Page 110 of Off The Ice

She stared at me, eyes ablaze.

“Dad pursued Mom. But he still left, didn’t he?”

And then she walked off, leaving me with the trauma that we both carried around like a plague inside of us.

“Dude.” Ryan Dawson laughed. “I had some woman tell me she was going to bid, like, a thousand dollars on a date with me.”

“A thousand?” Shane West snorted. “These are some of the richest women in the city. I wouldn’t go bragging about that number if I were you.”

I craned my neck, looking around a room that was filled with way too many fucking people, and unable to spot the one I was looking for.

Tuning out the rest of their back-and-forth argument, I scanned the crowd for Cassie. It had been a few minutes and she hadn’t come back yet, and honestly, I was starting to get worried.

I grabbed a glass of water from the table, downing the liquid. Brody sat next to me, laughing in turn with the rest of the guys.

“Hey,” I said, nudging him. “You haven’t seen Cassie around you, have you?”

“You lost your girl?” Brody asked, glancing around the room.

I clenched my jaw, fingers twitching at my side.

How the hell was I going to explain that I was worried she left the room for a few minutes to make a phone call? It sounded insane.

But by now, it had been more than a few minutes, and something in my gut didn’t feel right. Cassie looked nervous when Maggie came over with the phone, and Maggie seemed like she knew more than she let on.

“Never mind,” I said, standing to go find her.

I just wanted to see her. Once I had my eye on her, I’d relax.

I got up, anxious to move. I’d only made it a few feet into the crowd before someone appeared in front of me.

“Where are you off to, handsome?” The voice was sultry and low, belonging to a woman probably close to my age, give or take a few years.

“Looking for my date.”

“Your date?” she asked, tugging on my tie. “Not a very good one if she left you all on your own.”

The woman made an expression between a smirk and a pouty face, and honestly, I didn’t have the time or headspace to think of a response. I cleared my throat and tried to walk past her.

“Do you want to dance?” she asked,

“I’m here with my girlfriend,” I responded, voice thick with agitation.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maggie and didn’t bother to stick around to hear the woman’s inevitable rebuttal.

“Maggie!” I called out, jogging over before I could lose her to the crowd.

She spun, gnawing on her bottom lip when she saw me.

“Mags, have you seen Cassie?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah,” she said, way too fucking shadily for my liking. “I talked to her a few minutes ago.”

“And?” I asked, raising a brow.

“She, um, had to leave.”

“Sheleft?” My heart dropped. “Why? Where did she go?”

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