Page 65 of The Big Puck

“Let’s go out,” he says.

“I’ll go anywhere Lainey goes,” Sabien says. He’s relentless tonight, but I can sense it’s all in fun. Not that he’s not interested, but he’s not a threat. At all.

I notice Chase stays quiet and looks uncomfortable.

“I’ll go if Chase goes,” I say. Jason tries to flick me, but anticipating the move, I dodge him.

Because it always does, my glance goes to Spence, and my gut flutters when I find him watching me, his scowl especially deep. In fact, he’s finished with his interview and on the move. In our direction.

“Coach, come out with us,” Jason says, clueless about hockey team etiquette or maybe he doesn’t care. Either way, I’m surprised that Spence considers it.

“One beer,” he says. “If we get all the guys. And if you promise to call it a night by midnight.”

“Yes sir.” Jason salutes him like he’s in the army.

“Since when are we in the army?” Sabien says. Chase elbows him.

“We’re on a team fighting for respectability and an identity. Same thing,” Jason says.

Shit, he sounds like he’s drinking the Coach Spence Kool-Aid by the tub load.

Spence winces but claps his back with a nod and checks me for my reaction. But he should know I wouldn’t give him anything other than a smile, even knowing he’s responsible for planting those words in an impressionable young man’s head. We’ll have to have a talk about the thin line between motivation and indoctrination later. Not that I have influence. Or that I want to indoctrinate him into the Lainey positive thinking way. Shit. Forget my talk.

With Rafe joining us with the same single beer caveat as Spence, ninety percent of the team walks through the streets of Boston after a skirmish about where we’re going. Spence actually uses his whistle to settle the discussion.

“We’re going to The Hold in the Wall.” No one has a clue where it is, never mind having been there. It turns out it’s a small out of the way dive for locals that Spence used to frequent during the summers when he was in college. Probably in high school, too, but he’d never admit that to the guys.

He’s at the bar arranging a round for the guys, and I take the opportunity to join him.

“What are you doing here with these reprobates?” he says. What should be an easygoing opening comment actually sounds tense and like he really wants to say You shouldn’t be here with these reprobates.

“Same as you. Team support. Jason is my brother, remember?”

“Not about to forget any time soon.”

I laugh at this because I can hear his disgust, though I’m not sure if he’s disgusted with himself or Jason’s rule about no one touching me—especially him. I’m hoping it’s the latter, only because I’m an optimist. But my practical streak tells me it’s him, because he has his own lines.

“Besides, I’m entitled to a night out and some fun, aren’t I?”

He turns to me, gives me one of those toe-curling, vagina soaking stares—though I’m sure he has no idea of his effect.

He hands me a beer. “One,” he says. “Then I’ll give you a ride home.”

The seismic quake of excitement that hits me bullseye in my center has me clenching my thighs, and this is not something I do, not something that’s ever happened before with any man—okay, not with Moe because essentially, there were no other men.

I shouldn’t be so easy. In a fit of rebellion, I shake my head, then shake my tongue loose and all the sass I possess. “No thank you. I think I want to stay out and make the most of the night. But I really do appreciate the offer—and the beer.” I raise the beer to him in a salute and then guzzle it down just to spite him, or most hopefully, to provoke him.

In a further fit of rebellion, I let Sabien flirt with me. Okay, I invite Sabien to flirt with me because that’s where I head with my half-empty beer and a slight buzz to accompany the delicious warmth of awareness coursing through me—from Spence’s eyes on my back.

“Well, hello there,” Sabien says as I stand next to him at the high top, close enough for my hip to graze his thigh. He doesn’t miss the invitation and wraps an arm around my waist—after he checks to see where Jason is. His mistake was in not checking for Spence, but I don’t say a word.

He’s a very beautiful young man, but even that gorgeous dimpled smile aimed directly at me does not one thing for me. It’s a shame because he’s a good guy and fun in his brashness. I know he’s a decent guy, or Jason never would have adopted him as a roommate.

Maybe I should try. For real. I should make an effort at a relationship with a good young man, someone my age, someone at the start of their life adventure like I am. Those were Daddy’s words when he sent me off with Jason because he always thought Moe was a little too old and established for me.

I wonder how he’d react to Spence, and I bite my lip, knowing—and also knowing it wouldn’t matter in the end. All the same, I give him my full attention, including my best genuine smile with all the pearly whites showing, the kind I feel down to my heart, infusing it with all my good will and concentrating on all the good in him.

He sucks in a breath, and his hand pops off me as if he’s been singed.