I swallow hard and try not to shift in my seat. “Are you aware that a lot of them happen during the day and are at least eight hours long at a time?”
He gives me a horrified, clearly sarcastic look. “Everyday?”
“Sometimes,” I nod. “Though most are five days a week. It does vary which days, though, and some of them, like Beckett, who own their own businesses, work every day.”
“Jesus,” he says, shaking his head. “Thank god I’m good at slapping a puck around on the ice.”
I laugh. “Truly. That’s going to be very good for us.”
“What do I do all day until six?”
“Sleep in. Work out.” I shrug. “Get to know the town. If you want to volunteer, we can definitely arrange something. If you’d like a job, we can do that too.”
He frowns. “I don’t need the money.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m aware. But jobs are also things that actually help other people. Towns and cities, communities, need the businesses in them.”
He doesn’t respond to that. Just continues frowning at something in front of my truck.
“You don’t have to,” I say. “That’s not a requirement.”
“It’s just…” He looks at me again. “I don’t know how todoanything. Other than hockey.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. But Alex has been playing hockey all his life. He didn’t go to college. He came to the US as an eighteen-year-old and immediately started playing for the Grays.
He blows out a breath and opens his door. He gets out and grabs his bags from the back, then he pokes his head back in the truck. “See you later, right?”
“It’s a small town. I’m sure we’ll run into each other,” I say flippantly.
“For sure. At the next otter club meeting, if not before.”
He smiles, and a bubbly heat swirls through my stomach. I’d love for him to come to otter club. “You don’t even know what we do at otter club.”
“Do I get to hang out with otters?”
“Well…yes.” Kind of.
“Real live ones?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll be there.”
I shake my head. “But you’re a Reveler. You can’t be all cute and happy with the otters.”
“Why not?”
“That’s the mascot for the Rascals. Your arch rivals.”
He seems puzzled, which makes sense. The Rascals are also a brand-new team. I’m going to let Astrid fill him in on all the details.
“What are Revelers then? Some other cute animal I can play with?”
I laugh. “Definitely not. Your mascot is a Rougarou.”
“What the hell is a Rougarou?”
“It’s a swamp werewolf,” I tell him, watching his rich-city-boy face carefully. Alex might be a professional athlete who has traveled all over to play hockey, but I’m getting the impression he’s been in a bit of a rich-famous-hot-guy bubble. “The bottom half is human, with the head and upper body of a wolf. There’s a whole mythology around them. They hunt and eat naughty children.”
