Or whatever we’re calling this now, since my dad has apparently decided we’re a serious couple who moved in together.
My face warms just thinking about it.
I climb up the steps, trying not to trip.
Immediately, multiple heads turn.
Someone whistles.
Someone else goes, “Ooooh.”
“WELL, WELL, WELL.”
Jake steps up behind me, and the second they see him, the energy on the bus shifts into a pack mentality.
“Captain!” a blond rookie calls out. “You finally managed to get a woman?”
“Didn’t think it was possible,” someone else shouts from the back.
“I told you,” a handsome guy says loudly. I recognize him instantly. Declan Hawthorne. Even if you don’t follow hockey, you know who he is. “He’s too grumpy to date. It defies science.”
The bus erupts in laughter.
My cheeks go up in flames.
I take a cautious step into the aisle, trying to keep my smile polite, normal, not panicked.
Jake’s presence at my back is instant gravity. He’s quiet, but everything about him signals control. He moves like he owns the space, like he could silence a room just by looking at it.
He doesn’t.
He just keeps walking, bag in hand, as if he’s not surrounded by men who would happily die for him on the ice and roast him in public off it.
“Don’t,” Jake warns, his voice low.
Declan only laughs harder. “Oh my God. He’s completely gone.”
I glance up at Jake.
His jaw is tight.
He doesn’t look at me. He looks straight ahead and says, “Move.”
I try not to laugh at the sheer grumpiness of him.
It slips out anyway. Just a small sound.
Half the bus catches it instantly.
“Ooooh,” the rookie crows. “She laughs at him.”
“I like her already,” someone else calls out.
Jake turns his head slightly, giving me a look.
It’s not a glare.
It’s more like… don’t encourage them.
