Page 92

Koda’s posture changes. “Blondie. Come in here.”

“That’s okay,” she says from around the corner. “Paige, are you ready?”

“Blondie,” I call from my bed, where I can’t see her. “Get in here.”

Koda and Paige step back to let her through. She cuts the corner with her hands on her hips, and it isn’t the attitude that gets me. Her hair is down. There’s something dangling from her ears. There’s a piece of black fabric across her thighs that’s barely a thing, and her top isn’t much of anything either. It’s skin. All I see is skin.

Something in me turns over. It isn’t a thought; there are no words in it. It’s the same thing that happens when somebody puts a puck on your tape in front of an open net, except lower and hotter, and it goes straight through me before I can do anything about it.

What the fuck.

Koda whistles, low. “Damn, Blondie. Who died and left you that skirt?”

I look at him, and he shuts up. Rafe takes one look at me, knows exactly what’s happening in my face, and keeps it to himself.

“Who are you calling Blondie?” Kylie says to me.

Paige watches for my reaction, but I’m too stunned to answer. I sit up. “What party is this?”

Paige sighs. “It’s not the hockey house. We heard about that one. It’s a get-together at Warren Hall.”

“A get-together?”

Koda plays with Paige’s hair. “We’re going to that party at Greeley’s.”

Kylie makes a sound. It isn’t a word. It’s a noise of pure disgust from the back of her throat, and Paige snorts.

“You’re going to a party at his house?” Kylie says, looking right at me.

I make myself stop looking at the skirt. “It’s a team thing.”

“It’s a team thing,” she mocks. “Why would you ever go back there?”

“I just said.”

Kylie rolls her eyes. “That’s fucking insane.”

“It’s hockey,” Rafe says.

“Come with us,” Koda says to Paige. “Ditch Warren. Free everything, actual space. You can leave whenever you want, and I’ll walk you back.”

“It’s better than a room at Warren with a speaker in it,” I say.

Paige looks at Kylie. Kylie looks at Paige. Then she looks at me for a second, head slightly tipped, like she’s trying to work out what I just did.

“Fine,” she says. “But only because you need babysitting.”

Good.

She walks out putting her jacket on, and I look at her legs in that skirt and clench my jaw.

“Great,” Rafe says, very quietly, to nobody. “Great, great, great.”

Greeley opens his own door again. “Barnes.” He claps Koda on the shoulder. “Waleska. Kennebeck.”

“Greeley.”

He’s holding a beer, and his eyebrow is healing, and he smiles at the three of us. “Glad you came, man. Seriously.” He puts his hand on my shoulder in front of six people in his entryway. “It’s good. We’re good.”