Page 82 of The Romance Line
Asher snorts. “Good luck with that. Lambert’s unbeatable.”
I want to bask in the praise and the truth of it. But I can’t let either of them think that or they’ll never play poker with me on the plane again. “Not true.” I scratch my beard, as casual as can be. “I lost the other week. Don’t you remember?”
That’s a bald-faced lie, but I try to sell it with a lazy shrug.
Asher lifts a doubtful brow, studying me for several seconds. “You’re bluffing.”
Miles’s jaw drops. “Holy shit. He is. That’s your tell, Lambert.”
“You scratch your beard when you’re full of it,” Asher adds.
Well, fuck me. I only meant to throw them off the scent, not reveal my hand. So I double down, scoffing as we stride closer to the visitors’ locker room. “Don’t have a tell.”
“Everyone does,” Miles says.
I wave a hand to move on. Maybe my good mood has softened me up. “Fine, I’ll go easy on you next time.”
Miles stares dead-eyed at me. “You will do no such thing. Ever.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” I say, patting him on the back. “Now, let’s go make Nashville cry.”
As Miles turns into the locker room, Asher hangs back, stopping outside the door. “How’s everything going?”
“Good. Why?”
“I saw your comments from the other night got some pickup with the sports press.”
“You did?” I guess I shouldn’t be surprised Asher noticed—he’s observant.
But then he surprises me when he says, “Maeve was texting me and telling me. She said she was trying to scroll through calming, time-lapse videos of people painting murals—they’re her favorite, and it’s fucking adorable—but then hockey infected her feed.”
There’s a whole lot going on in that intel drop. I’m not sure where to start, so I say, “That’s awfully specific.”
“She’s a painter,” he says, a little proudly. “Anyway, just checking in to see how you’re doing.”
I’m a lucky guy that some of my friends are so emotionally astute. “I’m actually okay,” I say honestly, opening up some more to him. He makes it easy enough, like he did at the smoothie shop the other week, like he does in my car, too, when I drive him to the rink. “It wasn’t as awful as I’d thought it’d be.”
“Proud of you,” he says.
“I just put blinders on, you know?”
“That’s what you gotta do,” he says. “I’m glad you’re finally realizing you don’t need to make things harder on yourself. You don’t need to fight it. You’ll see it becomes painless after a while—talking to the press.”
But I’m not buying that yet. “Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”
“I’m not worried. You’ve got this,” he says.
I wave him along. “All right. If I spend too much time with you and your happy attitude, I might not be a dick during the game.”
He scoffs. “You’ll always be a dick,” he says, then nods toward the locker room. But my phone rings and when I grab it from my pocket, it’s my agent’s name lighting up the screen. A dart of tension stabs me in the chest. I waggle my cell at Asher. “I’ll catch up with you inside. I need to talk to Garrett.”
“Good luck, man. Let me know how it goes,” he says.
“Will do.”
I hit answer then turn around, pacing away from the locker room to a quieter corner of the corridor. “What’s up?” I ask with more trepidation than I’d like to feel with my agent. But that’s how things have been since this whole makeover project started with veiled threats from my very unhappy team.
“Guess who’s not getting fined?” Garrett asks.