Page 40 of The Fake Out

Dinah groaned when the goalie made the save, and then I got distracted by a petite blonde woman coming over to us and taking a seat next to me.

“Hi, sorry,” she said in a rush to Dinah.

“Hey, Max,” Dinah greeted.

The newcomer pushed her hair behind her ear. “Still scoreless?” she asked, to which we nodded. Then she turned to me and put out her hand. “Hi, I’m Max, TJ’s girlfriend. You’re Blaise’s girl, right?”

I shook her hand. “Right, Veronica.”

“Okay, good. He asked me to get you a ticket last minute, so I’m glad it worked out,” she said.

I eyed her carefully.

“She works for the team,” Dinah interjected.

“Oh, cool.”

“He’s a good guy,” Max said. “Even though he cheated off my math homework in high school.”

“Oh, you went to high school together?”

She nodded and smiled. “I swear this team’s all interconnected. It’s not even funny.”

I laughed and thumbed over at Dinah. “Yeah, you know our brothers are married?”

Max shook her head. “Nope! But I know you’re Rox’s tattoo artist.”

Speaking of which, I spied Rox’s man on the ice, taking the face-off. He was a big dude like Blaise, but I think he might have been slightly bigger. Man, where did they breed these mountain men at?

“Did Rox have a game?” Dinah asked Max.

Max nodded, but she wasn’t paying attention to the question. Her hand was on her bottom lip, and she stared intently at the game in front of us. Man, was this the hockey WAG life? It seemed stressful. I was thankful I had an expiration date for this shit.

“What the hell was that?” Maxine suddenly yelled.

I searched the ice for what she was looking at, and one of the Bulldogs was getting pushed on the ice by one of the opposing players. It looked heated. I spied the name on the back of the jersey, Desjardins. That must have been Rox’s twin brother TJ.

Dinah laughed at Max’s outburst, and the other woman’s cheeks tinged pink with embarrassment. “It’s so cute when she swears,” Dinah teased.

“Shut it, D!” Max teased back.

I watched the game with the girls, and they helped me when I didn’t understand a penalty. Like offsides. Like how do you have an offside if it’s on ice? They gave me an education on that one. There was apparently a lot of pressure on the team this year. They hadn’t won the cup since the eighties, and the heat was on for them to succeed.

After two periods of play, the game was still scoreless. Which might explain why Dinah turned to me before the last period to grill me.

She raised an eyebrow. “So how long have you and Blaise been a thing?”

Max gave me a small smile in sympathy. I shouldn’t have expected this to be easy. Especially with Dinah. Her family was nosy as fuck, so if it wasn’t her being hounded, she was dishing it out.

“Not long. We were keeping it casual,” I lied.

Dinah narrowed her emerald eyes at me. “You don’t do relationships. You specifically told me if you ever got into a relationship again to slap you.”

How did she remember that shit? Note to self: never tell a writer anything.

I shrugged. “He’s bomb at eating pussy.”

They laughed at that, and I hoped that would get me off the hook, but apparently not.