Page 11 of Scoring Lessons

I picked my own cup and didn’t dare to say anything else.

Daisy had abandoned all pretense of loyalty and was now resting her chin on his knee, gazing up at him with the type of devotion she usually reserved for me and me alone. He scratched the top of her head absently, like it was something he’d always done.

“She really likes you,” I said.

“Animals are good judges of character.”

“I may need to take her to the vet then, because she couldn’t be more wrong about you.”

He barked a laugh. “God, you sure are something else, Livvie,” he murmured.

“Thanks,” I quipped, though I knew he meant it as a jab.

“Wasn’t a compliment.”

“I know.” I smiled sweetly as I fluttered my eyelashes. “I’m choosing to take it as one anyway.”

He shook his head, mouth pulling at the corner. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Spin everything.”

I lifted a shoulder. “Survival skill.”

He studied me long enough to make me want to look away then reached for the last piece of toast on his plate. “You’re going to be a problem, you know that?”

“Funny you say that.” I hummed. “Because I was thinking the same thing about you.”

He stared at me for a long beat. Then he laughed—it was unrestricted and completely different from what I’d gotten this morning. The corner of his eyes crinkled, and it caught me off guard, the way it changed his whole face. How handsome it made him.

I filed that away somewhere I didn’t plan to read too much into.

We walked back to the building twenty minutes later, Daisy between us, the lake glittering in the morning light behind us.

At the elevator, he held the door.

“I gotta get to practice. Same time tomorrow?” he asked, like it was already decided.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “I’d rather starve to death.”

The last thing I saw before the doors slid shut was the grin hooking at the corner of his mouth.

I stared at my reflection in the polished metal and made a very important mental note: Wesley Hayes was a problem. A six-foot-four, annoyingly charming, green-eyed problem.

FOUR

WESLEY

ARE YOU BOTH DONE WITH THE MEASURING CONTEST?

When the whistle cut through the rink, I took a deep, calming breath to avoid saying something I was sure to regret.

“Three-man rush,” Coach Sloane said, nodding at me.

I pushed off the boards and drifted into the left lane. One of the youngest rookies skated beside me like he was trying not to breathe wrong.

Fan-fucking-tastic.