Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(75)

Telling them all the hurtful shit they’d hurled at each other wouldn’t change anything, so she kept her mouth shut about that. The truth was that it never would have worked. Everything she touched—even her flowers—was temporary. That her girls weren’t was just the exception that proved the rule.

“Does the fact that I brought dill-flavored ice cream help?” Gina pulled a grocery bag out of her huge tote.

“Oh my God, that sounds disgusting.” Her stomach growled. “Okay, maybe it’s worth trying at least.”

“It’s your taste buds’ funeral,” Lucy said.

“I have the pizza guy’s number on speed dial,” Fallon added, “because we need to order something before Paint and Sip, since there’s no way I’m eating that ice cream.”

“Come on,” Tess said, shaking her head at her friends’ antics. “I’ve got spoons in my office.”

They followed her to the back. It wasn’t until they walked through the door and the sound of Cole’s voice hit her ears, though, that she remembered what she’d been doing before her friends had shown up.

“I have got to take you to this place in Minneapolis,” Cole said. “They have this cheese-stuffed hamburger called a Juicy Lucy here. I’m already dying for another one, as if I’m the one with the pregnancy cravings. How’s our little peanut doing today? I’m about to crash out but I’ll sleep with the phone under my pillow so I’ll wake up if you call.”

“Peanut?” Gina asked, swerving around to Tess, who stood frozen in the doorway to get inside the office.

Tess let out a shaky breath. “That’s what we call the baby.”

“And did you call him that night?” Lucy asked as she nudged Tess into the small room where they all crowded around her desk, looking at the phone as if it was the Rosetta Stone.

“No, just left voicemails for each other. It’s dumb. I should erase them.” She reached for the phone, but Gina snatched it away before Tess could.

Before she could protest, the next message started.

“We didn’t get to stop, but the team bus drove by the mother of all baking supply shops on the way to the rink this morning. The damage I could do in there,” Cole said, his smile obvious in his voice. “I bet I could even find some rainbow glitter sprinkles in the shape of unicorns for the next time we make cupcakes together. I dreamed about baking with you last night. Of course you were naked. It was a very good dream. Still, though, I’d rather be home.”

Tess’s chest ached. Listening to the messages and knowing she would never get any more was like sticking a rusty nail into an open wound—pure torture. Emotion filled her throat as she fought to keep it together. Falling apart wouldn’t help anything.

Gina hit pause and pressed the phone to her chest above her heart and let out a dreamy sigh. “He’s in love with you.”

“No.” Tess couldn’t—wouldn’t—pretend. That way only led to heartache. Look at what a mess she was already. “It was just sex.”

“And baking,” Lucy said, you’re-full-of-shit plain in her tone.

“And making plans to go across the country to experience heaven in hamburger form,” Gina said.

“Is this the part where we pretend you’re not being a stubborn idiot?” Fallon asked. “Because that was not a man only interested in banging. That’s a guy in love.”

Tess’s gut twisted as she ran through every interaction with Cole without the drumbeat of “everyone always leaves” pounding in her heart. The voicemails. The dance. The cupcakes. Him cuddling Kahn. Almost everything with her right up to that last final fight when every truth he’d hurled at her burned like a brand. But wait. That didn’t take into account the third person always with them.

“What about Marti?” Her voice broke on the other woman’s name.

Lucy cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“Cole loves her.” They’d been the ones to tell her all about it the morning of Lucy’s wedding.

Fallon scoffed. “Is that what you think?”

Tess set her shoulders and looked at each of her friends. They loved her, but they were wrong about this. “She went down to the locker room right after he got hurt, and she stayed overnight with him. It’s only a matter of time until they get back together. It’s what they do. Fallon and Lucy said so themselves at the wedding.”

“Marti is head over heels for some tech guy.” Lucy gave her a sympathetic look laced with more than a little regret. “I should have told you. I didn’t think it was even an issue. I’m sorry. Plus, she never stayed with him. He spent the night alone.”

“No, he told me she was staying with him and that’s why I left him alone that night.” Guilt knocked Tess’s knees out, and she sank into the guest chair in front of her desk. “That he would want her there told me everything I needed to know about the impossibility of us being more. We were just temporary. We both said it.”

The floor tilted for a second as she tried to process it all. Had they both said it—or had she been the only one? She wasn’t sure anymore about anything.

“Tess, we love you, but you are so stuck in a rut of constantly thinking everything is temporary.” Gina rounded the desk and squatted down in front of Tess’s chair so they were eye to eye. “I hate to tell you, but everything is temporary, just like those flowers you sell. Does that mean people should stop loving flowers or is it that we should appreciate them more while we have them?”