Page 117 of Branded (Breakers Hockey)

I wake up to a heavy knock on my condo’s front door and glare blearily at my phone in the charger.

“Two in the fucking morning,” I mutter, grabbing a pillow and clamping it over my ears. “It’s two o’clock in the morning on my fucking birthday, and I have to deal with this shit.”

This shit being my neighbors.

It’s not the first time they’ve pounded drunk on my door, desperate for their roommate to let them in to what they think is their apartment.

This was sort of funny the first time.

I remember those days, drinking too much, being dumb.

But after the second and the third—where I gained status into the inner circle and a code to the keypad to their apartment door—it was no longer cute.

Now, six months later and countless times of bailing them out, I’m so not in the mood.

Especially when it’s my fucking birthday.

The knocking cuts off and I think— pray —that they’ve gotten the hint.

But it’s approximately two seconds later when it starts up again.

I glance at my phone again, see that really five minutes have passed, making it two-seventeen and officially my birthday.

Some present.

I could try to ignore it—but that just means extending the torture. Sighing, I toss back the blankets and stomp to my apartment door, whipping it open to reveal a slender brunette on my doorstep.

“Ho, mama,” she says, gaze taking a slow perusal down my body.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“It’s me. Luna.”

I stare at her, uncomprehendingly.

“From Rockfield?” she adds.

Recognition begins to dawn. “Luna Maybelle?”

“Yup! That’s me.” She nods, grinning, and I see it then, the glimpse of my best friend from the childhood rink I grew up playing at come out in her smile. Mischief and life. Joy and hard work.

Summers spent spending every spare moment together—her figure skating, me playing hockey.

But she’s not little Luna anymore.

Christ, she’s anything but—tall, beautiful, curves for days—and she’s staring at me.

Because I’m staring at her.

Fucking hell.

I spur myself into motion.

“Luna! Oh my God!” I pull her into a hug. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“It’s your birthday!” She holds up a piece of paper that looks faintly familiar. “And, well, it’s mine too, remember?”

That’s right.

We have the same birthday.

“We’re both twenty-five, single, and?—”

My eyes narrow in on the paper. It’s crumpled and stained, as though it’s years old.

A purple and pink swirl decorates the edges and suddenly I remember her painstakingly drawing it as we sat side-by-side at one of the high top tables of the ice rink, waiting for the Zamboni to finish cutting the ice.

Her brow had been furrowed. Her movements carefully controlled.

And I had been obsessing over how pink her lips were and what her butt looked like in her skating dress, so much so that I barely remember what we’d been drawing.

No, I think hard, grabbing on to those memories, not what we’d been drawing .

The contract we’d put together.

The contract my hormonal twelve-year-old self had signed.

With a sparkly pink colored pencil.

A giant boulder settles in my stomach, but before I can snap myself out of the horror of those memories, she shoves the paper in my hands then throws her arms around my neck.

“We’re getting married!”