Page 22 of The Grumpy Defenseman

The machine did not care that I had kissed somebody in Southtown. The machine did not pause. It kept running on its own timeline, and I had just made its job harder.

My condo was dark when I walked in. I did not turn on the lights. Just stood in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, breathing.

My phone sat where I had tossed it. I picked it up. Her contact was still open from when she had texted earlier. The message that had started all of this.

Sam: Meet me at Paramour tonight. Eight o’clock. One drink. No pictures. Just a drink.

No pictures.

She had left her camera behind. The one thing that defined her professionally, the tool she used to see the world, the barrier she carried between herself and everyone she photographed. She had left it at home. On purpose.

She had shown up without her armor.

And I had shown up without mine.

Chapter ten

Samantha

Iwoke up with the saxophone still in my head and Bella asleep on my couch.

She had arrived twelve minutes after my text, armed with a bottle of wine she had apparently been keeping for emergencies.

“Emotional emergencies,” she had clarified, kicking off her heels and settling into my couch like she had lived there for years. “Which this qualifies as.”

The debriefing had lasted two hours. She had wanted context. She had wanted the exact duration of the kiss.

“Four seconds? Four seconds? Samantha, that’s not a kiss. That’s a thesis statement.”

She had wanted the precise placement of his hand.

“Jaw? He went for the jaw? That’s not a hockey player move. That’s a romance-novel move, and I need to reassess my entire opinion of this man.”

She had wanted to know whether I could still taste the bourbon.

“I’m not answering that.”

“You just did.”

By midnight, the wine was gone, and Bella was performing a dramatic reenactment of the kiss using a throw pillow as Evan, which was both deeply insulting to Evan and the funniest thing I had ever witnessed from a woman who put criminals in prison for a living.

Now she was asleep with one arm flung over the armrest and her mouth slightly open, looking about as threatening as a golden retriever in a power suit.

I walked past her shoes and headed to the kitchen to prepare coffee.

The morning light came through the window soft and gold, the kind of light photographers called magic hour and normal people called too early. I stood at the counter and let it warm my face while the coffee machine did its work.

So. He kissed you. You kissed him back. Now came the harder part: walking into the rink in daylight.

Pretending would last about six minutes in a hockey room.

I poured the coffee. Took a sip. Burned my tongue.

That tracks.

Bella stirred on the couch, making a sound like a cat that had been personally inconvenienced by consciousness.

“Coffee,” she croaked. “Or I file charges.”