Page 117 of Like a Power Play
She sighs, and asks in the most uninterested tone possible: “Who’s Dr. John McLouglin?”
A giant grin breaks across my face. “I’m so glad you asked!” I say, high-pitched and condescending like a kindergarten teacher.
She groans, which is my cue to continue.
“Johnny here was a physician turned fur trader slash colonizer who basically ran the Hudson’s Bay Company.”
Peyton blinks, unamused. “And you’re telling me this because…?”
“Because ol’ Johnny had a son. Johnny Jr. And one day, after screwing up basically everything in his life, JJ decides he wants to follow in daddy’s footsteps and be a fur trader too.”
I stop there, just to see what she’ll do with it.
She raises an eyebrow. “Well? Did he?”
I nod. “Yeah.” A beat. “Until he got blackout drunk, beat the shit out of some coworkers, and got himself shot to death.”
Peyton recoils.“Jesus, Darcy!Why would you tell me that?”
I shrug. “Because sometimes trying to be like your dad gets you somewhere you don’t want to be.”
“You brought me all the way here to tell methat?To make me stare at the statue of a dead guy who has an even deader son?”
I tilt my head. “Can a dead person really be more dead than another dead person?”
She gestures to Johnny Sr. “Well, his son doesn’t have a statue to commemorate him, so.”
Another breeze cuts through, shaking the leafless trees, biting at my skin. I pull my hair back over my ears, makeshift insulation against the cold.
“I brought you here to tell you that,” I say, voice firm, “and to stop you from getting on the ice. Practicing every morning isn’t helping you get better. It’s setting your body up to fail.”
Peyton looks away instead of arguing. Which means she knows I’m right.
“If we’re doing this, if I’m going to keep helping you, then no more early practices.”
Now she argues.
“Four,” she says.
“One.”
“Three.”
“Two. Thirty minutes, max.”
Her amber eyes scan mine, searching for leniency. She finds none. A sigh escapes her lips, her shoulders sagging in surrender, but when our eyes meet again, there’s a gleam there. A spark of something I can’t quite decipher.
“Okay,” she says. “Two.”
I smile. “Two.”
After another long pause, I add: “In a completely coincidental and unplanned circumstance, there just so happens to be a five-star coffee shop just down the—”
Before I can finish, she steps closer. Close enough that our bodies are, once again, touching. Her hand curls behind my neck, pulling herself onto her toes until our mouths are perfectly aligned.
I like when her mouth is parallel with mine.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” she murmurs, her smile soft and lopsided.
