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“And you’re dating…him?”
Everyone laughs, Zeke most of all. He tucks her hair behind her ear and she smiles at him. It’s as if they’ve heard this one before.
“He’s the best man I’ve ever known,” she says simply.
He stares at her in awe, and it does something to my chest. I rub at it as I hear a sweet littleawwwnext to me. My eyes meet Megan’s and she smiles softly.
“Brah,” Freddy says, pounding a fist on the table. “You need to lock that down fast before she smartens up.”
“I’m on it,brah,” Zeke quips, kissing her temple as everyone chuckles.
Mackenna is chatting up a woman who is a new trainer for the pro soccer team in town. And Bishop is trying to flirt with Ainsley, who seems completely ambivalent about his attempts.
The waitress comes to freshen our drinks, and Megan sits quietly, turning her elegant finger around the base of her pint glass.
“So, how do you know everyone?” I ask.
She stiffens and I wonder if I’ve hit a nerve.
“Unless that’s a story for another time?”
“It’s okay,” Megan says, her voice softer and deeper than I expect. I ignore the small thrill that passes through my chest as she leans closer. “I dated Zeke for like, a hot second.”
“Oh?” I say it casually. But my hand tightens around my pint glass and I force myself to take a long sip of my sour beer.
I can’t see it. They don’t seem like they fit. There’s something about her that’s darker… sweeter… lush with mystery.
“Yeah,” she says with a low, musical laugh that goes straight to my dick. “It was over pretty quick when I realized he was in love with Faye.” She smiles as she looks at them, his fingers playing with Faye’s hair as she leans into him.
“They’re good together,” I say. I don’t know them all that well, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that they have the good kind of love.
“So good,” she says, then takes a long sip of her cider.
I don’t want to talk about the guys she used to date. I want to talk about anything else. But mostly, I just want to figure out what it is that makes it feel like she’s the only one in the room. Hell, in the stadium. When I saw her from the ice when Freddy pointed out his friends, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. It was as if I already knew her. I definitely would have remembered meeting someone like her.
She’s beautiful, but it’s more than that. She reminds me of the dancer in Deanna's old jewelry box from when she was a kid. There’s something sweet and fragile and spellbinding in the way she moves, the way she blinks, the way she sips her cider like it’s the most important thing she’s ever tasted simply because it’s what she’s tastingright now. It’s like I could trust her with all my secrets in this moment and know they’d stay safe and protected, like fireflies in a jar.
“Tell me something,” she says.
“What do you want to know?” I ask, leaning back in my chair so that we’re sitting at the same distance from the table. My arm brushes hers and a current jolts through me.
“Do you love coaching?”
I lift my eyebrows. It’s not what I expected. Honestly, I don’t get the sense she’s a hockey fan, more that she’s along for the ride with her friends.
“I do,” I say.
She hums and the vibrations go straight to my cock.Fuck.
“When did you know you loved it?”
“Hockey? Or coaching?” I ask.
“Both,” she says, sipping her cider. It’s almost gone. She leaves a light kiss of lipstick on the rim of her glass and I imagine what that lipstick would look like around my cock.
I clear my throat and readjust the way I’m sitting.
“Uh, hockey when I was a kid. I used to skate on the pond behind my house.”
