Page 218 of Cross Checked
Her mouth trembled once before she pressed it flat. “That was very arrogant.”
“I’m comfortable with the label.”
“You would be.”
Aura looked at Charm.
Charm looked at Aura.
Something passed between them, silent and fast.
Then Aura straightened. “We’ll come too.”
Bliss’s head turned carefully. “What?”
“We’ll stay at Hockey House,” Charm said immediately, voice bright in a way that rang just slightly too polished. “Obviously. You cannot be expected to recover in a house full of men without civilized supervision.”
Aura nodded. “And I have no faith any of them know what toner is.”
Briggs, who had been uncharacteristically silent near the door, lifted a hand. “I know what toner is.”
Charm stared at him. “Printer toner does not count, Lawson.”
He lowered his hand. “Then I withdraw.”
Bliss looked between her friends, suspicion fighting exhaustion across her bruised face. “You don’t have to do that.”
“We know,” Aura said.
“I mean it. I’m not dragging you into a hockey house hostage situation because I got my ass kicked by a wannabe horror-movie villain with control issues.”
Charm’s eyes shone, but her smile stayed firm. “Baby, we have been dragging each other into questionable locations since middle school. This is not our first hostile environment.”
“Hockey House is hostile,” Bliss said, pointing weakly. “Thank you for acknowledging that.”
“It smells like boy and poor choices,” Aura said. “But it has bodies, cameras, locks, and a future NHL player who looks like he hasn’t slept since the Industrial Revolution.”
I looked at her.
Aura looked back, unimpressed.
Fair.
Bliss tried to laugh and immediately regretted it, her hand pressing carefully to her ribs as pain flashed across her face.
Every man in the room moved half an inch.
She noticed.
“Everybody stop doing that,” she hissed. “You look like a disturbed football team.”
“Hockey,” Briggs said softly.
She turned her glare on him. “Read the room, lab partner.”
His face cracked for the first time since I’d walked in, not into a grin but into something tender and wrecked. “Yes, ma’am.”
I watched Aura and Charm move closer to Bliss, both of them fussing over her blanket and water cup like that had been the whole reason they offered to come.
