Page 41
That was apparently enough.
Ash took one look at my living room, then at the couch, and stopped with his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “That’s not the couch from the photos.”
“No.”
He stared at me for another second before comprehension dawned. “You threw it away?”
“I replaced it.”
“You replaced an entire couch because Melanie sat on it?”
“She was naked on it.”
His mouth twitched. “Max, I’m fairly certain you’ve had naked people on your furniture before.”
“Not people who broke into my apartment.”
That did it. He started laughing, the sound building until he had to drop onto the apparently uncontaminated replacement couch.
“I cannot believe you bought a new couch.”
“It was contaminated.”
“With what?”
“Bad decisions.”
He smirked. “In that case, replacing the couch isn't going to be enough. You'd need to burn down the apartment.”
“Keep talking and you can eat your pizza in the hallway.”
His grin widened, and the sight of it did something uncomfortable to my chest.
Ash rarely laughed like that. He had the dry half-smile, the sarcastic snort, and the occasional locker-room laugh when someone else did something particularly stupid, but this was different. He looked younger when he forgot to guard himself, and for one second, I could see the boy he must have been before whatever had happened with his father taught him to watch every room for exits.
My phone chimed from the kitchen counter, but I ignored it. I had spent enough of the day answering questions I didn’t want to answer, and whoever was trying to reach me could survive another hour without access to the captain of the Colorado Dragons.
Ash glanced toward the sound. “You going to get that?”
“No. It’s probably my agent, and he already knows I'm not giving anybody an interview tonight.”
The look Ash gave me suggested that wasn't nearly as reassuring as I'd intended.
“Given the press scrum outside the airport, maybe you should answer him. You’re captain, Max. You don't exactly get to hide during a media storm.”
“I’m not hiding.”
He raised both eyebrows and then very deliberately looked around the apartment, taking in the closed door, the drawn blinds, the pizza boxes, and the fact that I had apparently decided the best response to a public-relations disaster was to barricade myself at home with one particular teammate.
I followed his gaze and refused to concede the point. “I’m eating pizza.”
“The two activities are not mutually exclusive.”
There was enough satisfaction in his voice that I grabbed a napkin and threw it at him. He caught it one-handed without even looking, which was irritatingly impressive, and his grin widened as though he'd just won something.
Then his phone buzzed on the coffee table.
The change in him was immediate. One moment he was smiling at me, relaxed enough that the tension he carried everywhere had finally started to loosen, and the next the expression simply disappeared.
