Page 73 of Drop the Mitts

Jenna leaned forward. “You didn’t mention that?”

“No. He did not.” Grace folded her arms over her chest.

Jenna looked between the two of them. “Kay, I’m a bit confused. Weren’t you saying how you didn’t like kissing smokers?” She turned to André. “I assumed you’d text her first thing, considering.”

“Considering what?” Grace looked over her shoulder, and Jenna winced.

“Brett might’ve told everyone about the locker room?”

Grace groaned, and Country blew out a breath. “Bud, I’m sorry. Didn’t realize you were keeping that close to the chest.”

“Extremely close, apparently,” Grace muttered.

André shifted his hands on the wheel. “I told you I would quit.”

“Yeah. You pretended you’d quit in exchange for me going on the waterslide. We made a deal.”

“And I’m sticking to that deal.”

Grace swivelled in her seat. “It doesn’t count! You already started quitting?—”

“Your argument was that I didn’t do things that are hard for me. It doesn’t matter when I started, this is hard. Still an equal exchange, and you loved that slide?—”

“I didn’t love it!”

“You looked like a completely different person at the bottom! Happy, loose?—”

“So I don’t look happy normally?”

André growled in frustration. Grace pushed back against the seat, turning her head to look out the window. Pressure built behind her eyes as his words sank in.A different person?That was why she always found herself sucked into stupid arguments with him. He knew exactly how to push her buttons.

No, it didn’t matter when he started, and yes, she was happy to hear it. But it wasn’t even about the damn slide. They’d lain in the dark talking that first night and she’d asked him about smoking. He told her about his brother—they’d had a real conversation. Why wouldn’t he have said something about quitting? It would have been the natural thing to do, which meant he’d purposefully kept it from her. Andthenmade her believe it was an equal trade.

“Maybe it was time to grow up.” André’s voice was low, each word clipped.

Grace’s heart stuttered. That was what she’d said to him, wasn’t it? Outside Curtis’s house. She’d thrown it like a dart and meant it to stick, to draw blood.

Grace clenched her jaw, fingers tightening on the seat belt strap. She was such a hypocrite. She was lashing out at him for not spilling all his secrets when she’d kept all of her own. She mocked him for the way he played, for being silly, easy, light, when her world felt so heavy. But yesterday she’d watched him launch himself into the wave pool and make his teammates laugh until they cried.

She’d felt like a different person. She liked what André pulled out of her in every way.

Tears stung the corners of her eyes. She didn’t want him to grow up. But she didn’t know how to say any of it.

The silence in the truck wasn’t uncomfortable. It was excruciating. She’d hurt him, she fully realized that now. When it started, she didn’t know. At that first game? At Curtis’s? Last night?

She was a terrible person. Her stomach knotted, her throat so tight, she didn’t dare try to join Country and Jenna’s conversation, their obvious attempt to cut the suffocating tension.

At least André got what he wanted.

That thought hit like a slap, cold and cruel. Was that all he wanted? The chase. The tension. The pull.

No. She knew it instantly. If that were the case, he’d be on cloud nine right now. Cocky and relaxed. André was anything but.

This wasn’t just sex. This wasn’t casual. And pretending it was would only dig those darts deeper.

Jenna dozed with her head tilted toward the window, Hope sleeping soundly in her car seat between them. Country scrolled through playlists and offered up a running commentary about the Oilers’ odds for a deep playoff run if McDavid’s linemates could get their shit together.

André responded in monosyllables.

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