Page 251 of Break Away
“We should call him.”
“That’s what I said.”
“With disguised voices.”
He blinked. “Why?”
“Because our team name is No Further Questions, I’m wearing a tiara, and you lost a historical integrity battle. The night demands theater.”
He looked at me for three seconds too long.
Then he handed me the phone. “I am so in love with you it’s becoming a medical issue.”
I took the phone, smug and warm. “Finally, a diagnosis.”
Cade answered on the third ring. “Easton?”
I lowered my voice into something dramatic and terrible. “Mr. Mercer, we have your emotionally unstable defenseman.”
Easton immediately bent at the waist, laughing silently into his hand.
Cade was quiet for half a second. “Aura, I can see your name on the screen.”
I covered the phone and glared at Easton. “He’s annoyingly observant.”
Easton took the phone and, for reasons known only to his concussion-adjacent masculinity, used an accent that sounded like a mobster raised by a lacrosse coach. “We require transportation. No police involvement.”
Cade sighed. “Easton, if this is your attempt at a disguise, your education is failing you.”
In the background, Bliss yelled, “Is that them? Are they drunk? Put them on speaker.”
I leaned toward the phone. “We won trivia morally.”
Easton nodded solemnly. “We were robbed.”
Cade’s voice flattened. “Where are you?”
I glanced at the sign above us. “A secondary location.”
Bliss came on the line, delighted. “Oh my gosh, they’re so drunk.”
“I had two drinks,” I said.
“I had two beers,” Easton added, offended.
Cade paused. “You sound proud of that.”
“He was extremely responsible,” I said. “It was unsettling.”
Bliss laughed so hard the phone crackled.
Easton took the phone back. “My truck died, the Uber driver abandoned us for her emotional support ferret, and Aura is wearing a tiara. We need extraction.”
Cade was quiet for another beat. “I’m sorry. Did you say ferret?”
“Pickle,” I added.
Bliss shrieked again.
