Page 61 of Blocked Score

“Thanks, see ya!” She skips past.

I look at Scarlett. My heart stutters when I notice that she’s wearing a Black Bears jersey.

“Like it?” Scarlett asks, no doubt noticing where my eyes are pointed. “I picked one up from the concession stand at the front of the arena. Figured I should have one now that I’m living with half the team.”

She does a goofy little twirl to show it off. My mouth slides into a grin—until I spot the name on her back as she spins.

Lawrence.

She’s wearingSebastian’sjersey.

“You’re wearingthat one?” The question pulls from my throat tight and gravelly.

She frowns. “What’s wrong with it?”

The only name I want on your back is mine. That’s what I want to say, but the words that just left my mouth were coated with enough suspicious hostility that I don’t want to come right out and reveal how much of a caveman I’m feeling like right now.

“It’s dirty,” I fumble for a totally phony excuse. “There’s a stain.”

She looks down at it. Quirks an eyebrow suspiciously. “No, there isn’t.”

Tuck’s lifting his hand to finally take a bite of his condiment-loaded hot dog. I step to the side and jostle his arm so that thedog slips from his grip and falls right onto the front of Scarlett’s jersey, leaving a thick streak of red, yellow, and green.

“Now there is.” I’m on autopilot, incapable of stopping myself even though I’m totally aware of what a nutcase I look like right now. I grab Scarlett by the wrist. “Come on, I know where we keep a bunch of spares. I’ll get you a new one.”

With the right name this time.

30

SCARLETT

“Is that a new jersey?” Summer, who’s sitting next to me as we watch the Black Bears take on Boston U, asks while there’s a lull in the action. “You bought a different one when we got here, didn’t you?”

“She sure did,” Olivia wastes no time answering. She wears a broad grin on her face and her eyes glimmer like this is some juicy topic of conversation.

My stomach feels like it tips sideways as I remember how Lane acted when I showed him the jersey. There was no stain on it. Not until he very intentionally put one there, at least.

Was it because it had Sebastian’s name on the back? It didn’t escape my attention that after he dragged me by the arm to get a new one, he rummaged through the pile for a good minute and a half before he foundhisjersey to replace it.

Or maybe I’m reading into what happened. Maybe I just wish Lane still had feelings for me so bad that I’m desperate to twist reality any way I can to make it seem possible.

“Huh?” Harper, who arrived at the arena later than the three of us, leans across me, like there’s gossip she wants to be privy to. “What’d I miss?”

“Lane turned into a caveman when he saw Scarlett with another man’s name on her back.”

Butterfly wings flap in my chest. “That’s not what happened.”

Summer makes a humming noise in her throat. “Not surprising the way he’s been glancing up at you all game.”

My cheeks burn. “He has not.”

This is the last thing I need, third parties fueling my own delusions about Lane possibly still caring about me as more than a friend, more than someone he’s just doing a favor for.

I got all those illusions dashed two summers ago, and I don’t need to build them back up only to feel the pain of them tumbling down again.

The first period of the game comes to an end with the score still 0-0.

I’m thankful that Olivia, Summer, and Maddie start to talk in more detail about how the team’s been playing. Having been surrounded by hockey longer I have, they have a better sense of what they’re watching. The game’s still a confusing blitz of speed for me.

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