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“Do you ever wonder what it would be like if things were different?” She gives me a small shrug. “If we could be friends?”
“Friends?” I’d like to be the kind of good guy where that would be enough, but all it takes is looking at her to know it wouldn’t.
Wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue, she walks through the piles of boxes. Her fingers trail across cardboard before she stops at a foldout table set up with a laptop and the clipboards the volunteers were using during the event. Leaning back on it, she looks up at me, her eyes soft.
“That would be something, huh? If we were friends. Can you imagine it?”
There’s something about the way she says it. A vulnerability that won’t allow me to let her down. So even though I know I’d want more, I take a couple steps in her direction and nod. “Sure, I can. I’d be lucky to have a friend like you.” I jut my chin at her. “You could give me some pointers on my slap shot.”
Christ, that smile.But then it’s gone, and it feels like the sun just set for the last time. “Allie—”
“What if it didn’t have to be such a big deal, Vaughn?” Her eyes search mine. “I mean, would itreallybe that big of a deal?”
It would. No one would believe that a friendship with Natalie Baxter was about anything but me fucking with her brother. Which means a friendship with her would cost me my season and that could cost me my career. She knows it. This girl understands the world I live in almost better than I do. But for whatever reason, in this moment, the reality of that world isn’t where she wants to be. And so I cross my arms and listen.
“We’ve bumped into each other enough times that it makes sense we’d say hello after the games, right? Have a few private jokes between us about that time at the book drive,” she says, a soft plea in her too-blue eyes.
A plea I can’t resist. “And at the rink.” The memory of finding her there, sweaty and pink-cheeked, so fucking pretty, pulls at the corner of my mouth. “All the kids.”
She nods, pleased that I’m playing along. “So we talk a little.”
“But not too much.” I step up to the table, leaning into it beside her. “Not too long.”
“Because Greg will hate it, but if it’s just a minute here and there, what’s he really going to say, right?”
Baxter? He’ll have plenty to say and my guess is that it wouldn’t be with words. It would be with his fists.
But that’s not what I tell her, because the smile this game ofwhat ifis earning me is too sweet to give up. And maybe I want to see the kind of ending Natalie would write us, even if it’s only within this bubble in the back room of the book drive. So I take another step into the shared fantasy. “Nothing. He wouldn’t say anything. Because we’re just talking about volunteering.”
Her voice softens. “And little by little our talks last longer.”
“And it’s no big deal, because it would be a gradual thing.”
She nods. “Slow.”
“And then when I leave?” Because I will. I have to.I want to.
“You’ll have a few people meet you at Belfast for a goodbye drink. And by then everyone will know we’re friends, so it won’t be any big deal at all when I give you a hug goodbye.”
I can practically feel her chest pressed against mine, her slim frame filling my arms. “For a minute. And then I’ll let you go.”
She nods once, some of the light in her eyes dimming as she stares at the floor. It ought to be the end of the story except I don’t want it to be. Turning into her, I reach for her, tipping her face toward mine. “And then maybe one day, because we’re friends, I’d fly you out to one of my games.”
“In Oregon?”
“Yeah.” I shouldn’t be touching her, but her skin is so soft I can’t make myself stop. “And this time, you’ll be wearing a jersey with my name on it.” Christ, just the idea of having her wrapped up in my number sparks something in my chest that shouldn’t be there. Something hot and possessive.
“I’d cheer for you and you’d knock the glass as you skated past.”
“After the win—” because if she was there, there’s no fucking way we wouldn’t win, “—I’d take you to dinner so we could catch up.”
“We’d talk. For as long as we liked, because it wouldn’t matter anymore if anyone saw.”
“I’d make you laugh so you were smiling just for me.”
“And after, you’d take me back to my hotel,” she whispers.
I should. But even in the context of this friendly fantasy that’s more than a year off and will never actually happen, I know that’s not the way it would go. Giving in to the pull inside me, the one I feel every time this woman is within sight, I plant one hand on the table beside her hip. I’m crowding her. Standing so close I can smell the faint scent of her shampoo. Her pupils are blown wide and I can hear the change in her breathing. See the flush across her chest and neck.
