Page 118 of Wild Card 13

“Burns,” he said.

“Müller.”

His eyes moved over me once. “You look nervous.”

“You look like shit for someone that got engaged a minute ago.”

That earned a grunted laugh from Alois while Coach snorted into his coffee.

Then I saw her.

Lucy stood near the screen at the front of the room, sorting through a stack of folders with the kind of precision that made every other person in the building look like they were managing their lives with a shovel and a prayer.

Cream sweater. Dark slacks. Emerald glasses. Her auburn curls were pinned back today, though a few pieces had already escaped around her face like they had no respect for authority.

Unfortunately, I respected authority just fine.

Mostly.

When it was wearing glasses and pretending not to be exhausted.

God.

Months.

It had been months since New York.

Months since that hotel room.

Months since we’d crossed a line neither of us had talked about afterward.

We had survived the fallout by doing what apparently mature adults did. We avoided. We nodded in hallways. We sent emails that sounded like they had been written by two people who had never once made out in the back of a pickup behind the Northbend library.

And now there she was, standing fifteen feet away from me, looking every inch the polished front office professional.

Except I knew better. I knew the difference between Lucy focused and Lucy locked down. This was the latter. Her mouth was too still. Her shoulders were too straight. She kept squaring the edges of those folders even though they were already perfectly lined up.

She looked up when I walked in. Our eyes caught long enough for something to kick hard under my ribs.

Then her gaze snapped away. “Mr. Burns,” she said. Cool. Professional. Clean enough to cut with.

I pulled out a chair. “Ms. Thomas.”

Alois looked at me. I ignored him.

Sarah tapped her tablet. “Good. Everyone is here.”

I sat down across from Lucy because sitting beside her felt insane and sitting too far away felt worse. There was no winning with that woman in the room. There never had been.

A packet plopped in front of me.

At the top, in clean black lettering, it read:

Northbend Community Outreach Skate:

Final Operations Brief

Prepared by Lucy Thomas,