Page 58 of Play Your Part

I had a programmed light system, but some of the lights on weren’t part of it. Briggsy slurped his milkshake and shook his head. I sighed—nothing signaled no one was home better than a lit house all night. I was too tired to care. I didn’t grab my bag from the trunk. It would be tomorrow’s problem.

“Surprise!” I heard the words as soon as the doorknob turned, but I didn’t see Kennedy until I walked through the door from the garage and spotted her in the kitchen, standing beneath a sign that read “CONGRATS ZACH!” which she had strewn across my kitchen cabinets. She held a cake with Zach’s picture on it; in it, he wore an enormous smile and had both arms out wide, ready to accept an incoming hug from his teammates.

He’d scored his first NHL goal on this trip, something worthy of celebration. Even more important, he’d played solid in every game. No way could they send him back to the AHL now.

Briggsy dropped his bag, almost on my foot, and rushed to Kennedy. “Sick! You made this cake for me?”

Kennedy smartly slid the cake onto the counter behind her before Zach knocked it out of her hands. “I might have had help.”

Zach flung his arms around Kennedy, saying something to her I couldn’t hear before quickly moving to grab a plate and eat his cake. She finally looked over to where I stood rooted to the spot. I’d thought a lot about what would happen when I saw her again. Would this road trip mark a change for us?

Walking into my house to see her standing there—in a dark green tank top—I knew what I hoped would happen. But I couldn’t get ahead of myself. She was here for my roommate, not me.

“Where’s my cake?” I asked in lieu of hello.

Her shoulders visibly relaxed as I slipped us into our teasing dynamic. Nothing wagered, nothing risked. “Do something impressive and maybe you’ll get one.”

“Do I need to read you my stats from this trip?”

“Only if you want to bore me so much I’ll physically never have the strength to bake again.”

I barked out a laugh. “I’m still not sure you had anything to do with this cake.”

“Hey,” she said, cracking a smile. “I labored over this cake.”

Zach looked up from his plate. “So good,” he muttered as he chewed, not bothering to cover his mouth. He cut another piece of cake and took off to his lair. “Thanks, Kennedy!” He fell back onto the couch, then turned on the PS4 and TV. Those would be his last words for the evening.

“You’re going to give the poor kid a crush if you keep doing stuff for him.”

“Oh, please. That’s not even close to true. Watch this.”

She slipped her shirt over her head, revealing a black bikini, and let it fall to the chair beside her. I fought to keep my eyes from slipping to her chest for too long; to not let them linger for a moment would have made me a candidate for sainthood.

“I’m going to use your hot tub,” she said, sauntering straight across the room, directly between the kid and his TV. Zach didn’t spare a look at her, only moved his head to look around her at his game.

Kennedy turned back to me, a victorious smirk on her face, but it only lasted a moment. Whatever she saw when she looked at me sent her scurrying out the door to the hot tub without another word.

Like hell I wasn’t going to follow her. Exhaustion be damned.

25

KENNEDY

Ididn’tthinkthisthrough. That was the thought flashing through my mind when I saw the heated look on Alexei’s face.

We had been in near-constant contact over the last week and a half, but the distance made it easy to pretend that we were talking to someone else. Someone other than controversial hockey star Alexei Volkov and Kennedy Cole, owner’s daughter and overall mess. The distance made it easy to forget how this started, that Alexei and I were forced together by strange circumstances.

And I realized I liked talking to him. That, more than anything, scared me.

Our animosity kept me safe, impervious to Alexei and the deep tenor of his voice, the smolder in his glare, the dimples in his cheeks. I needed the animosity, but it felt so far out of my grasp, I couldn’t even remember why I once felt that way.

It was also hard to hate someone who looked at you like he wanted to push you against a wall.

It wasn’t only that I’d stripped to my bathing suit top in his kitchen. No, I hadn’t properly thought anything through since I came over and found him half-naked in bed, bruised from his fight on the ice. Something shifted that night. Maybe if I’d left the room after checking on him rather than hanging out, everything that followed—the texts, the phone calls, my idiotic idea to be in his home when he got back from this trip—wouldn’t have happened. Maybe I wouldn’t have lost control over this entire situation.

But I stayed that night, and I exchanged flirty texts and traded secrets with him.

And now I sat in his hot tub.

---