Tomboy (The Hartigans #3)(13)

“It’s not fair.” And just because there wasn’t anything she could do to change it—not with her bank balance—that didn’t mean she was going to just sit back and accept it.

“But it is life. We just have to learn to accept the things we can’t change,” he said. “And in light of this, we’d completely understand if you want to cut back on your volunteer hours since the full-time position isn’t going to happen.”

She may have started volunteering at the clinic with the understanding that it would turn into a full-time, paid position, but she believed in its mission. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

And there had to be a way to raise enough funds for the outreach program before the money ran out. All she had to do was figure out how.

…

Locker rooms on the day before a big game always felt different, more electric with a sense of heaviness in the air. It was like the last few moments before the first bolt of lightning lit up the night sky. There was no way to explain it, but Zach’s body always got tuned up tight, knowing on instinct that something was about to break. It was the best feeling in the world. He had his earbuds in and his favorite playlist blasting but hit pause on his phone and yanked out the buds when Coach stopped in front of him.

“You planning on playing like you did the last game?” Coach Peppers asked, holding his usual mug of three-fourths sugar and milk with one-fourth coffee.

Zach stopped taping the blade of his stick—toe to heel—with white tape. That’s the color he used during the last game rather than his usual black. It seemed to have made a difference.

“Yeah.” Last night was the first time in over a year that he’d gotten on the ice without the weight of what he’d let his parents do to him bearing down on his shoulders. From the first face-off, it had been like the days before hockey had become tainted with all of the bullshit that came with actually getting to play the game he loved.

“Good.” Coach leaned in a little closer. “How’s the other thing?”

Besides the trainer, Peppers was the only one he’d told about the food poisoning. Not that there was anyone else to really tell. It wasn’t like he was going to call up Stuckey, his defensive partner, or Christensen, Petrov, and Phillips, the forward line they most often played with on the ice, to tell them about his puke-a-thon. But his coach? The man who’d known him since he was a teenager and knew the real reason why he’d left his hometown team and signed with the Ice Knights? Yeah, he’d told the old man.

“I’m fine.” Zach sealed the tape at the top of his stick’s toe and got the scissors so he could cut off the extra.

The other man took a drink of his sugar-spiked concoction and looked around the locker room. All the other guys were going through their pre-ice-time rituals. For some guys, like Stuckey, it was the same as before a game—listening to New Age music blasting on the headphones while chewing his way through an entire pack of spearmint gum. The majority of the team, though, just talked smack as they got ready, as opposed to the near dead silence of right before a game.

“Be on the ice in five, boys,” the coach said, then turned his attention back to Zach. “Two tickets will be at the will-call window for your nurse tomorrow night. You did invite her to the game, right?”

Zach tossed the roll of tape back into his locker. Delay? Him? Always. “Not yet.”

After that photo had hit all the gossip sites, sending his social media notifications into overdrive, according to his agent, who had an intern monitoring those things, the guilt started to sink in. Yeah, he’d reached out to Lucy and confessed that he’d left her bestie hanging in the wind, but like a chickenshit, he’d left the message in a voicemail and who in the world actually checked voicemail?

He should have realized that Lucy hadn’t heard his message when he didn’t hear back. Of course, even if she had, the picture of Fallon and him were all over Harbor City within twenty-four hours. And his attempts to reach Fallon? Nonexistent because there was something about the woman that made him a little bit nervous—a fact that he’d take a puck to the mouth sans mouth guard before admitting out loud.

“Blackburn,” Coach said, sounding exactly like he had when he’d been coaching Zach in juniors. “Why are you always so difficult?”

He glared up at his coach, putting in all the obstinate screw-you attitude he could muster at the moment. “It’s part of my charm.”

Peppers just rolled his eyes. “The woman did you a solid. Say thank you and give her the tickets.”

Coach was almost as bad as that little bit of guilt gnawing on the back of his brain that he hadn’t been able to squash. Fallon might have been a pain in his ass—the kind who didn’t want to be anywhere near him any more than he wanted her to be there—but she wasn’t used to the media hordes. She hadn’t deserved to get chewed up and spit out by the Harbor City sports media.

“Fine,” he said, not showing anything but annoyance—he did still have a sense of self-preservation. “I’ll text her later.”

“Take out your phone and do it now,” Coach said before draining what was in his sure-to-cause-diabetes drink.

Was this guy kidding? What. The. Fuck. “I’m not sixteen anymore. You don’t get to just tell me what to do.”

Coach snorted in that I’m-pretending-to-be-amused-but-I-can-still-kick-your-ass way that he had. “Just do it.”