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"I couldn't leave it like that." He doesn't move to come in. He fills my doorway, all of him, and for once there's no grin.

My heart feels like a closed fist. Tight and small. "We had a plan and you nearly torched it, and now Cade's watching us like an eagle over open water, and you cannot get jealous of a man who isn't even… "

I stop.

Jax goes very still. "Isn't even what, Margot?"

"In the same city." I fold my arms. "Ethan travels. Constantly. You can't get jealous of a man who's never even here."

He steps in, and I let him. He watches my face.

"You want to know why I'm so worked up." His voice drops into the register that takes me apart stud by stud. "You want the answer to that, Margot?"

And this is it. This is the exact thing I swore I would make this man say sober one day. Here he is one sentence from saying it, and I’m so scared.

Because if he says it, I’ll believe him. I believed Jax once, during our first kiss, only to realize he only ever wants me when he’s drunk, and it cost me the ability to trust my own heart.

"No." I step back, and it is the bravest and the most cowardly thing I have ever done. "I don't want to know. Because it doesn't change anything. In a few weeks the deal signs, you go back to your parade of women, and I go find something real." I flatten my voice into a closing statement. "It's a job, Jax. Don't make me manage you on this one too."

Something flickers across his face, there and gone, the same skinned-raw thing I caught in the tunnel when Cade hugged me. For one second I think he's going to say it anyway, straight over my objection, and I honestly don't know what I'll do if he does.

I watch Jax decide to believe me, exactly the way I made Cade decide to believe me, and I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing I'd been brave enough to hear him out.

"Right." The grin comes back. "Whatever you need, boss."

He turns to go. At the threshold he stops, one hand flat on the frame, and he doesn’t look back at me.

"For the record. I notice everything about you, Margot. That's the problem. Always has been."

And then he's gone.

Chapter 13: Jax

"New line just dropped, gentlemen, get your money in before puck drop."

Ryker's up on top of the bench with a dry-erase marker, the whiteboard behind him already a crime scene of odds and bad handwriting.

"Current book," he announces to the room. "'The girlfriend's real': plus one-fifty. 'It's a stunt': even money. 'Hunter proposes by playoffs': plus three hundred, and I'm your bag man. 'Hunter's already whipped and too dumb to know it': off the board, gentlemen, that one's a lock, house doesn't take action on locks."

The room is loud and stupid the way it always is before a big one, all of us throwing noise at the nerves so they don't get a word in.

I lace my skates and let it happen and try not to think about the fact that in an hour I play the Boston Bruins.

Cade's Bruins. The one line on the schedule I've dreaded since the day it dropped, and that was before I kissed his sister on national television and then lied to his face over her pot roast.

Mason's in his corner not betting, because gambling before a game is bad luck and bad luck is Mason's entire religion. He's lacing the left skate first, always the left, then he goes still with that weird goalie radar of his.

"Callahan." He says it slowly, tasting it. "The Bruins' Callahan. Cade." He points his tape roll at nobody. "The ops girl's a Callahan. Margot." His face looks like he is doing long division. "Are they related? They've got the same nose. I notice noses."

Everyone’s listening and waiting.

"She's his sister." I say it calmly, because there's no version of this where I let them build something uglier out of gaps. "Margot's Cade's little sister. She keeps it quiet so nobody treats her like a mascot. Leave it there."

That should end it. It doesn’t end it, because Mason has the memory of a man who alphabetizes everything.

"That's why Hunter's got the picture." Mason nods, pleased with his own detective work. "Cade and the sister, taped in his locker. I've noticed it lots of times."

A photo of your best friend is nothing.. but his sister too.