Page 43 of Offside Attraction

What the actual!?

She scrolled back in the text chain, her stomach dropping to her knees. She needed an alibi for Friday night—because she was going to murder her friends.

Chapter

Thirteen

Jordan

Jordan threwhis hockey bag into the back of his truck, then cut across the parking lot to the sidewalk.

“Coming out with us tonight?” Cam nudged him.

Jordan nodded. “It’s been a while.” He’d taken so many night shifts lately, his social life was suffering.

He briefly wondered if any of the Snowballs players would be inside the pub, but their practice ended two hours earlier. If they were still chugging brewskis after that long on a Monday night, they had more problems than running into Pucks Deep.

He grinned to himself as they walked in out of the cold. He may be a terrible person. He shouldn't have responded to the texts, but it wasn't him that started it. By the messages that were coming through, he knew that Rhonda wasn't telling her friends what had happened between them.

He didn't enjoy seeing them hypothesize about who she'd slept with. More concerning was that sinking feeling in his gut whenever he thought about her being with someone else. He didn't get that feeling. Ever.

That was when he told himself to delete the chat, block their numbers, and never interact with Rhonda or her friends again. He wasn't the kind of guy that girls wanted to be exclusive with, and clearly, Rhonda was no exception.

He also wasn't the kind of guy to get his feelings hurt anymore, and he wasn’t going to let this situation change that.

Jordan walked across the parking lot and kept his hand on his phone. Every time he felt it buzz, his heart jolted. He was probably a tool, and Rhonda would most definitely hate him, but that text chain was just too good. He and his siblings had played pranks on each other all through high school. Then his hockey friends had taken their place in college. It had been a while since he participated in a good one, and he hadn’t realized how much he missed it.

Anne—he’d gotten her name from context—and anonymous friend number two were sure that Rhonda was at a dinner with doctors and medical staff that night, which meant any second now, she was going to see at least fifty text messages on her phone. His heart raced, and his hands were clammy. As they walked inside the pub and found the other guys at a table near the back, he ordered a drink and sat down.

"That wasn't so bad." Cam reached across the table to take a handful of nachos.

"What, the rink? Or watching the Snowballs leave the locker room?" Chubbs asked. "I kind of wished we had signs. We could give them rankings. Like Miss America as they walk down the hall."

Cam snickered, and Nate snorted. "I don't think they were too thrilled with us being there."

"They can't complain," Jordan grunted. "They didn't have to change their practice time. We’re the ones who have to be sweating until ten o'clock at night."

He'd been watching the hockey boards to see if there would be any chirping about the rink closure but, so far, Sean had stayed quiet.

Jordan's phone buzzed on the table, and he glanced down. It wasn't Rhonda.

Anne

Just tell us how you met Rhonda. She won’t care. She tells us everything

Jordan smirked. This text chain was proof of that fallacy. He’d at least told them his pronouns, but everything else had been banter. With Rhonda still MIA, they were getting desperate for facts.

Friend #2

Give us a ballpark. Are you from her college days? Earlier?

Later

Friend #2

Oh, damn. Okay. So . . . her twenties later or more recent?

I never ask a woman’s age.

---