Page 76 of What if It's Us

We stare out the glass window overlooking the rink. Practice is winding down and players are zigzagging across the ice, laughing, shouting, smacking pucks like they weren’t just blurs of muscle and stubbornness.

I can see him down there.

Ledger.

Skating like his life depends on it but not looking as strong as he usually does. My guess is he’s probably a little sore from last night—not that he’d admit it.

“He’s got good hips,” Blakely says, appearing beside me like some kind of gossip fairy. “That’s all I’m saying.”

I jump, sloshing some of my cold brew down my hand. “Jesus. You scared me. Did you just appear out of thin air? Is that what you do now?”

“I’m a reporter. I observe, and then I report,” she says with a smug grin. “I’m just up here pretending to be focused on the guys below and totally faking it for the sheer purpose of checking on your emotional state after last night.”

I turn to her. “What? Why? What was last night?”

Ella spits out her coffee, some of it shooting out her nose when she laughs. “What was last night,” she mumbles. “Girl, did you not hear yourself?”

Oh my God.

They heard us?

Of course they heard us.

We weren’t even trying to be quiet.

Dammit!

Wait.

Maybe they didn’t hear what they think they heard.

Play dumb.

Play dumb.

Play dumb.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Oh, my God, Ledger!” Ella squeals, impersonating me as she repeats the noises she heard last night. “Yes, Ledger!”

“Fuck yes! Yes! Yes!” Layken adds, giggling and pretending to be breathless.

Corrigan’s eyes bulge and she laughs. “Oh, my Gosh! Sounds like someone had a rockin’ night, huh?”

I roll my eyes as Blakely laughs with them. “Alright bitches. I get it.”

Ella pulls her straw into her mouth and takes another sip of her smoothie. I secretly hope she gets a brain freeze but she doesn’t. “I mean either you were having a hell of a night with your newest toy…”

Layken finishes her sentence. “Or you were getting super-fucked by a boy.”

He’s nowhere near a boy.

He’s a man.

One hundred percent grade-A man.

Just thinking about him causes a shit-eating grin to spread across my face. Blakely’s eyes grow huge and she points at me. “I knew it!”

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