Page 149 of Call the Shots
My phone buzzed in my pocket with a familiar ringtone, and I checked it while King smiled at me. “I love you too.”
I had to swallow down every exclamation threatening to spill out and hurried to click the tag, screenshotting it as fast as possible. I yanked my phone down and hugged King again, saying my goodbyes.
Willow left for King’s truck, and I returned to Cleo and Bear. Cleo tried to hug me tight, but I was too busy showing her the screenshot.
Cleo frowned. “Is it another Leelee post?”
“Better.”
Bear glanced over her shoulder. “What is it?”
“Look who put it up. Florence Townsend. Riley’s grandmother!”
CHAPTER 55
JUNE
YOU’RE BOTH MINE
My move-in date to my parents’house was looming closer and closer. I was determined to do some good before I left. A parting gift for the hockey team and to Bear for making my last summer at Marrs the best one.
Vernon had to fucking go.
Our base of operations couldn’t be at the Colo, so Cleo, Bear, Denali and I set up shop in the second-floor lounge—the one place Vernon and Riley couldn’t get to us. We had five or six hockey players investigating bags of trash, a dozen combing through security footage, and a group researching leads from their old schools.
“Tallulah’s here to help,” Fridge said, hand in hers.
“I—I think I have something?” she said. “We get a rundown of the budgets as part of the accountability articles, and I have Vernon’s expense reports for the last five years?”
“I knew I liked you for a reason!” Cleo beamed.
They were added to our whiteboard of evidence, and I gazed around at the tables of empty pizza boxes and the hockey players sitting on the floor together, joking on the couch and perched up on the tables, shouting at each other over timestamps on thesecurity footage. They could work so well together on and off the ice.
Montoya was next, with a group of freshmen figure skaters working on more papers from the shredder bin. I was about to go through the list, but Bear took the lead, kneeling to explain what we were looking for.
Which was wonderful. He was being such a team leader.
There was only one problem.
Bear was wearing that slutty tank top of his. The one that showed off his arms like he was getting paid to do it. I stalled by my laptop, watching him tilt his head while he listened to questions. He smiled at Montoya, flipping through pages to show them what kind of evidence we were searching for.
Damn, those arms.
“So, what do we know so far?” Cleo asked, breaking my drooling. “We know for certain that LeeleeisRiley.”
“We knew before, but nobody believed me,” Elijah retorted.
Nick threw a balled-up piece of paper at him. “If I yelled ‘Betty’ at you in a crowded grocery store, I bet your dumbass would look up.”
“We know Riley can’t skate,” Bear interjected.
“Marrs already had a poor lineup of hockey players,” Cleo pointed out. “Vernon allowing someone subpar isn’t…you know. Necessarily unusual.”
“Last year maybe but it’s different now,” Elijah argued. “Us having this many good players is the weird part.”
“Is that a compliment?” Fridge asked, amused.
“Shut up, Fridge.”
