Chapter 17
ANOTHER YOU
The whole team was wiped out—physically, mentally—as we got off the ice. It was a brutal loss to begin with, but now we were staring down the end of our season on top of it.
We were hoping for one more game. If we’d taken regionals tonight, the next step was the national championship. It would’ve meant a round-trip ticket to Minnesota for an entire week and a one-way ticket to certain glory.
But now it was over.
I was sweaty and tired and pissed as we headed back to the locker room, the echo of our useless sticks and skates reverberating off the concrete walls of the large corridor... when I looked up and saw Tess.
She was leaning against the wall, looking hot as hell, pretending to ignore the many sly looks she was receiving from my teammates. They’d just suffered a devastating loss, but they hadn’t gone blind.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, completely dumbfounded.
She smiled wide to answer, “I don’t know. Figured I’d come see what all the fuss was about.” She gave a tap to my stick and asked, “You free tonight?”
I didn’t know what was with the spontaneous visit, but she’d managed to raise my curiosity. “Yeah, I guess. Let me get showered and meet you in the main lobby.”
“Sure.”
“Might be a while,” I warned. “Coach will want to talk to us.”
“Whatever.” She shrugged and crossed her arms. “I can wait.”
And that’s how I found myself at Bennigan’s an hour later, sitting across a booth from Tess Valletti. We’d ordered some food and made polite smalltalk, catching up on each other’s lives the past few months.
But ultimately, I wanted to know what the hell was going on. “You know,” I started in, stabbing my fork into the cheesecake. “I don’t think you’ll blame me if I’m surprised to see you. What is this?”
“I don’t know,” she laughed out. “I guess I missed you.”
“You missed me?”
She swirled her straw around her soda glass as her eyes met mine in an unmistakable invitation. Her lids lowered to half-mast in that sexy, sultry Tess way, a look I’d seen from her more than a few times back when we were dating. Her lip quirked dangerously as she finally leaned across the table and said, “I especially missed your mouth.”
Whoa.
I had no idea where this was coming from. As intrigued as I was, I knew there was no way I was going to take her up on her offer. It could be so easy to just fall back into a casual thing with Tess. Just take us both out of here and fuck her until my brain was purged of all thought for a little while. To forget my life for a few minutes.
But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be that guy anymore. I wasn’t that guy anymore.
I let out with a nervous snicker before answering her unasked question. “Hey, uh... It’s not like I’m not tempted, because I am. But we are so not doing this.”
“Doing what?” she asked coyly.
I scrubbed a hand over my face before answering her. “Look, Tess. I think you’re a lot of fun and there’s no denying you’re smoking hot... but I don’t want to lead you on, here. I don’t think this is going to happen for us.”
I was expecting hurt. Shock. Anger.
I wasn’t expecting to get called out.
Tess’ jaw dropped open as she said, “Oh my God. There’s someone else, isn’t there.”
“Wait. What? No, I—”
“Trip. No one ditches me for no reason. You’ve obviously got something going on with someone else. Mind if I ask who the lucky lady is?”
Yes.
I couldn’t tell her even if I wanted to. I’d stopped saying Her name out loud weeks ago. It was the only way to salvage my sanity.