Page 24 of Wild Card 13

I laughed once under my breath.

Not because it was funny. Because my life apparently enjoyed psychological warfare now.

She’d looked beautiful.

That realization pissed me off immediately. It still hit me the same way. One look and suddenly I was sixteen again standing outside Northbend High trying to pretend I wasn’t completely gone for her already.

I dragged a hand down my face slowly. “Jesus Christ,” I muttered into the empty room.

The worst part?

It wasn’t even the write-up.

It was the way she looked through me. Like whatever we’d been belonged to somebody else now. Some younger version of us she no longer recognized.

I finished the beer eventually without remembering most of drinking it.

Sometime after midnight, exhaustion finally started dragging at me hard enough to shut my brain up for a few minutes.

I stretched out on the couch instead of bothering with the bedroom upstairs.

One arm over my eyes.

Lake wind rattling softly outside.

And somewhere between one heartbeat and the next—I was seventeen again.

The Northbend SummerFestival took over downtown every July.

Food stands.

Live music.

Beer tents full of middle-aged men arguing about hockey prospects like NHL scouts personally monitored Main Street every year.

The entire town smelled like fried food, sunscreen, lake water, and hot pavement baking under summer heat.

Lucy walked beside me through the crowd wearing denim shorts and one of my old hockey hoodies wrapped around her shoulders because the temperature had dropped after sunset.

Her fingers stayed hooked loosely through mine like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“You cheated,” she informed me seriously as we stepped away from the carnival games.

“I won you that frog fair and square.”

“You bullied the high school volunteer running the dart booth.”

“I applied strategic pressure.”

“You told him you’d make his life miserable during preseason skates.”

“That sounds fake.”

Lucy laughed softly beside me.

God.

That sound.