Page 48 of A Loser by Christmas
Like the reason for global warming. Hot enough to melt every iceberg.
Those are the only honest answers. Or they would be if he didn’t supply a different definition.
“Entitled, right?” He gets good and comfy, his thick thighs spreading. “Super-rich yet lazy?” Calum digs into a drinks fridge for the fizz that Dad usually pours down the necks of execs to help them lose control of their cash. He waggles a bottle at me. “Go ahead and drive. I’ll act like I’ve spent my whole recovery time here living it up while people like Reece are risking their lives. You could put that on a split screen, right? Him being good while I’m bad to the bone.” He waggles that bottle again. “If I down this, I’ll?—”
“Be drunk later in charge of a bunch of kids?” Another hockey-camp rink visit is on today’s schedule. “How about no?”I reconsider after Calum takes the passenger seat beside me and we wait at the lock gates to join river traffic.
He laughs. “I was only going to pretend to drink it. Better not even do that if I want to open a hockey school of my own one day.”
“That’s your plan?”
He nods.
Finding this out feels vital. “Here? Or in the States?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Here.” I let out a held breath until he frowns. “Well, not here exactly. In Cornwall.”
“Because there aren’t any real rinks there?”
“Exactly.” He looks pleased that I remembered. “That’s where I’d build a hockey school, but not only for kids.” Now he looks anywhere but at me. “I’d build it for players whose careers ended before they were ready.”
“You want to build a team of your own?”
“Kinda. More like a programme where they can deal with whatever cut their careers short. Mindset stuff, you know? To help deal with the fallout of the ice breaking underneath them when they least expected.”
I don’t know which of his brothers he sounds like more. I hear both Reece and Patrick.
“Can’t help thinking who better than a team of losers to teach kids that the real win is getting to play, whatever happens. Win or lose, picking up a stick as part of a team is all that matters.” He also hasn’t given up attempting to score a win of my own for me. “Pull over at the next pier.”
“Why?”
The breeze ruffles his hair, wintry sun finding strands of dark gold. They glint. His smile is even brighter. “Because I set up something else to help score that cup for you.”
“You did?” I hope to fuck the River Police are nowhere nearby. I’ll get fined for letting a six-figure boat drift—bannedfrom piloting on the Thames forever, all because I face him instead of watching out for river traffic.
“I told you, Valentin. Forget what you heard me say to Penny in that video.” His brow creases with how much he means this. “I’m not done trying. I won’t stop. Not for you. Right up to your contest deadline.”
That deadline will also signal the start of his last week in London before he heads home to Cornwall. I don’t know how the first two weeks have almost passed this quickly. Perhaps Calum hears the same clock ticking.
He leans in.
So do I.
Our mouths meet for our first kiss since he left that restaurant kitchen, and risking an arrest feels absolutely worth it. Just as swiftly, I need to break off to steer around a boat full of tourists. I hope to fuck none of them stan this hockey player or point their cameras in his direction.
“Look,” Calum tells me. “I got a pod just for you.”
“Of orca? What the fuck, Trelawney? I thought you liked me.”
He laughs again, and I’m glad the light on my camera blinks—I’ll want to replay his confirmation over and over. “Oh, believe me, I do.” He points up. “That’s your pod.”
He takes the wheel so I can stare at what makes slow revolutions above us.
Each capsule of the London Eye is crowded, apart from the one he’s dropped a ton of cash on.
“I splurged on the full exec experience. Thought it would be another good contrast between me and Reece. You could show him treading water to keep kids afloat, then show me being the kind of loser who wastes his cash on something trifling. Like sightseeing.”
The one problem with his plan is that nothing feels wasteful about what I’ve already witnessed. This ride on an oversizedFerris wheel is no different. Sure, the executive package he’s purchased comes with more champagne that neither of us opens, but I don’t focus on the Moët he’s paid for once we’re aboard. I zoom in on his eyes widening, and they do that a lot when we rise above the city.
