Page 114 of Oh, Puck!
"I SAID NO CHILLI THIS TIME, RICO!" Beck hollers back, eyes streaming, while Sawyer pats his back and hands him a glass of milk.
"He cried," Finn announces, clearly delighted. "Actual tears, lads. I got it on video."
"Delete it or die, MacAllister."
I'm still laughing when Colin's voice booms from a cluster of blazers near the sponsor tent. He's sitting around with a group of men with expensive watches, all of them nodding along as he gestures at the pier like Michelangelo describing the Sistine ceiling.
"—and I said, gentlemen, this town doesn't need a hockey team, it needs alove story.And that's when the vision came to me. The night sky. The carousel. The whole—"
"The whole thing Josie planned," Darcy says flatly, appearing at his elbow with a champagne flute.
"—the whole thing Josieexecuted," Colin course-corrects smoothly, "based on my vision."
Darcy peels away from the sponsor cluster and clinks her glass against mine. "For the record, if he says the word 'vision' one more time, I'm pushing him off the pier."
"You'd have to catch him first. The man's surprisingly fast when he senses accountability."
She almost smiles, then tips her glass toward the crowd. "You did this, you know. Not him. Not anyone else. Enjoy it."
"I couldn't have done it without everyone's help."
"Josie! There you are—okay, hold still—" A sound tech in a Bears crew shirt appears with a small black transmitter and a lapel mic. "We've got you down for the speech in twenty. But Rose wants you hooked into the PA and the stream now, ready to test first."
"The stream?"
"Oh yeah." He clips the tiny mic to my collar, threads the wire down, and tucks the pack against the back of my dress. "We're live on all the Bears socials. Rose's idea. Whole world's watching tonight."
Across the party, I spot Rose, hunched over a folding table stacked with a laptop, a camera rig, and enough cables to hogtie a whale. She's wearing a gorgeous dress, but she has headphones half-on, her hair escaping its braid as she fusses between screens.
She catches my eye and gives me a thumbs up so enthusiastic she nearly knocks her own camera over.
"Alright. Mic's muted till you're up on stage," the tech says, tapping the little unit now clipped to my dress. "Red light means hot."
"Red light means hot," I repeat. "Got it."
I file it somewhere behind the speech I've been rehearsing and the sponsor names and the seven hundred other things in my brain, and then I forget about it entirely.
Because Declan has arrived.
He's across the party near the ring toss, letting a kid in a jersey climb his arm like playground equipment. When he looks up and finds me through the crowd, the look on his face makes my breath actually catch.
He can't come over, and I can't go to him.
That's the game we've been playing for weeks.
So we just stand there, thirty feet apart, having an entire conversation with our eyes that would absolutely get us both fired.
"Okay." I press my palm flat against my stomach, half to smooth my dress back down, half to keep whatever's fluttering in there from actually escaping. "Speech in fifteen. I just want this part over with."
"You'll be great." Darcy studies me over the rim of her champagne glass. "So where's your mother?"
Fuck.There goes my stomach again.
"Her flight doesn't get in till later." I glance at my phone just in case.
Darcy's mouth twitches. "So she'll be at the game tomorrow."
"She'll be at the game tomorrow." I say it like a vow, like if I repeat it enough it becomes unbreakable. "Front row. VIP box. Watching every second of it."
