Page 83 of Offside Angle

I’m halfway through checking the pictures from the game when Matteo drops into the empty seat beside me with all the grace of a falling refrigerator. I smile without looking away from the camera.

“You were good tonight.”

“Yeah?”

There’s something in the way he asks it that makes me glance over. Under the dim bus lights, he’s still flushed from the game, hair damp from the shower, that leftover adrenaline making him look brighter somehow.

He’s also blushing.

Adorable.

“Yeah,” I tell him, letting my eyes stay on him long enough that the color gets worse. “Very.”

Matteo opens his mouth, probably to say something stupid, but Cole comes down the aisle before he gets the chance. He’s heading toward Elias near the front when he notices Matteo sitting beside me and slows.

The look he gives us could curdle milk.

Matteo immediately groans. “Oh, come on, Hollywood.”

Cole stops completely and braces one hand against the seat in front of us. “No, actually. Because you know who gets to deal with a mopey Lena? Me. Meanwhile, you’re sitting back here making puppy eyes at the photographer.”

The words wipe the grin off Matteo’s face.

Cole sees it too, but he’s angry enough not to care. He scoffs, shakes his head, and continues up the aisle, muttering something I can’t hear over the music.

Beside me, Matteo sinks farther into the seat and rubs the back of his neck.

A few seconds ago he was glowing.

Now he looks guilty for having been happy at all.

I hate that.

The bus keeps roaring around us, but I lean closer so I don’t have to raise my voice. “For what it’s worth, he’s not wrong about the puppy eyes.”

Matteo huffs out a laugh and nudges my knee with his, but it doesn’t quite fix the look on his face.

“I should text her,” he says after a moment, already reaching for his phone. “Just… check on her.”

I don’t say anything while Matteo starts typing. The glow from the screen lights his face in the dim bus, and for a minute he seems completely absorbed in whatever he’s writing.

“She answered,” he says quietly after a moment.

I glance over, but I don’t ask.

Matteo reads for another few seconds, then lets out a breath through his nose. “She says she’s okay.”

“That good?”

“I think so.” His thumb moves over the screen again. “I asked if she’s coming to Game 7.”

The typing bubbles appear, disappear, then come back while he waits. Around us, the bus is still complete chaos—music playing too loudly, somebody yelling from the back, Damian periodically telling everyone to simmer down with absolutely no effect—but Matteo barely seems to notice any of it.

Then his phone buzzes again.

He reads the message and winces.

“Oh, fuck off.”