Page 30 of Hockey Heart

Ugh. This was not a good look.

“We’ll get the PR team on it, but for now, let’s get you home.”

“Maybe a cold one on the way? It’s been a day.”

“Tommys?”

“Gotta be.”

If Jimmy was a good agent, he was a better friend. I was his enforcer of a different kind at high school. Some of the other kids had taken exception to him, seeing as his family was from the nicer end of town. I put a few of them straight and we were inseparable after that.

As we rode in his car across the city, I hit dial on Sarah’s phone and waited until it rang out. What a jerk I was. She was well within her rights to hate me.

We rolled into Tommys and slid ourselves into a booth.

“Hay, should I be worried?”

“Nah, Jimmy, just got some things going on. Cara’s back in town, Maiden’s had some problems at school.”

I checked my phone again and Jimmy gave me a look that said,c’mon, we’re friends, what are you not telling me?

“What I mean Hay is Iamworried. Who you waiting on a call from, anyway?”

I sighed heavily.

“Wait. Hayden. I know that look. It’s the look of someone irrational, whose feelings are all mixed up good and proper. You met someone?”

“Nope. I just let someone down that I really didn’t want to.”

Jimmy shot me a grin that I rolled my eyes at.

“It’s not that, Jimmy. It’s just Maiden’s teacher. She helped him out, and I was kind of… I was a massive jerk, is all.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I scowled back at Jimmy’s odd smile. Jimmy knew me too well sometimes and, hell, I didn’t know what I felt. Just that this isn’t how I’d wanted things to go.

“So, you gonna do something about that?” Jimmy said.

I thought for a moment… “Actually, yeah. Jimmy, you want to run an errand with me?”

“Sure Hay, where we going?”

19

BUTTERMILK CHICKEN

Sarah

It felt good to take my make-up off, get out of my bra, and slump back in my sweats with a bottle of wine, a tub of Ooey-Gooey-Choco-Lava ice cream, and a classic movie.

As I settled in and turned on the TV, the news flashed on the screen and there he was. Not exactly in all his glory, but instead being dragged into a cop car.

Hayden Raynor. So that’s where you went tonight.

“…Hayden ‘the Hellraiser’ Raynor was taken into custody for an alleged violent assault in Merryville this afternoon. Details are still coming in but the captain of the Ice-Hawks was caught on film by bystanders, just two days before the Mayor’s Ball here in Merryville, where he was widely tipped to receive his MVP award from the Mayor himself…”

That was enough of Hayden for me tonight. Or for forever. I flicked over to the movie and settled in for a nice ten minutes, before a pounding on my door made me jump like hell. I wasn’t in the mood for annoyed neighbors, unexpected guests, or mob hitmen right now. Who in the hellwould it be at this time, anyway? The door strained under another round of thumping.

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