Tomboy

Fallon shifted uneasily on her seat. Damn it. She hated it when other people were right. “I guess I’m using—”

“Oh my God, stop looking like that.” Gina picked up Fallon’s wineglass and handed it to her. “This is medicinal. Drink it.” She waited for Fallon to down half of it before continuing. “You’re not a user. There’s just no way you could be. Just look at what you do for a living—you help save lives at the ER and then you volunteer at the clinic on top of that.”

“Plus you’re a great friend,” Tess said. “When my delivery guy flaked out on me, you helped cover his shifts, even though you work all the time.”

Gina nodded. “Also, you did give up a weekend off to go nurse the most-hated man in Harbor City as a favor to Lucy.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, slouching a little bit more with every brush stroke as the uncomfortable awareness that she wasn’t fighting the good fight even if it was for a good cause broke through. “I’m Mother Teresa. Everyone agrees.”

“I don’t know.” Gina giggled. “I never heard about her threatening to pluck the balls off a doctor who kept cornering the candy stripers in the supply closet.”

“You’re definitely somewhere between Mother Teresa and someone who uses people for their own gain,” Tess said.

Yeah, there was no overlap in that Venn diagram. “You do realize there’s a lot of room between those two.”

Tess shrugged. “The world is full of gray.”

“Speaking of which,” Fallon said, glancing up at Larry, who stood in the front of the room giving them the evil eye. “If we don’t start adding gray paint to this picture, Larry’s going to start threatening to not let us in again, even though we come so often we practically pay the light bill.”

Tess and Gina looked over at Larry and gave him matching guilty smiles before going back to their sad lettuce leaf on canvas.

Fallon dipped her brush in more gray paint, but the droopy feeling that had made her shoulders sag didn’t go away—not even when she was back in her car on the way home to watch the hockey game. She had been using Zach, just like that fake nurse and her poisoned muffins. The fact that she was doing it to raise money for the clinic instead of to gain another fifteen minutes of fame didn’t change the fact that she was basically using his belief that she was Lady Luck to her own advantage.

That had to end. There had to be another way to help the clinic raise money, and she’d figure it out. She had to because, while she was nowhere near being at the Mother Teresa end of the line, she didn’t want to be this far on the opposite end.

Chapter Fifteen

The locker room at the L.A. Sequoias Arena was jubilant. Some teams wouldn’t be ready for the champagne after only three wins in a row. Those teams weren’t the Ice Knights, and it wasn’t just the wins that had Phillips standing on the wood bench scream-singing a song that was about a million years old that had everyone yelling along to “doing it their way.”

Hair damp and his suit back on—Coach Peppers really needed to get talked out of this whole formal-when-they-traveled thing—Zach headed down the underground hall that led to the private parking lot where the bus would be waiting. There were a few non-Ice Knights folks hanging around, family members and friends, but no one stopped him on his way out—something he was oh so grateful for.

After two brutal, hard-fought games in three days, the last thing he wanted to do was chitchat. Nope. His ass was headed for the bus and then the plane for a few hours of dead-to-the-world sleep on the cross-country trip back to Harbor City. He’d have to deal with catching a ride with Stuckey home from the airport, but after that, he’d collapse in his bed. The only thing that could make it better was if Fallon were there.

The thought hit him out of nowhere like an illegal check to the back of the head, and he came to a dead stop halfway to the exit.

What. The. Fuck.

“Hey there, Zach.” The words came from off to his right side. It was a voice he would never not recognize, in part because it was low for a woman, thanks to her decades-long smoking habit.

And despite knowing better, he couldn’t help but be drawn to the fake warmth of it. God knew, he’d been responding to her call since he’d been born. He pivoted, spotting his parents standing next to a water fountain. Both were dressed in some kind of low-key designer clothing that made it look like they were the kind of people whose lives were filled with golf at the club and dinner at home, where the silverware really was silver and always sparkled.

His mom spread her arms wide. “Come give your mother a hug.”

He didn’t move a muscle. “What do you want?”

“Don’t you embarrass us in front of your teammates, Zachary,” Mom said, her voice sharpening to Wounding Level Three.

If she wasn’t up to Level Six yet, then she hadn’t started drinking.

“Listen to your mother, boy.” His dad looked the part of a wealthy old guy, but there was no getting rid of the Midwest nasal accent tinged with bitterness the old man had gained growing up angry and poor so far from town that he couldn’t even see the streetlights. “Your mother and I don’t want to make a scene.”

But they would, being the implication, and after all he’d done to avoid publicity about what they’d done, he wasn’t about to let it happen now.

Zach glanced around. There was no missing the curious glances players and others were shooting their way. Cold fury washing over him, Zach put that shit on lockdown as he turned back to focus on the vipers who’d made him, both as a human and a hockey player. His mom’s smile grew even as it iced up, and she winked.

They had him, and they knew it. If he ignored them, they’d make a fuss and people would get to wondering out loud about why they weren’t his managers anymore. He’d worked too hard—and paid his parents too much hush money—to make sure no one ever found out the truth to give it all up now.

He stepped into his mom’s embrace like a man about to eat ground glass. She squeezed him tight. He did the awkward pat on the back thing and untangled himself from her as fast as possible