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“Good goin’, boys. The Jags won’t know what hit ‘em!” Coach concludes, slapping his hands together, his eyes gleaming with a warrior’s fire.
Nothing would make me happier than beating Jared when he has the home advantage.
I blow out a breath, feeling every ounce of tension building around all of us. Coach isn’t just preparing us for the Jags, it’s also for the postseason. With only five days separating the end of the regular season and the playoffs, he wants us to be ready and fine-tuning line combinations, strategizing, and everything else that comes with the next stretch.
The Sabertooths aren’t just competing for the Stanley Cup, but also for personal achievements like the Art Ross Trophy, the Hart Trophy, and other accolades. We only have one game left until the Stanley Cup playoffs begin. In short, this stuff with Gail couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
Even as I think that, I know I don’t actually feel that way. After I’ve let my anger and past hurt make room for my new reality, I’m excited… no, that doesn’t cover it. I’m happy. And yeah, I’m in love. Who would have thought, definitely not me.
The mother of all irony is that back at Cupid’s Court, both Soren and I were falling for Abby, and we did want to see if we could find a way to see her outside that place. But then the pregnancy threw all our plans and ideas to the wind, and yeah, we turned into heartless jerks.
“A penny for your thoughts?” Soren says, punching me lightly on the upper arm.
I look around, noticing that every one of my teammates is in various stages of undress. Some wet from the shower, others walking toward the shower. Huh, I didn’t even notice Coach stopped talking, or that I got undressed and showered.
Turning off the water cascading down my body, I look at Soren. “Not here,” I answer, reaching for my towel.
He nods and joins me as we walk back to our lockers and get dressed in silence. I don’t think I’ve ever been that deep in thought that I’ve been completely oblivious to what was happening around me. But right now, I can’t think about anything but Gail.
“Alright! Enough with the moping, we’re going to O’Jackie’s getting some beers,” Sawyer announces, making it clear he isn’t going to take no for an answer. “I’m texting Lucia now so she knows not to expect me soon, and then we’re going to have some fucking fun.”
Gail
The chirp of Lucia’s phone shatters the silence we are—were—working in. She quickly snatches it up, her lips curve into a dorky grin that spells out “Sawyer” in flashing neon lights, even though she doesn’t say a word.
“Is he sexting you from the locker room again?” I tease without looking up from the spreadsheet that’s as tangled as my thoughts.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she singsongs, tapping away with fingers that dance over the screen like they’re on fast-forward. “Nah, he just told me he’d be late since he’s… doing stuff.”
I’m pretty sure “stuff” means he’s hanging out with Soren and Mickey, but since I’m too much of a chickenshit to ask, I push away from the desk to lean back in the creaky chair that protests under the weight of my exhaustion.
It’s been one week—seven days, one hundred sixty-eight hours—since I walked away from Mickey and Soren with nothing but my shattered heart and a baby growing inside me.
My little Fet, the only piece of them I have left.
Loneliness clings to me, a second skin I can’t shed, and heartbreak pulses through my veins with every beat of my heart. But there’s also this fierce determination to prove I can stand on my own two feet, even if they’re wobbly as hell.
Unaware of my turmoil, Luce pulls me out of my thoughts and back into business mode. “Do you think this call-to-action is edgy enough?” she asks, her green eyes squinting at the glowing screen in front of her.
I lean closer to have a look. “Edgy? If you make it edgier, we might get shadow banned,” I retort. But there’s a lilt to my voice, one that doesn’t belong in our business banter. I can tell she hears it—the way her eyebrows draw together like she’s solving me as if I’m her next big project.
“Let’s try it out then.” She hits “send” before I can protest, sealing the fate of our latest EduSync brainchild into the digital void. “And now we wait.”
I tap the screen of my phone, scrolling through the list of influencers Lucia and I have curated—each one a potential kindling for the firestorm we want to set off on launch day. “How about this guy?” I say, pointing to a profile with an impressive follower count and an aesthetic that screams “creative entrepreneur.”
“Perfect,” Lucia nods, her red curls bouncing as she leans over to peek at my phone. “He’s got reach and his audience is our target market. Let’s draft him an email.”
My fingers dance across the screen, crafting an invitation laced with just enough flattery to catch his attention without sounding desperate. We need these influencers to believe in EduSync as much as we do.
“Sent,” I declare, a tiny triumph amid the vast sea of tasks still ahead of us. “One down, a million to go.”
“Every empire starts with a single brick,” Luce quips, her eyes sparkling with that relentless optimism of hers.
I nod, rubbing at the slight swell of my belly that’s become my constant companion, along with this gnawing ache for Mickey and Soren.
I’m reaching for my mug when she fixes her eyes on me, a softness in their green depths that I’ve seen way too much this past week. It’s herI pity you but don’t want you to knowlook. “You’re glowing, Gail,” she says, her voice tinged with that mix of awe and concern only a best friend can muster.
Radiant isn’t a word I’d normally use for myself, especially not these days, but as I catch my reflection in the window, I see what she means. My skin has taken on this warm luminescence, like I’m backlit by some gentle inner fire, and my hair seems shinier.
