Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(48)
“Why?” Fallon asked. “You’ve been to games with me.”
“That was before.” Before she’d met Cole. Before she’d gotten pregnant. Before she’d started to think of him at weird times of the day—like every time she inhaled.
“So what’s changed besides your bun in the oven?” Fallon, dressed in her team jersey with Zach’s number on it, a pair of jeans, and her ever-present Chucks, tightened her ponytail, her eyes never leaving her defenseman boyfriend on the ice. “I mean, it’s not like you guys are a couple or anything.”
“Exactly.” And it would be awesome if her lady bits could remember that.
“And you don’t even like Cole,” her bestie continued, “so really, you’re just here for my moral support while Zach shuts down any scoring opportunity the Rage may get.”
It was the lack of a diatribe against the Ice Knights’ most hated rivals, the Cajun Rage of New Orleans, that tipped Tess off that maybe her friend wasn’t as neutral as she was playing at. Well, that and the shit-eating grin Fallon had just turned on her friend that all but hollered, I think you like him; you want to bang him.
Fallon was many things—an ER nurse, a passable skateboarder, and one of the best takes-no-shit friends Tess could ever have. What she wasn’t was subtle. At all. Ever.
Tess rolled her eyes. “You know subterfuge is really not your strength.”
“Thank God, even trying was killing me.” Fallon let out a full laugh and turned back to the ice. “So you surprise Cole by showing up at the game and then maybe you two hook up again and—” In the middle of all this, Fallon looked over at Tess, and whatever she saw on her face must have surprised her. She stopped talking mid-word, her eyes widened, and she let out a gasp. “Oh shit. You fucked him.”
“Shhhhhhhhhh.” Face on fire, Tess looked around at the people sitting nearby, but thank God, with the sound system pumping and everyone yelling at the Rage players to let them know just how very badly they sucked, no one seemed to have heard. “It was a fluke because of the pregnancy hormones.”
Fallon twisted the end of her ponytail around her fingers, her face a little too neutral for her, who had an opinion about everything and wasn’t afraid of sharing it. “Sounds totally reasonable; after all, everyone knows how you’re the kind of woman who just flits from bed to bed having orgasms until you’re too exhausted to tell your best friends that”—she exhaled and the facade dropped, revealing total and complete glee—“you’re banging Cole Phillips.”
“Shhhhhhhhh.” Tess waved her hands downward in the international sign for lower your damn volume. “My God, Fallon. You do not have an inside voice.”
“That is one hundred percent fact.” Fallon shrugged, focusing her attention back on the players who were starting to skate by on their way to the tunnel and the locker room beyond, and leaned closer to Tess. “So use your inside voice to tell me everything.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” That was her story and she was sticking to it.
A tap on the glass pulled her attention away from looking at Fallon’s not-buying-what-you’re-selling expression. Cole stood on the other side of the glass. Her heart slowed down before speeding up to Enterprise at warp speed.
Fuck.
This should be illegal; he should be illegal. If she wasn’t pregnant already, the look on his face would have knocked her up. Confident and cocky, the wink promised he was about to give her some live-action competence porn with a remember-how-those-solid-muscles-of-his-felt-underneath-her chaser. Then he turned and skated to the tunnel, disappearing inside.
“Yep, nothing to tell,” Fallon said, sarcasm thick in her tone. “Totally just friends. Occasional fuck buddies.” She shook her head. “Girl, you are a live-action version of that gif where the guy is standing in front of an explosion and says, Nothing to see here.”
“It’s just weird circumstances.” Oh God, not even she believed that, but the words spilled out anyway.
Fallon snorted. “I don’t buy it in the least. But it’s a good reminder not to ignore what’s happening whether you believe in it or not.”
Tess made sure to keep her mouth shut—not because she was afraid of what would come out of Fallon’s mouth next. It was more like she was afraid of what would come out of hers, because this thing with Cole was starting to feel like more than just temporary living arrangements.
…
Not even the shit talk of the Rage’s star left forward, Elon Zarcheck, could knock the grin off Cole’s face as Petrov took the face-off in the neutral zone five minutes into the second period.
Zarcheck snarled at Cole. “Just wait until I knock that smile off your pretty-boy face.”
He lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “You can try, but it’s not happening.”
Shit, even going nose-first into the glass wouldn’t shift his grin an inch. That was the power of seeing Tess in the front row staring at him like she couldn’t look away even if someone had been offering her a twenty-million-dollar check.
“Finally got laid,” Zarcheck said, one side of his nose lifting in a sneer.
“Yeah.” Cole nodded, gaze focused on Petrov and the puck about to drop from the ref’s hand. “Your mom says hi.”