Breaking the Deal with My Hockey Bad Boy novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Ride Home

Jase drives Melina home with his hand too close to hers, and she finds a page of her own story waiting on her bed with a note.

Jase opened the passenger door of his truck and waited.

"I'll walk her back," Rhett said from the glass.

"It's two in the morning, and it's twenty-eight degrees," Jase said. "I'm her brother. I'll drive her."

He said brother like a flag he was planting.

I felt Rhett's eyes on the side of my face.

Rhett had told me one thing in the arena: touch only where Zara can see.

Zara was not there, and I still lifted up on my toes and kissed his cheek.

"Text me," I said.

Rhett's mouth twitched, and he stepped back.

"Yeah. Goodnight, Stat Girl."

Jase's truck smelled like cedar and old coffee and him.

I buckled in and kept my hands flat on my knees.

For two years he had been the person my mother introduced as my new big brother.

For one year he had been the person I wrote pages about at midnight.

Neither of those people was supposed to be sitting eight inches from me with the heater blowing his hair.

"So," Jase said, turning onto Main Street. "You and Tremblay."

"Yes."

"Since August."

"Yes."

"You never told me."

"You never ask what I do, Jase. You ask who I'm dating, once, when you're worried."

He laughed under his breath.

"That's fair."

He drove with one wrist draped over the wheel, his scarred eyebrow lifting at the red light.

"He's a mess, Mel. I'm not trying to be a jerk. I roomed with him for two years."

"Then you know he isn't cruel."

"I know he's loud and he breaks things."

"He took a phone out of Zara's hand in front of forty people for me."

Jase's jaw flexed.

"Yeah," he said. "I saw."

The light turned green and he didn't move.

A car honked behind us, and he lifted a hand without looking, and went.

"It was good, you know," he said after a block.

"What was?"

"The story. Whoever writes it. I mean, the hockey stuff is right. She knows I always hate the left side of the bench."

My throat closed.

"That's a thing a lot of people know."

"Is it?"

"Everybody sits there when you're out. Hallie says it's because of the heater."

"Maybe," he said, and he smiled at the road.

The heater clicked, and he reached toward the dashboard to turn it up.

His knuckles brushed the inside of my knee.

It was nothing, an accident, a half second of warm skin through my jeans.

My whole body lit up.

I stared at the window so hard I could see my own reflection.

I wrote about hands like that.

I wrote about exactly that, the way a person can make a whole room tilt by accident.

Jase did not move his hand away right away.

He left it there for one breath, then another.

"Cold?" he asked, low.

"No."

"Your knee's shaking."

"It's the road."

"Right," he said, and he took his hand back, and looked straight ahead.

We turned onto the street by the dorms, and he put the truck in park a little too far from the door.

Neither of us moved.

"I should tell you something," he said.

My heart climbed into my mouth.

"Dad wants us all at the house Sunday," he said. "Your mom's making pot roast. He wants to meet Rhett."

The breath went out of me so fast I almost laughed.

"You want to bring Rhett to dinner with Zara and our parents?"

"I want to see how he does."

"That's mean."

"It's brotherly."

He said the word again, and again it landed like a hand on a bruise.

"Okay," I said. "Sunday."

"Good."

I got out of the truck.

He rolled the window down.

"Mel."

"What?"

"That kiss tonight. You've never kissed anyone like that at a family thing."

"It wasn't a family thing."

"No," he said slowly. "I guess it wasn't."

He drove off with the taillights smearing red down the street.

I stood on the curb with my fingers on my own mouth and no idea which kiss I was feeling.

Our dorm room was dark when I got in, except for the line of light under the bathroom door.

Hallie's voice came through it, muffled by a toothbrush.

"Is it true? Everybody's texting me. Rhett Tremblay? The Rhett Tremblay?"

"It's complicated," I called.

"I'll take it!"

She came out foaming, a short redhead in a hockey tee, and hugged me hard.

"Okay, we're doing this in the morning, with bagels. Also, someone left you something on your bed."

I turned on the lamp.

A single sheet of paper lay on my pillow, folded in thirds.

It was a printout of page one of chapter thirty-one.

Across the top, in thick black marker, someone had written a question.

WHICH ONE OF THEM IS THE CAPTAIN?

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