Page 37 of Wild Card 13

“You look concussed.”

“Rude.”

Marlene pointed at the burgers sternly. “He told you about the cheese?”

Lucy nodded through laughter, and Marlene walked away before I could add anything. Lucy was still laughing quietly when she looked back up at me across the table. “This is absolutely your fault somehow.”

“I didn’t invent your name.”

“You brought me here intentionally.”

“Honestly? The realization hit me halfway through driving.”

“That’s objectively embarrassing.”

“For you maybe.”

Lucy narrowed her eyes slightly. “You are enjoying this way too much.”

“I’m having the best day of my life.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Lucy froze for half a second.

Because the thing was? I meant it. Not because of the grade. Not even because of hockey.

Because somewhere between frozen lakes and biology flash cards and Beatles songs in my truck, Lucy Thomas had quietly become my favorite part of every day without me noticing when it happened.

And judging by the way she was looking at me now across the tiny booth at Matt’s? I had a feeling she knew it too.

CHAPTER 4

LUCY

NOW

By the time I pulled into the Talon Arena parking garage in the morning, Northbend had fully committed to threatening winter.

The sky hung low and gray over downtown, heavy with the kind of cold that settled into concrete and stayed there until April out of pure spite. Wind whipped sharply between the buildings surrounding the arena district, carrying traces of snow flurries that had not technically started yet but clearly intended to soon. Every local weather station in Minnesota had spent the last forty-eight hours talking about a clipper system with the emotional intensity of war correspondents.

I shut off my car and sat there for a second anyway.

Normally, I liked mornings. The structure. Quiet. Coffee. The predictable comfort of sequences that kept my brain organized before the chaos of the day started clawing at me professionally.

This morning, my brain felt like somebody had thrown a hockey puck directly through the center of it.

Because apparently seeing Ty Burns for the first time in years had turned my entire nervous system into an active crime scene.

Fantastic, I thought.Just fucking great.

I grabbed my bag from the passenger seat and climbed out into air cold enough to sting immediately against my cheeks.Somewhere deeper inside the garage, tires hissed across wet pavement while distant arena machinery hummed through concrete walls.

Game day.

Not my first game day at Talon Arena. I'd already spent nearly two weeks learning the rhythms of the organization—shadowing departments, attending meetings, observing home games, and trying to memorize enough names, procedures, and reporting structures to function like a competent adult.

But this was the first one without an asterisk attached to it. No onboarding schedule. No training checklist. No safety net.

Just me doing the job. And maybe that was why the building felt different this morning.