I Seduced His Rival: Now the Hockey Star Wants Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Price Sticker

Chase brings grocery-store roses and his version of the broken nose, Finola says no to him for the first time, and a dinner in Brighton ends in a kiss nobody is watching.

I typed back to Luc. "Yes."

Then I opened the door.

Chase was holding a bunch of red roses in cellophane.

The orange price sticker from the Star Market on Brighton Ave was still on the wrapper. $12.99.

Three years I'd waited for Chase Prentiss to bring me flowers.

I looked at the sticker and wanted to laugh.

"Hey," he said, and gave me the grin. The one that worked on everybody. "Can I come in?"

"My roommate's asleep."

Kat was at the hospital until seven. He didn't know that. He didn't know where Kat worked or that Kat existed.

"Out here's fine, then." He held out the roses. "These are for you."

I didn't take them.

He kept holding them out for a second too long, then tucked them under his arm.

"Look. About last night. The furniture thing. I was messing around. Brynn gets jealous, you know how she is."

"I don't know how she is. I've never talked to her."

"She thinks you're into me." He laughed. "It's stupid."

I waited.

He ran a hand through his hair.

"Finola. Thibodeau? Seriously? You know what he is, right?"

"Tell me."

"He jumped me. Freshman year, in our own locker room, from behind. Over some puck bunny he had a thing for."

He touched the bump on his nose.

"Broke my nose. I nearly lost my season. The school threw him out. That's the guy you're kissing in bars."

"You told me it was a puck."

He blinked. "What?"

"Your nose. Sophomore year, in the library, I asked. You said a puck."

"I didn't want to talk about it. It was a whole thing." He stepped closer. "He's using you, Finola. He wants to get to me. That's all you are to him."

"And what am I to you?"

That stopped him.

He looked at me.

"You're my girl," he said finally. "You're my Finola. Come on. Library tomorrow, two o'clock, like always? I've got a stats quiz Tuesday and I'm dying."

There it was.

Not even ten minutes.

"No," I said.

He actually laughed. "No to what?"

"No to the library. Get a tutor from the center. They're free."

"I don't want a tutor from the center. I want you."

"Since when?"

He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

I closed the door.

I stood on the other side of it with my back against the wood.

My heart was going so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

He knocked once more. Then I heard the stairs.

He took the roses with him.

Luc's apartment was a second-floor walk-up in Brighton with a hockey net in the hallway and a couch held together by duct tape.

He'd texted Sunday at noon. "Dinner. My place. My roommates want to see if you're real."

They were two Saints.

One was enormous and loud and kept calling me "Bayhill" like a nickname.

The other one was quiet and had made a pasta that tasted like the pot.

"He tried," Luc said. "Don't hurt his feelings."

"It's great," I lied.

"Rule one," Luc said.

"It's terrible," I said. "Sorry."

The quiet one looked relieved.

Luc had made garlic bread and burned it black on one side. He served it burned side down like nobody would notice.

The big one told me about the time Luc drove the Zamboni into the boards at two in the morning.

He'd pretended it was a mechanical issue.

"It was a mechanical issue."

"You were singing."

"The mechanics were singing."

I laughed so hard I had to put my fork down.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd laughed at a table with boys and nobody had asked me for anything.

At ten Luc walked me home.

It was cold enough that our breath hung in front of us.

"Chase came last night," I said.

"I know. You said yes."

"How did you know he'd come?"

"Because I know him." He had his hands jammed in his jacket pockets. "He doesn't want things until somebody else has them. Then he wants them more than anything."

"I'm a thing?"

"To him."

"And to you?"

He stopped on the sidewalk outside my building.

"You're Finola Keogh," he said. "You skate at six a.m. at the far end of rink two."

I went still.

Nobody watched us practice at six a.m. Nobody.

"How do you know that?"

"I was at Bayhill a whole season. I had eyes."

He was standing very close. The streetlight was in his eyes.

There were no phones. No bar. No Chase. Nobody on the whole street.

I reached up and put my hand on the back of his neck where his hair curled, and I kissed him.

There was nothing to prove. That was the strange part.

He made a low sound in his chest and backed me into my own door.

His hands came up under my coat to my waist, hot through my sweater.

I opened my mouth to him.

I had my fingers in his hair. He had his thumb at the edge of my ribs.

He kissed the way he'd said he would.

I was the one who pulled away.

I was also the one who didn't let go of his jacket.

"That wasn't for anybody," he said, low.

"I know."

"Rule one, Finola."

"I know."

He waited, like he was giving me the chance to say something else.

I didn't. I went upstairs with my mouth still burning and sat on the edge of my bed in my coat.

My phone lit up.

Chase.

"Game's Saturday at the Barn. If you sit in their section in his jersey, don't bother coming back."

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