Page 122 of Branded
“It’s me. Luna.”
I stare at her, uncomprehendingly.
“From Rockfield?” she adds.
Recognition begins to dawn. “Luna Maybelle?”
“Yup! That’s me.” She nods, grinning, and I see it then, the glimpse of my best friend from the childhood rink I grew up playing at come out in her smile. Mischief and life. Joy and hard work.
Summers spent spending every spare moment together—her figure skating, me playing hockey.
But she’s not little Luna anymore.
Christ, she’s anything but—tall, beautiful, curves for days—and she’s staring at me.
Because I’m staring at her.
Fucking hell.
I spur myself into motion.
“Luna! Oh my God!” I pull her into a hug. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“It’s your birthday!” She holds up a piece of paper that looks faintly familiar. “And, well, it’s mine too, remember?”
That’s right.
We have the same birthday.
“We’re both twenty-five, single, and?—”
My eyes narrow in on the paper. It’s crumpled and stained, as though it’s years old.
A purple and pink swirl decorates the edges and suddenly I remember her painstakingly drawing it as we sat side-by-side at one of the high top tables of the ice rink, waiting for the Zamboni to finish cutting the ice.
Her brow had been furrowed. Her movements carefully controlled.
And I had been obsessing over how pink her lips were and what her butt looked like in her skating dress, so much so that I barely remember what we’d been drawing.
No, I think hard, grabbing on to those memories, not what we’d been drawing.
The contract we’d put together.
The contract my hormonal twelve-year-old self had signed.
With a sparkly pink colored pencil.
A giant boulder settles in my stomach, but before I can snap myself out of the horror of those memories, she shoves the paper in my hands then throws her arms around my neck.
“We’re getting married!”
* * *
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Bewitched
Breakers Hockey #5
