“Hold on.” Pictures of Eric were easy enough to find, particularly if you liked him in his hockey gear, which I did. I pulled up one of my favorites from last year when he’d participated in a hockey camp for low-income kids looking to get into skating. At six-four without skates, he towered over the kids. In this picture, he had four kids, two on each hand, tugging him forward on the ice as he leaned back, trying to resist; a human tug-o-war. His blue eyes sparkled and his smile was wide and genuine. He looked so happy.
I slid the phone over to the boys. “Oh, he’s a Viking!” Breck said. “He could plunder my shores any time.”
“He’s like a blond Steele,” Danny said.
Steele snorted his opinion of that.
“Well, he is wearing a lot of pads,” I conceded. “But he’s a big man. He was that height at seventeen.”
“Damn, no wonder you were crushed to give that up,” Breck said.
I took the phone back. “Well, yes. Quite. Thank you for reminding me.”
“Don’t worry, Carson. We’ll get your boy back,” Steele said.
Leo frowned. “I don’t think we can make that—”
“Yes,” Breck cried, cutting Leo off. He clapped his hands in delight. “Operation Get Carson-Jake Laid is on. I am so down for this. Because, dude, you really need to get laid.” His eyes were wide with sincerity. “I mean, it’s been months since we met and I don’t think you’ve gotten any this whole time. Months! I would die.” He grabbed on to Steele’s arm as if needing reassurance that he would never meet such a tragic fate.
Ah, youth. Leo’s glare matched mine.
Breck recoiled from our combined looks. He held his hand up, palm out, and leaned away from the table. “I’m just saying. Might help. Both of you,” he added with a glance at Leo.
Leo closed his eyes and pressed his thumb against the spot between his eyebrows—the wordless gesture of disbelief that he habitually used around Breck. Breck had that effect on people.
“We are going to need a plan,” Danny said. “We have to scope him out. We have to find out his routines, what he likes, if he’s seeing anybody.”
“He’s not,” I interrupted.
“Have you considered calling him?” Leo suggested. “Just talking to him on the phone?”
Oh, please. As if I was going to take advice from him of all people. “Really, Agent Shook? Is that what you’ve done in your life? Was there a special someone in your life with whom you had deep, sincere talks about what it all meant and what the future held?” I hoped the look I gave him conveyed the fact that I knew more about Agent Shook than he would be comfortable with me knowing.
The glower he turned on me said message received.
“I thought not,” I said.
The kids had missed our exchange, too caught up in planning.
“You have to, like, super seduce him,” Breck said, warming to the idea. “Like hit him with everything you got.” He did a quick assessment of what, exactly, I had. He didn’t seem impressed.
I knew I was average looking. That was an asset in my profession. But I was warming to the idea of seducing Eric, of wooing him.
“I think we need to know why it ended,” Leo said, “before we go any further.”
“What does it matter?” Danny asked.
“What if he cheated?” Ridge said, picking at his food as if he remembered past unfaithful boyfriends.
“He who? Carson-Jake or the other guy?” Breck asked.
“For the love of God, just call me Carson,” I burst out.
Breck laughed. He’d been waiting for me to break. Ridge fist-bumped him.
“Asshole,” I muttered.
“We need to know,” Danny said eagerly. “Who was the bad guy? You or Eric?”
Wasn’t that the question? Once the answer had seemed so clear, but as the years went by, I was starting to think I may have, very slightly, overreacted.
On the surface, I was the wronged party. I hadn’t been gone three months when I’d come back to Wisconsin early and found Eric making out with that asshole Ryan Kantor—of all people—even though theoretically he’d been dating Maddie Kane.
Ryan Kantor, King Douchebag of my high school, had shown up at the beginning of eleventh grade and quickly charmed teachers and students alike with his mediocre looks and phony nice-guy act.
It had been obvious to me that everything about him was fake and everything he’d said about his past and his parents was a lie. It wasn’t like it was hard to check out his claims, but no