Page 18 of The Pucking Coach's Daughter

“Pleasure,” she echoes. “Great.”

“Dylan is on the women’s volleyball team,” Brandon says in the wake of our awkward-as-shit introductions. “She likes to tell people she has an innate ability because she’s tall and talented, but really she practices more than anyone else.”

“Brandon,” she snaps again.

“And Sydney has some thoughts on what makes writing interesting,” he continues. “So she might have read your mom, Dyl.”

I straighten. “Is your mom an author?”

Dylan blushes. “Unfortunately, yes. She writes romance books. The kind with half-naked cowboys on the cover.”

I don’t want to say that sounds interesting, but I am intrigued. “No hockey guys?”

She snorts. “No.”

“That’s a bonus. So does she write under a pen name, or…”

Brandon bursts into laughter.

“Shut up,” she mutters. She offers me a small smile. “If you mention that to anyone, I’ll fucking kill you.”

“That’s a sign of friendship,” Brandon explains. “As soon as the murder talk starts, you’re in.”

My smile fades at the idea of murder.

What if my mom hasn’t come home because she can’t?

six

sydney

Unknown

How many texts do you get a day?

Me

Texts, emails, phone calls…

All of them.

Well, there’s a feature that lets you send unknown calls right to voicemail. So I turned that on, and now I have 150 voicemails. I think it’s full, though, because they’ve stopped.

And I’ve been trying to delete the texts as they come in, but I gave up.

It’s been a week.

And you’re still talking to me.

You’re intriguing.

I get that you think that, but I’m about as far from it as possible.

Boring people don’t interest me like you.

Because you saw a photo of me online?

Because you were ballsy enough to steal a playbook and give it to their enemy.