Page 57 of Going All In

“Maybe another time,” he said with a smile, then turned and walked away.

That’s who she should be dating. But none of the guys in her program had ever appealed to her.

Bad boy hockey players with smirks she wanted to kiss off of their faces, on the other hand…

***

Later that afternoon,she was holed up in the small office space the university had given her, waiting for her office hours to start. She had a lot of work to do on her own final project and was currently analyzing some data from a study on possible environmental factors on brain plaques. She wanted to blame almost missing a deadline with Dr. Maguire on this study, but that was a lie. She’d gotten sucked into one of the Strikers’ away games—correction—to Jake gliding up and down the ice. She hadn’t been setting aside enough time to do her work, and she needed to get her butt in gear.

If she was smart, she’d stop working at the coffee shop—it was just extra spending money and she was trying to save before she had to start paying off student loans. She was lucky that her parents helped her out and she didn’t have to finance everything.

And it wasn’t just the coffee shop; hockey games were starting to take up a lot of her time—Jake was taking up a lot of her time. It wasn’t supposed to be that way, but she’d clearly not thought fake dating a sports star through.

There was a knock on her door before she could nosedive into dwelling on what was going on between her and Jake.

“Hey, Darcy, I have some questions about that last assignment.” Dan, one of the students from her TA class, slipped into her office and took the chair across from her desk.

She pushed aside her own work—and Jake—and focused on Dan. “Sure. What can I clarify?”

She spent the next two hours working with a handful of students who had similar questions about the assignment. She answered them and reminded them about her weekly study group.

She hadn’t thought the assignment was confusing when the professor had issued it a few days ago in class.

Acting as a teaching assistant was a requirement for her degree. She didn’t mind TAing since it looked good on her résumé, and she was familiar with the coursework. But it was a lot of work, from office hours, grading, and occasionally running the lecture. It added up.

Which was something that hadn’t bothered her until she’d starting spending more time with Jake.

***

“What are youdoing here?” she asked later that night when Jake strolled into the coffee shop.

He hadn’t texted or called. How had he even known she was working?

Stupid question.

Ally.

He looked good. He wore faded jeans that molded to his impressive thighs. He didn’t even need to turn around for her to know that they also lovingly cupped his ass. He pulled a knit hat off of his head, giving his hair a quick shake, and she bit her lip.

Good god. She bit her damn lip.

Really?

“Hello to you too, girlfriend,” he said, placing his hands on the counter in front of her and leaning in.

She had no choice but to meet him halfway for a kiss.

Like it was a hardship.

He tasted like cinnamon and mint, and his warm scent wrapped around her.

“Hi,” she said. He pulled away after someone cleared their throat behind her.

She wanted to twist around and tell Shelby to go away.

When Jake tugged on one of her loose curls, she felt it down to her toes and almost reached for him again for another kiss.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

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