“He’s Caspian’s best friend, Jansen. There’s nothing going on.” She sighed, not that I could blame her. We were both tired of the same damned argument.
“He flirts with you at every possible opportunity, London, which he might not do if he knew we were together,” I snapped. Then again, knowing Maxim, he’d just try harder. From what I’d seen, he thrived on a challenge.
“He doesn’t flirt. He’s just so mean to everyone else that it looks like flirting when he’s nice to me.” She set her clipboard on the desk and folded her arms under her breasts.
“This is really starting to get to me.” I put my helmet under my arm. “I know you love this job, and you think that I’m some kind of—”
“We agreed not to tell anyone,” she reminded me, worry consuming her eyes.
“How the hell would you feel if that was another woman out there, asking me to dinner and trying to touch me?”
Her mouth opened and shut a couple of times. “You mean like every single damned meet and greet that I have to coordinate and facilitate? At least you don’t have to smile at Maxim and offer to take a fucking picture. Do you know how many phone numbers women shoved into my hands at the last game, just hoping I’d give them to you? Seventeen, Sterling.”
I raised my eyebrows. Sterling. She was pissed. Good, because so was I. “You’re the only woman I call, London. The only woman I sleep with. The only woman I kiss.”
“And that goes both ways.” She ran her hands over her face. “Why are we fighting about this? We’re together. We’re committed. We’re just not shoving it in everyone’s face.”
“There’s a difference between flaunting a relationship and hiding one, London.” I shook my head. “I have to get in there before someone gets suspicious and starts looking for me. Heaven forbid they find us alone together.”
I yanked open the door and marched into the hallway.
“Wait, I need to tell you something!” she called after me.
I turned around at the locker room doors. “Tell me tonight. Yours or mine?” The hallway was empty, but anyone could be listening, and I knew it. I just wasn’t sure I cared anymore.
“Yours,” she whispered.
I nodded and pushed my way into the locker room, leaving her in the hallway. Fuck, I needed to get a grip. Jealousy wasn’t going to get us anywhere, and if London lost her position on the Reapers, she’d have to find another job…in another city.
Pull your shit together.
“She didn’t want to go?” Caspian asked Maxim, his voice carrying across to me as I sat on my section of the bench.
“Said she had plans.” Maxim shrugged, then turned toward me with a calculating gleam in his eyes. “Doesn’t mean she won’t change her mind. After all, we eat dinner together what? Twice a week?”
“Something like that,” Caspian answered, his back turned as he took off his gear, so he didn’t see the stare-down going on between Maxim and me.
I wasn’t about to tell him that I was well-fucking-aware of how many times they ate dinner together every week or that she ended up in my bed every night. Instead of rising to whatever Maxim wanted out of me, I just threw back a bottle of water, then shook my head.
London was mine. The fact that he didn’t know that didn’t change the fact.
“I’m surprised, though,” Maxim said, keeping his eyes narrowed on mine as he unlaced his skates. “She’s all about family, so I figured she’d want to meet my dad.”
I froze. My heart stopped. My lungs crystalized. My muscles turned to stone.
“Fuck,” Briggs muttered at my side.
“After all, she was the one who just handed me his VIP passes for next weekend’s game.” He lifted his dark brows.
I couldn’t fucking breathe. Seeing Sergei Zolotov after a game a couple seasons ago was one thing, but knowing he was coming ahead of time? Impossible. That’s what she wanted to tell you in the hallway, I told myself. There was no way London knew and had kept it from me on purpose. This wasn’t some kind of teen drama. She cared about me more than that.
But does she love you?
“Take a breath,” Briggs muttered under his breath. “Sterling. Breathe.”
I filled my lungs with air, and it took everything I had not to fly across the room and punch that smug little smirk right off Maxim’s face.
As if satisfied with my level of shock, Maxim nodded,