Okay.
My heart had climbed up on a horse and was threatening to gallop out of my chest. But… “Sure, I’ll sit down.”
I gingerly took a seat in the space the model had abandoned and tried again. I could do this. For Paul. I could do this terrible, hard thing.
“About that drink I owe you,” I squeaked out like the guilty mouse I was.
“Da.” He flagged a passing waitress with another stern flick of his wrist. “Two Peroni Zeroes, please.”
“Peroni Zeroes?”
“Nonalcoholic beers,” he explained.
Up close, he looked even more impossibly perfect. The angles of his cheekbones and jawline were actually sharpened even further by long lashes and light gray eyes, which felt like they could see through every lie you’d ever told.
“Oh, you don’t drink?” I set down the clutch I’d somehow managed to hang onto in my lap and fretted my hands on top of it.
He angled toward me slightly, his knee brushing against mine. The closeness made my heart race, and not in a good way. Sitting next to him was like sitting next to a live wire—dangerous, electrifying, and impossible to ignore.
He tossed his hair, which was the kind of messy that usually required at least thirty minutes in front of a mirror and tons of gel. But he made the style look effortless, like maybe he’d snapped his fingers and every lock just scrambled to fall into perfectly on-trend place. “Not on game nights.”
“Oh, that’s... sensible,” I said, even as my mind scrambled to reconfigure Paul’s plan. Would the powder I was supposed to slip into his drink still go undetected without alcohol in play?
“You attend same school as me.”
To my surprise, Artyom took up the conversation baton instead of waiting for me to say something first. Also, before I could come up with any alternative to Paul’s doping scheme.
“Yeah, but I’m in the school of social work—probably super far away from whatever building you take classes in for whatever major you chose.”
“Business,” he supplied.
“That tracks,” I said with a nod, my eyes running over the tailored black-on-black suit he was wearing over an open-collar button-up. Basically, the same thing as my i-banker brother. But while Paul looked like a pudgy Midwesterner playing dress-up, Artyom wore his suit like a second skin.
We trailed off into an awkward silence. Until Artyom asked, “You are liking hockey players then?”
“Great question,” I said enthusiastically—before admitting, “Actually, I’m pretty neutral on them. But my roommate is dating Claudia Gambetti. She’s the starting position I can’t quite remember off the top of my head for the women’s hockey team?”
“The forward.Da, very good player.”
“That’s what Trish says. But she’s a lot more knowledgeable about hockey than me. Which is ironic, since?—”
Before I could finish telling him way more than Paul would have wanted me to about my background, a large-chested waitress came over with two bottles of the nonalcoholic beer Artyom had ordered, along with matching pint glasses.
“Oh, just let me…” I reached for my clutch and fished out a twenty-euro bill, using it to hide the small packet of white powder Paul had handed me outside the club.
My stomach swam with guilt, but somehow, I managed to tuck the packet into my dominant hand while I used my non-dominant hand to pay... wait. The waitress who’d brought over our drinks was nowhere to be found.
“Where did she go?” I asked Artyom. “You have to let me pay for?—”
He shifted on the couch to face me fully. “You do not like hockey players, yet you chose to fall across my lap?”
“I tripped,” I reminded him, doubling down on my lie since “I was shoved by my brother” would have sounded even weirder.
“Youtripped.” He regarded me with a skeptical look. “When you are coming over here to say hello.”
“Yes, when I came over to say hello.”
I cleared my throat. Took a swig of the NA beer straight from the bottle. Tried not to think about the terrible, terrible thing I was about to do to this innocent hockey player.
