Page 26 of Dirty Pucker

“Something short. And catchy. And don’t use too many hashtags.”

I hand her my phone. “I’ve got nothing. You’d better do it.”

Ingrid chuckles as she takes my phone. Ten seconds later, she hands it back to me. “All done.”

I skim the caption.

Hockey fam #bashers #denver #cheers

Short and sweet. And better than anything I could ever come up with.

I smile at Ingrid. “You’re really good at this social media stuff.”

A shy grin pulls at her lips. She shrugs. “I’ve been doing it forever. It just takes practice.”

I shake my head. “You have a real knack for this. That’s better than anything I could come up with. And look.”

I point at the number of likes and comments I’ve gotten already in just the past couple of minutes of that photo being posted to my Instagram.

Look at Dirty Del with his Basher bros!

Ummm is that Xander Williams, Theo Thompson, and Del Richards smiling in a photo together? These guys have kicked the shit out of each other. Multiple times. Has hell frozen over?

Holy shit is Dirty Del smiling? I’ve seen that grumpy fucker smirk plenty of times while playing. But a genuine smile?

How much you wanna bet a brawl broke out after they posed for this photo lol

The Bashers dream team! Hell yeah!

“Thanks to you, my Instagram account is back from the dead,” I say. “You’re a social media genius.”

A pink flush paints Ingrid’s porcelain skin. “You think so?”

I nod. A second later, Ingrid’s smile turns teasing. “How about this for our next bet: if that Instagram post gets tenthousand likes by tomorrow night, I get to film a TikTok of you doing something silly.”

I scoff. “I don’t even have ten thousand followers.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You sound pretty confident it won’t happen. Why not bet on it?”

There’s a flicker in my chest at her confidence and playfulness.

“Fine. If my pic on Instagram gets that many likes, I’ll do it. But if I win, you have to put on my hockey gear, and I’ll film you skating around the arena and post it on the team TikTok account.”

She bites her lip like she’s nervous, but the determination in her blue eyes doesn’t fade one bit.

“Deal.” She sticks out her hand and we shake on it.

Sophie pulls Ingrid into a conversation. I sip my beer and nod along with Xander as he goes off on a questionable call from one of the refs during tonight’s game.

I catch my sister glancing at me.

I turn to look at her. “What?”

My little sister’s big, brown eyes are curious as she looks at me. “Are you into Ingrid?”

My eyebrows crash together. Damn. She picked up on that quickly.

“What makes you say that?” I mutter as I flick my beer glass.

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