Tomboy

Fallon stared at her phone.

Two tickets?

For her?

From him?

Thank you?

She flopped down on her bed, trying to get her brain to process this information. Leaving her thank-you tickets did not sound like something the most-hated man in Harbor City would do—at least not voluntarily. Maybe he was in a good mood for once after he’d had his best night on the ice since he’d gotten traded. The whole team had. They’d crushed the Kodiaks. No doubt, each one of the superstitious players was working the magic of their own particular good luck charm. As a card-carrying Ice Knights fanatic, she knew them all. Coach Peppers had a special tie he only broke out after a win, Stuckey did a handstand walk around the perimeter of the locker room, and—

She jolted into a sitting position, her brain whirring as everything clicked into place.

He hadn’t left two tickets as a thank-you. He’d left two tickets as a bribe for her to be his own human rabbit’s foot. Yeah, she wasn’t the fuzzy bunny type, even if it did get her team a win. A woman had to have standards.

She started typing.

Fallon: Thanks, but no can do on the tickets. Great game last night, though. That check on Nitski was killer.

Zach: Thx Why not?

Fallon: Some of us have to worry about paying bills so we take shifts on our day off.

Not a lie. If she was ever going to stop being her brother Finian’s roommate, she had to save up enough for first and last month’s rent.

Zach: Can’t u get someone to cover your shift?

Probably, but there was more to it than that.

Fallon: I’m volunteering at the clinic after.

Zach: To pay the bills?

She rolled her eyes at her phone, even though he couldn’t see it. It was that or suffer a fatal case of ingested annoyance. The man needed to stop acting like he had the brainpower of a box of rocks. No one who could read a play on the ice like he did lacked in the IQ department. Of course, she wasn’t about to tell him that.

Fallon: Volunteer = no $$$ Did Antoni’s dirty hit rattle your brain before you got sent to the box?

Her blood pressure got jacked up just at the memory of that vicious hit. She’d screamed so loud at the TV that even Finn had told her to calm down.

Zach: Antoni’s an asshole.

Fallon: Some might say it takes one to know one.

She swings. She hits it out of the park. She cackles in her bedroom while texting a guy who had this thing about him that made her nipples stand up and say hello. What? No. That wasn’t it. Not at all. Zach Blackburn was Lucy’s client, and she’d done a solid for a friend. That was all. Nothing more.

Zach: Coach wants you at the game against the Rage. Says ur lucky.

All of the bubbles of giddiness in her chest went flat. Fallon let out a long sigh and fell back onto the bed. And there it was. Confirmation. For once it would be nice if she were wrong about the way things were going to go down.

Fallon: Oh yeah, I’m sure.

Zach: I won’t beg.

Shocker. Next thing he’d be telling her the sky is blue.

Fallon: Good that makes things easier.

The text bubble with its blinking three dots appeared and disappeared several times before his next message finally came through.