I Seduced His Rival: Now the Hockey Star Wants Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Napkin

Luc walks into Finola's kids' skating class in enemy colors, they write their rules on a diner napkin, and at midnight Chase Prentiss knocks on her door for the first time.

I didn't answer Chase.

I lay there and read it six times.

Ask him what he did to my face.

Like I didn't know. Like the whole campus didn't know.

Kat came in from her night shift at eight, still in her navy scrubs, and stood in my doorway eating cereal out of the box.

"So," she said. "You made out with a Saint."

"How do you know that?"

"Babe. It's on four accounts. One of them set it to a song."

She turned her phone around.

There I was in my Bayhill scarf, and there was Luc unwinding it from my neck.

My hands were grabbing his jacket.

"I look desperate."

"You look like you're in a perfume ad." She crunched a handful of cereal. "Prentiss seen it?"

"He texted."

"What'd he say?"

I showed her.

Kat read it and smiled with her whole face.

"Oh, he's mad," she said. "Finola. He's mad. In two years that boy never once texted you before noon."

I had a class to teach at ten.

Saturday mornings I coached learn-to-skate at the Bayhill rink. Eleven kids, ages five to seven, in helmets and snow pants.

I was crouched at the boards fixing a lace when the whole row of parents went quiet.

I looked up.

Luc Thibodeau was walking down the rubber mat in his green St. Brendan's jacket.

Inside the Bayhill rink.

Three Bayhill players were leaning on the glass by the tunnel after morning skate. One of them actually stood up straight.

Luc didn't look at them.

He stopped at the boards next to me and held out a coffee.

"You didn't say what you take," he said. "So it's black."

"I hate black coffee."

"Then you'll tell me next time."

A little girl in pink tights skated straight into the boards to stare at him.

"Are you a hockey player?"

"Yeah."

"Are you good?"

"Pretty good."

"Can you do a spin?"

"No," Luc said. "Can you?"

She did one, wobbly and proud, and fell on her butt.

He clapped.

After that it was over. Every kid in the class wanted to show him something.

A five-year-old boy made him hold his mitten while he blew his nose.

I watched Luc Thibodeau, the animal from Maine, kneel on a rubber mat in a hostile rink.

He tied a double knot on a pair of rental skates.

The Bayhill guys at the glass watched too.

One of them took out his phone.

"You know they're going to send that to him," I said.

"That's the idea, isn't it?"

We went to the diner on Harvard Ave after.

He ate two breakfasts. I watched him do it.

"So how does this work?" I said. "Do we have rules? I feel like we need rules."

He pulled a napkin out of the holder and a pen out of his jacket and pushed both across to me.

"Your plan," he said. "You write them."

I wrote: One. No lies to each other.

He nodded.

"Two. I pick the dates. Where we go, who sees us."

"Fine."

"Three. It ends the night of the last game of the season."

He took the pen out of my hand.

Under mine he wrote: Four. I get one date. My pick.

"What kind of date?"

"You'll find out."

"If it's a bar, no. I've done your bar."

"It's not a bar." He signed it. Luc T. "Your turn."

I signed it. Then I put the pen down.

"Rule one," I said. "What did you do to Chase's face?"

He didn't look away. I'll give him that.

"I broke his nose."

"I know that. Everybody knows that. Why?"

"He said something he shouldn't have said."

"About who?"

Luc leaned back in the booth.

"I'd do it again," he said. "That's all you get for now."

"That's not no lies."

"It's not a lie. It's a not yet."

I folded the napkin into my wallet and wanted to hate him a little.

I didn't, which was worse.

He walked me home to Allston.

Kat was in the kitchen in pajama pants, very obviously waiting.

"Oh, he's tall," she said. "Finola, you didn't say he was tall."

"Kat, this is Luc. Luc, Kat. She's leaving."

"I live here." Kat pointed a spoon at him. "Do you have a record?"

"No."

"Girlfriend?"

"Yes." He looked at me. "As of last night."

Kat's eyebrows went all the way up.

"Do you know what Chase Prentiss did to this girl for two years?"

"Some of it," he said.

"She did his homework."

"She tutored him," Luc said. "There's a difference. She'd never do his homework."

I stared at him.

That was true. I'd never done it. Chase had asked a hundred times.

How did he know that?

Kat looked from him to me, slowly.

"Okay," she said. "I like him. That's a problem for you, not me."

Luc left at nine. He didn't kiss me in the hallway. Nobody was watching.

I told myself I was relieved.

At midnight, someone knocked on our door.

Not a polite knock. A fist.

Kat was at work. I padded out in my socks and looked through the peephole.

Chase Prentiss was standing in our dirty third-floor hallway.

He'd never been to my apartment. Not once in two years. I'd always gone to him.

He knocked again. "Finola. I know you're up. Come on."

My phone buzzed in my hand.

A text from a number I'd saved that morning as "7."

"Is he there yet?"

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