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“I’ve spent every summer since I was fourteen working at one marina or another. They’re all pretty much interchangeable.”

She laughed, her eyes sparkling. “My dad has a boat.”

I sat back in my chair, grinning. “Lemme guess—his favorite band is either The Doobie Brothers or Steely Dan?”

“I legitimately have no idea,” she replied with a warm, tinkling laugh.

I sang the pre-chorus from “What a Fool Believes” by The Doobie Brothers, pulling Nielson’s attention from whatever he and Sydney had been whispering about.

“Holy shit, Ports. You can sing.”

I shrugged. “Enough to not embarrass myself at karaoke, I guess.”

I’d taken choir in high school, and the teacher had seemed somewhat pleased by my ability to carry a tune, though she hadn’t ever encouraged me to take it any further than the school’s annual holiday concert.

“No,” Sydney said, shaking her head. “That was really good.”

My skin prickled, Cally’s voice slipping into my head. “You like being told you’re good at things.”

I felt my face go hot.

“We should totally go to karaoke next time!” Sydney exclaimed, clapping her hands together, completely ignorant of the tangle of emotions currently swirling inside of me.

“Sure,” I said, shaking my head against his intrusive voice.

I secretly—or not so secretly now, I supposed—loved karaoke, and I thought Nielson would probably be hilarious at it. I could also imagine Bell, Morrison, and Lavoie totally hamming it up, too. Cally would rather die than sing in public, but I figured I could convince him to come if I promised to suck his dick after.

Though probably not anymore.

Things were … not great between us.

Yesterday, he’d left that apartment without me, only texting once he was gone with some bullshit excuse about having to run an errand before the team headed to Philly.

This morning, we’d passed each other in the hallway, and he’d mumbled out a subdued “good morning,” but that was it. He’d even bowed out of today’s optional skate, and Cally never skipped ice time.

Fuck. Now I was tense again.

Forcing myself to unclench my jaw and relax my shoulders, I dragged my attention back to Paige. “So what’s your ‘I’m strangely good at’ fun fact?” I asked, picking up the earlier thread of our conversation.

She scrunched up her nose and lifted her gaze up to the ceiling while she thought of an answer. “I guess it’s that I usually figure out all the important bits about a person within like twenty minutes of meeting them. Obviously not their whole life story or anything, but I’m really good at reading people’s motivations and whatnot. It can be a bit of a curse, actually.”

“How so?” I asked.

I considered myself a pretty good judge of character, and I’d always found it helpful. Made knowing who to trust—and not to trust—real fucking easy.

Paige tore a strip off her napkin and rolled it between her fingers. “I dunno. Like, sometimes I know when someone’s lying, but not necessarily about what, and I can’t just call them out on it. Or, I’ll meet a guy who’s saying all the right things, but it’s super obvious to me it’s only an act.”

That was … exactly how I felt about bunnies.

And yeah, I’d assumed Paige would be one of them given what I knew about how Nielson had met Sydney, but the more I got to know her, the more I realized Nielson had given me the wrong impression of his girl’s best friend.

I didn’t think he’d done it to be an asshole. He wasn’t malicious; he was just really fucking dumb.

Sydney dropped her head onto Paige’s shoulder. “I swear she should have gone into psychiatry or something.”

“What can I say?” she asked with a wry grin. “I like bodies better than brains.”

Sydney lifted her head and snorted out a laugh. “Oh my god.”