Page 1 of Never Your Girl

1

Holland

A digital chorus of beeps and dings sweeps through Slap Shotz like a wave as the buzzing of my phone coincides with dozens of others. In the split second before I read the message, I catch the shift in the room. The way conversations die mid-sentence, the collective intake of breath, the sudden tension that crackles through the air like static before a storm.

Anonymous message

Make sure someone sends the hockey ho penicillin in the morning. We all know she’s gonna need at least one dose. Maybe two.

Damn.

Shots fired.

I shouldn’t smile.

I really shouldn’t.

But there’s something darkly satisfying about watching the mighty fall, especially when that fall involves Bridger Sanderson. The same type of texts have been terrorizing him for months now, and no one has been able to trace their source.

Not the tech department.

Not campus security

Not even the chancellor himself.

As far as I’m concerned, Bridger deserves it.

If I didn’t believe in karma before, I certainly do now.

“Oh boy,” my bestie, Willow, mutters from where she’s sitting across from me. “That’s not good.”

“Says who?” I arch a brow, not bothering to hide my amusement.

Willow tips her head in Bridger’s direction. “Probably him.”

Near the bar, I can feel Bridger’s presence like a physical weight. He’s been brooding in the same spot all night, radiating the kind of darkness that makes people give him a wide berth.

Not that I’ve been watching.

Much.

Our eyes meet across the dim space, and that familiar jolt of awareness hits me like a sucker punch. His gray eyes narrow, and I respond with my middle finger, a gesture that feels childish even as I do it.

“Real mature,” Willow says dryly.

“What can I say? I have my moments.”

She flicks a glance at him before refocusing her attention on me. Questions and curiosity swim in her blue depths. “Are you ever going to tell me what happened between you two?”

I take a long sip of my root beer to buy time.

Not deterred in the least by my silence, she lifts a brow, prodding me for an answer. Only then do I grudgingly say, “Nope.”

“Ahhh. Now we’re finally getting somewhere.” She holds her hand up. “Stop. We’re bordering on information overload. Why must you be so dang chatty? It’s such a personality defect.”

I roll my eyes as a smile trembles around the corners of my lips.

I love Willow to pieces, but she doesn’t need to know the gory details of what happened between Bridger and me. Most of the time, I wish I could scrub them from my memory.

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