Page 30 of Play Your Part

Or at least, it had been my own.

“Do tell how you heard all about that in your no-hockey bubble. Been asking around about me?”

Kennedy’s smug smile fell into something resembling sadness, but it was gone in a blink, making me wonder if I’d imagined it. “You wish, hotshot.”

My jaw ticked at the nickname and the impeccably insulting way Kennedy delivered it.

“So what’s next in your playbook?” she asked. “Are we supposed to hold hands and skate in circles? Or should I stand to the side as you zip and zag across the rink?”

“You think I lead with the hockey because that’s all I have?”

Kennedy unhooked her arm from mine and skated away from me. “I imagine some women are into this whole strong, cocky man thing you have going on.” She waved her hand around, encompassing my entire body.

I scoffed. “Some women.”

“I’m sure they’re out there.” Kennedy grinned, the first genuine one she’d deigned to toss my way. And it had been in service of mocking me. “Don’t give up hope.”

I couldn’t keep up with her changing tactics fromI’m a fuckboytoI’ll never find someone to tolerate me. Although they weren’t far from the same insult. There was no shortage of women who would bang Alexei Volkov, winger for the Palmer City Wolves, but there were few who would stick around if I were only Alexei. Cora hadn’t. Kennedy had no way of knowing how dead-on her insult was to the most insecure part of me. Would it bring her joy to know how much those words stung? Or would she see our similarities—two people left behind by the people who knew us best, who supposedly loved us?

“Finding someone is the furthest thing from my mind,” I told her.

“Me too.”

“So…” I said, moving away from this topic. “What was it like growing up with the owner of a professional hockey team?”

“It was fine, as you would expect.”

“Did you ever go to any games?”

This question brought her assessing eyes back to mine, full of wariness. “I went to some.”

“And?” I prompted.

“And what?”

“What turned you against it?” I asked, desperate to understand how Kennedy could hate this sport I loved more than anything else in the world. “Bad game? Food made you sick? You resented moving here?”

She closed her eyes so all I could see was her dark eye shadow. “I stopped liking it.” She affected a casual shrug as her eyes opened. “I got bored, I guess.”

“Bored,” I repeated. For all the complaints about my sport, feeling bored while watching a game was the one I heard the least. Hockey games flew by, thanks to near-constant action and very few breaks.

“Yes, bored,” she said as her skating speed dropped to a crawl. It was a strategy to lose me, going so slow I couldn’t stand it. Too bad my stubbornness trumped my impatience. “Like I counted the minutes until I could leave. Satisfied?”

“I bet Ward loved hearing that.”

“I don’t want to talk to you about Justin.”

“You don’t want to talk to me about anything.”

“Ding, ding, ding,” Kennedy said, punctuating each word with a jab of her finger in the air. She stopped skating altogether and plastered herself against the boards.

I glanced toward the glass separating the rink from the lobby. The crowd had waned, but we still weren’t alone. “This is no picnic for me either,” I said in a low voice. No one could hear us from so far away; I knew it, but my paranoia over someone finding out about our arrangement had me barely whispering the words. If people found out, Kennedy could hide away for a few weeks, but I would be screwed.

“Glad we’re finally on the same page about something,” she said.

“But you agreed to do this. For whatever reason.” I gave her a pointed glare, conveying I knew full well why she agreed. I let her see my judgment. The fact that what I needed to fix this whole media mess would also bring her back to that prick filled me with resentment. Even when Ward lost, he won. “So we need to know enough about each other to pass at this whole dating thing.”

Kennedy crossed her arms over her chest. “Then why don’t you tell me three things about your life, hotshot? I’ll do the same, then we can call it a night.”

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