Page 75 of The Pucking Coach's Daughter

“Sydney?” Oliver stops beside me. “Ready?”

“Yeah.” Ready for something, I don’t know what. “I thought that would make me feel better.”

He eyes me. “But?”

“I just feel empty.”

“Ah.”

We go outside. This time, he puts the helmet on my head and buckles it under my chin, his knuckles brushing my skin. I shiver, but it’s definitely the cold air and not his touch that does it.

Back on the bike, arms cinched around his abdomen, I rather expect him to take me straight home.

Nope.

He pulls into the driveway of his house.

I don’t have a reaction, though. I don’t really know why we’re here unless he’s going to be mean again. I just follow him up the walkway and into the house.

It’s all familiar. It shouldn’t be, but… I know where everything is because I scouted it out and I was merciless about it. He toes off his shoes and disappears down the hall into the kitchen. I stand in the doorway for a long moment, then ultimately do the same and follow.

He sets a small pot of milk on the stove and leans against the counter beside it.

“From threatening to return me to Penn all bloody and bruised to… what are you making? Mac ‘n cheese?”

“I was going for hot chocolate.”

“Whatever you’re making is fine,” I murmur. “What a weird fucking day.”

“Yeah?”

“Obviously.”

He doesn’t have a reply to that.

I take a seat at the table. Penn still has my phone, so there’s no distractions. The clock on the wall ticks loudly in the quiet. There’s just our breathing and the slight crackle of the flame under the pot.

I open and close my mouth, but any thought on what to actually say to him has evaporated.

Trusting Ruiz is a bad idea. Such a fucking bad idea.

“My playbook is upstairs if you want to go sneak more pictures,” he says.

See?

I push back from the table and go upstairs. Not that I have my phone. Or anything, for that matter. Not that he seems to know any differently. I head straight upstairs to that room that had it last time. It’s in a drawer this time, but it takes me no time at all to find it.

I cradle it to my chest and go back downstairs.

“Hey,” I bark.

He turns.

I chuck his playbook at him. He catches it—of course he fucking does—and squints at me.

“You were an ass.”

He doesn’t reply.