Parental Guidance (Ice Knights #1)(15)

Her knee was jiggling against his, but she answered without hesitation. “Yes.”

“Interesting,” Asha said, turning the wattage of her smile up to twenty. “I’m sure all of Harbor City will be tuning in after date number two to find out if you or our viewers were right about how it would go. We’ll see all of you then on Harbor City Wake Up.”

The red light over the camera went dark, Asha got up and started to walk off the set, and everyone in the studio started chattering at once—except for him, Zara, Jasper, and Britany.

Caleb sat there dumbfounded. He got that he was a dipshit. He got that Asha and probably most of Harbor City wanted to give him a public comeuppance, which he could take. What he didn’t understand was why he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was personal for the TV host.

“I’ll be right back,” he told Zara before hustling over to where Asha was talking with a guy in a headset who was holding a clipboard. “Thanks for having me.”

“You have no idea who I am, do you?” she asked.

Trick question? Maybe, but he was going to play it straight. “You’re Asha Kapoor.”

Glaring at him, she took a step closer and lowered her voice so only they could hear. “One of your teammates slept with my sister a few months ago, but he wouldn’t know who she is because she was just some rando puck bunny, I guess.”

Seriously, getting slashed in the face with a stick a hundred times would be worth it if he could go back in time and have another chance to call out his friends for saying such stupid shit. Most of it really was just talk—they weren’t bad guys—but they’d acted like it, and that was just as awful.

Guilt twisted his gut. Up until this moment, he hadn’t really thought about how the video going viral had impacted the women he and the other Ice Knights had slept with. Yeah, that pretty much confirmed it. He was pond scum. “I’m sorry. I should have said something. I deserve the response I’ve gotten.”

“You do.” Asha jabbed her finger into his chest. “And not because of some sex shaming but because these women were human beings, not pussy sleeves for your dicks. They have names.”

“You’re right.” He took a step back and stopped himself. “Please tell your sister I’m sorry.”

Asha glared at him, a divot forming between her eyes, but didn’t say anything.

Taking the hint, he turned away and walked out of the studio with his mom, Zara, and Jasper. Zara and her dad gave them space, chatting quietly in the corner. From what he could catch, it sounded like Zara was giving her old man the what-for about all the commercial plugs he’d dropped during the interview.

It wasn’t until the elevator started going down that his mom pulled him aside and said, “That was rough. You okay?”

“I’ll live.” He let his head fall back so it thunked against the elevator wall. “Do you think I can come back from this?”

Giving him a considering look, his mom paused, seeming to gather her words. He knew what that meant. Coach Britany was on duty. “Let me ask you this, how would you feel about someone who said what your teammates did about your sisters?”

He didn’t even have to think about it. “Like smashing his face in.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a shitty, dehumanizing move and they deserve better.”

His mom nodded. “So why do I have to make the connection between your sisters and these other women for you to realize the shittiness of this kind of locker room talk, if that’s what you want to use as an excuse?”

She shouldn’t have to. That was the water his mom was leading him to, and as soon as he was standing over the pond looking down at his reflection, he saw it all. Epic-level dickery.

“So what do I do now?” he asked.

“Act the way you know you should,” she said as the elevator doors opened. “Use this opportunity not just to make yourself look better but to be better.”

And how exactly he was going to do that, he had to figure out—and soon. A few floors later, he was holding the elevator doors while everyone walked out. His mom and her dad said their goodbyes and walked out, but Zara lingered in the lobby, her fingers wrapped tightly around the strap of her purse as her gaze flicked from one part of the busy lobby to another without ever landing on him.

“You got a minute to chat?” he asked.

This wasn’t going to go well. More than likely, she was going to move over to the side of the 68 percent of the city’s female population who were ready to kick him to the curb. Who could blame her? Not him. Still, it needed to be done.

“I understand if you want to end this here,” he said, walking with her toward the doors. “No hard feelings.”

She looked up at him, her gaze wary. “Were you serious up there? Are you really sorry you didn’t act or that you got caught?”

“I’m ashamed I didn’t say anything.” He shoved his fingers through his hair in frustration, mad at himself. “I should have, and I fucked up.”

Zara didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look at him. Instead, she watched the people hustle around them in the lobby. Then she took out her phone and opened the Bramble app. The yes or no to date number two confirmation notification popped up immediately.

She tapped yes. “Let’s see what the Bramble folks have planned for date number two.”