Page 58 of The Fate Factor

“I’ll make the end of the season.”

Greg winces. “You must be bored out of your mind.”

I know he feels like shit about breaking my ribs, so I try to summon a smile. “It’s fine. A little rest never killed anyone.”

Em snorts into her pint glass.

“What?”

“Is that what you’re doing at the boat launch the other night with Noel? Resting? I bet there were a few other cars down there filled with peopleresting.”

“Actually we were on the lighthouse side, and since I’m not seventeen, it wasn’t fucking like that.”

So much for getting my mind off of it.

Trev shakes his head. “Only Jamie Bishop could pick up a woman while sporting a black eye.”

I ball up a napkin and toss it at him left-handed. Chase uses his goalie reflexes to bat it away before it hits a woman at the table behind him. Trev should talk. I’m pretty sure he was missing a front tooth when he met his wife Julia. He used to have a reputation for being borderline insane on the ice. Now he designs banking software. Also, my eye is nearly back to normal except for some yellowing around the cut.

“Nah,” Chase says. “Women love a mysterious facial wound. He’s probably doing better than ever.”

“I didn’t pick her up,” I say with a little too much venom in my voice. It gets their attention. Though, now that I have it, the panic sets in. Ireallydon’t want to talk about this. The first time I mention a woman to these guys in years, and it’s after I’ve already fucked it up.

I’ve backed myself into a corner, though. Trev rolls his hand to tell me to spit it out, and I clear my throat. “You remember the party a few years ago, with the fortune teller?”

“Not exactly something you forget, J.” Chase chuckles but I’m not sure if it’s with me or at me.

I tug at the collar of my hoodie. “Anyway, well, she’s back in town and I…”

I what?I guilted her into hanging out with me and now I’m dreaming about her mouth?I tried to kiss her and she ran away?I need her to tell me the future of my business, but now the only future I care about is whether I’m going to get to see her again?

Fuck, what if I don’t get to see her again?

A high-pitched squeal distracts me from the cold sweat creeping up my spine, and for a blessed second everyone’s attention turns away from me. The women at the table beside ours are greeting two others who just arrived: A tall brunette in knee-high boots and a very familiar blonde who I last spoke to when she was declining to pick me up at the ER.

I tip my head back and groan at the ceiling.Really?

Em leans in, dropping her voice. “Is that—?”

“Yeah. It is.” There’s something almost cosmically on the nose about Kelly’s timing, bursting into my line of sight while I’m trying to forget how stupidly hooked on Noel I am.

She spots me immediately, shuffling around chairs until she’s beside mine. “Jamie?”

I tip my chin politely even though I’d rather have pretended not to see her. “Hey, Kel.”

“Oh my God. What the hell happened to your face?”

I guess she forgot all about the other night when I called her from the hospital. “Hockey,” I remind her.

“Oh.” Her eyes slide over my chest then back up, her lip between her teeth. “Well, how’s the rest of you?”

Then she drops herself into my lap, grabs my face with her manicure pressing painfully into the bruise she just commented on, and kisses me.

One of my stepfathers used to talk about bell ring moments, where all of a sudden something becomes so clear to you that you can’t believe what an absolute dumbass you were before that instant. As quickly as the very public proposition is out of her mouth, the first emotion Kelly has ever elicited from me hits me square in the chest. I’m pissed.

“What the fuck, Kel?” I stand up, dumping her back onto her high heels.

“What’s wrong?” She looks genuinely confused which is even more embarrassing.

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