Page 132 of Blindside Sinner

Then again, Beck doesn’t always think things through before he acts.

He tips a bucket of pucks onto the ice and smiles at me as he glides over. His arms come around me and cup over mine where I’m holding the stick so we can shoot the puck—which is what he’s brought me here to teach me, in a move straight out of every 90s rom-com ever, not that I mind one bit.

I twist in his embrace and look up at him. “You want to be with me.”

“Yeah.” He adjusts my fingers beneath his, choking down a little bit and squeezing tighter. “So the important part of the shot is the wind-up.”

“And you meant to say that you want me to be your girlfriend? That wasn’t, like, a slip of the tongue?”

He’s looking down at the ice and the puck, and I’m looking dead up his nose, but I need clarification. He could say it a thousand more times and I’d still probably ask if he made a mistake.

“Yeah. I meant it.” He nods. “The wind-up follow-through combo is crucial. Also you have to have…”

“And you meant to ask that tome?Not some other girl?”

“Yeah. Pay attention. This part is tricky.”

He winds the stick back, but I let my arms fall, so it’s more him shooting a puck into the empty net with the added obstruction of my body between him and his stick.

The puck whistles into the top corner, but he sighs in frustration. “Sloan, what are you doing?”

“Fact-checking.”

“Okay.” He stands straight and leans on the stick as I turn to look at him. “Let’s fact check, then. You go first.”

“Vivian will fire me.”

“Not if I fire her first.”

“She works for the team, not for you.”

“Her pay comes out of my salary, so technically… gray area.”

“Well, I work for her.”

He shakes his head again. “Technically, I pay you, too.”

If he thinks that makes it better, he’s incorrect. Horribly and atrociously incorrect. Dead fucking wrong. And I might be having a slight panic attack. Well, not so slight, actually.

The truth is, I want to say yes. But I can’t jeopardize everything that hangs in the balance.

Any minute now, the Bloodhound is going to come breathing down my neck with his new threats and his new demands for more, more, more. I need a paycheck more than I need to be a kept woman.

“Okay, fact-check number two. I like my independence.”

He’s calm as could be. “You aren’t losing your independence. You’re gaining a partner.”

I scoff. “‘Partner in crime’is more like it.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not a bad thing. Not per se.”

Not unless one is keeping a secret from the guy who is asking her to be his girlfriend. And if said guy has no idea that said woman is hiding a bad guy who wants to take out her father’s debt in blood, so to speak, said woman can’t expect him to actuallywantto be her boyfriend.

Plus, said woman will most likely end up driving said man—who, it must be said, is a good man, once you get to know him—into an actual crime by association.

Despite all that, said woman wants to say yes.

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