“Why are you smiling like that?”

My hands close over a package of lean meat and I plop it into the carriage. “Smiling like what?” I ask Zoe.

She circles her finger in my direction, and I have the random thought that she’s feeling her antennae at me. Like she’s trying to figure me out. I snag another package of meat from the display, purposely giving my best friend my back so she can’t do her magical-reading skills.

It doesn’t work.

“You got laid last night!”

The butcher behind the glass-display counter gives me a creepy grin and an even creepier once-over. “Lucky man.”

So awkward. With a stiff smile—grimace? It’s more of a grimace—I turn the carriage away from the meat section of Stop & Shop and head toward an empty aisle. Zoe trails behind me happily, her high heels clipping across the shiny linoleum tiles.

“Can we not?” I mutter, throwing a canister of bread crumbs into the mix. In an attempt to make my mother happy after the whole Ty debacle, I decided to throw her a little dinner for tonight. Just her, me, and Manuel. When I clued her in this morning, she put up a small fuss about having chefs who can do the cooking for us—but ultimately caved when I mentioned that it’d give her the time to get a load off her shoulders and vent.

I don’t know what it says about my company that the prospect of a bitch fest was the enticement Adaline needed to spend time with me.

I push the sobering thought away. It’s neither here nor there—end of the day, she agreed to suffer through a dinner with me, and I suppose that’s all I can be grateful for.

With light fingers, Zoe snatches a small potato chip bag from a display at the end of the aisle and tears it open like a savage. At my lifted brow, she shrugs. “What? Mere mortals eat as they go, Gwen. Save the bag and pay later at the register.” She shoves a chip into her mouth. “Anyway, you can’t get out of this. You’re looking at me like I’m crazy and yet you can’t stop smiling—you had sex. Was it with someone new? Andre and the team are getting back from Toronto today, so it couldn’t have been with Hunt.”

My cheeks burn with the memory of what Marshall and I did last night—or rather, what we didn’t do. I’d like to pretend that we were just two lonely people who agreed to a little mutual self-satisfaction, but that seems woefully inaccurate to describe my most vivid sexual experience.

Regardless of whether we were in two different countries or not, Marshall gave me an orgasm I’ll never forget.

Exactly the reason you woke up this morning and took care of business . . . again.

“Not someone new.”

“Hunt, then?” Zoe asks, crunching away. “Who knew the two of you would develop some sort of telepathic sex system?” She waves her free hand in the air, as though she’s showing off a billboard. “Sign me up. It’s a lonely world when Andre is on the road.”

“We didn’t . . .” Stopping in the noodle section, I eye my options and buy myself time before answering. Fettuccini or lasagna. Unbidden, a visual of cooking for Marshall pops into my head and I shove it away. Don’t get ahead of yourself. “It was like . . .”

Popping another chip into her mouth, Zoe watches me like a hawk. “Yes . . .?”

My gaze darts from one end of the aisle to the other. Spotting an elderly lady on the far end, at least ten feet away, I lower my voice. “We had video chat sex, okay?”

Her chip bag releases a strangled-sounding pop! pop! as though she’s squeezed it too tightly. “Like Skype? FaceTime? Facebook?”

“Does it matter which platform it happened on?” I don’t know whether to laugh or poke her in the ribs for being ridiculous.

“Not really,” Zoe tells me, “but it does help set the scene for the sexy times.”

“Well, then!”

The elderly lady I’d spotted earlier smacks her carriage into mine as she angles past us in the narrow aisle. Behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, her blue eyes turn into slits. “Heathens,” she mutters. “Your generation has no common decency. You take up the aisle space, you steal the handicapped parking spaces without consideration for anyone else. You talk about—”

“Sex?” Zoe offers up, crunching away on her chips like this is the best form of entertainment she’s had in months. “Hey, Gwenny, did Hunt spank you, by any chance?”

So much for keeping this between us. To support the cause, I nevertheless swallow down my embarrassment and fake a casual smile. “Only once. I guess I haven’t been a bad enough girl for anything more.”

The woman’s lips part and, with a shake of her head, she gives a hand-shove to my cart before marching down the rest of the aisle and turning the corner.

For a moment, Zoe and I stand in silence.

Then, “You think she hasn’t gotten laid in years?”

I cover a laugh with my hand. “I was thinking that she might have some pent-up aggression toward anyone under the age of eighty.”

“Heathens,” Zoe agrees with a sage nod, “the lot of us.”

We both erupt into laughter, and I wrap my arm around my best friend’s shoulders to touch the side of my head to her shoulder. For a girl who never allowed herself to have true friends, the last year has been something of an awakening for me.

I don’t have blood sisters, but Zoe and Charlie fill a hole in my heart I never even realized I’d been missing.

Zoe demands I open my mouth for a chip to, and I quote, “Prove that you are a plebeian like the rest of us.”

I’m fully aware that not everyone grew up the way I did with butlers and chefs and a mother who couldn’t be bothered with my existence.

To be honest, I wouldn’t recommend my childhood to anyone either.

As we turn the corner, Zoe latches back onto our earlier conversation with barracuda-like claws. “So,” she says, “you, Hunt, sex.”

“Facetime sex.”

“Ah.” Zoe winks at me. “So it was FaceTime. A-plus quality and all that.”

“You’re insane.”

“Not as insane as you. You and Hunt went from deciding that no sex was happening at all, and then you got down and dirty while he was away at a game.”

When she puts it that way, I totally am insane. Marshall and I have always had chemistry—in some capacity or another—but I’ve never let myself dwell too long on it. What good would it do when I didn’t have plans to sleep with him? But the way we were last night . . . the way he looked with his hand wrapped around his cock, every lingering protest in me died.

Hearing him order me to come, to stroke myself for him . . . it did it for me. Marshall pushed me over the edge with nothing but the deep timbre of his voice and the visual of his hard body.

In a whisper, I carve up my heart and spill it all to my best friend. “I worry I’m going to be in over my head soon, Zo. What if it’s all part of a plan or something?” Insecurities rise up—particularly those that deal with wondering if I’m even good enough for a guy like Marshall. “What if he’s just giving me a taste of my own medicine after all these years? Like, she fucked with me and now I’m going to mess with her emotions in return.”

We step in line at the nearest register, and I push the carriage up to the conveyor belt.

“I’d kick his ass,” Zoe tells me, and then gives me a little nudge.

I follow the direction of her gaze, only to swallow hard at the sight of Marshall on a Sports Illustrated cover. Since I’m not his publicist—he opted to sign with Harris Publicity during his farm team days—I had no idea that he’d been chosen to represent the month of December.

I skim the cover, taking in the headline: Marshall Hunt Brings Heat To The Ice. And then, directly below: No Other Player Has Scored As Many Hat Tricks In A Single Season. Will The Streak Continue? Hunt Explains How Hockey Is More Than Just A Test Of Physical Strength.

In nothing but his navy-blue uniform pants, Marshall rests his hockey stick across the back of his shoulders. His upper body is a work of art—rippling muscles, tattooed arms, smooth, tan skin with a dusting of hair on his chest that narrows into a thin happy trail.

Last night, I had the chance to see where that trail led, and it was heaven.

“Ma’am, are you ready?”

Without giving myself the chance to decide otherwise, I set the glossy magazine on the belt and then begin unloading the groceries.

Zoe bumps her hip with mine. “I’m gonna take it that the, you know, was good then?”

My thighs involuntarily clench together at the memory of Marshall telling me to taste myself. “I’ve literally never had better.”

I just hope I haven’t set myself up for heartbreak.