Page 55 of Call the Shots (For The Arena #1)
JUNE
YOU’RE BOTH MINE
My move-in date to my parents’ house was looming closer and closer. I was determined to do some good before I left. A parting gift for the hockey team and to Bear for making my last summer at Marrs the best one.
Vernon had to fucking go.
Our base of operations couldn’t be at the Colo, so Cleo, Bear, Denali and I set up shop in the second-floor lounge—the one place Vernon and Riley couldn’t get to us.
We had five or six hockey players investigating bags of trash, a dozen combing through security footage, and a group researching leads from their old schools.
“Tallulah’s here to help,” Fridge said, hand in hers.
“I—I think I have something?” she said. “We get a rundown of the budgets as part of the accountability articles, and I have Vernon’s expense reports for the last five years?”
“I knew I liked you for a reason!” Cleo beamed.
They were added to our whiteboard of evidence, and I gazed around at the tables of empty pizza boxes and the hockey players sitting on the floor together, joking on the couch and perched up on the tables, shouting at each other over timestamps on the security footage.
They could work so well together on and off the ice.
Montoya was next, with a group of freshmen figure skaters working on more papers from the shredder bin. I was about to go through the list, but Bear took the lead, kneeling to explain what we were looking for.
Which was wonderful. He was being such a team leader.
There was only one problem.
Bear was wearing that slutty tank top of his. The one that showed off his arms like he was getting paid to do it. I stalled by my laptop, watching him tilt his head while he listened to questions. He smiled at Montoya, flipping through pages to show them what kind of evidence we were searching for.
Damn, those arms.
“So, what do we know so far?” Cleo asked, breaking my drooling. “We know for certain that Leelee is Riley.”
“We knew before, but nobody believed me,” Elijah retorted.
Nick threw a balled-up piece of paper at him. “If I yelled ‘ Betty ’ at you in a crowded grocery store, I bet your dumbass would look up.”
“We know Riley can’t skate,” Bear interjected.
“Marrs already had a poor lineup of hockey players,” Cleo pointed out. “Vernon allowing someone subpar isn’t…you know. Necessarily unusual.”
“Last year maybe but it’s different now,” Elijah argued. “Us having this many good players is the weird part.”
“Is that a compliment?” Fridge asked, amused.
“Shut up, Fridge.”
“What else do we know about Vernon?” I pushed to the lounge.
“He’s the coach with the smallest salary at Marrs,” Bear offered.
“Do we think he embezzled money?” Montoya picked up a new stack of papers to go through. “That’s a crime. I think.”
“Erm…maybe?” Cleo shrugged. “Wouldn’t he use his office’s budget if he was embezzling?”
The room lapsed into confused silence. It didn’t make sense. If Vernon knew the hockey team would fold, why did his office look so nice? How was Riley involved? Why would Riley even want to get involved if the hockey team was going under?
“June?” Bear called, and I walked to his workstation. His laptop didn’t have anything interesting on the screen, but he made a clear sign to look beyond the computer. My eyes flickered to Montoya, in a circle surrounded by the figure skaters like a Great Dane surrounded by puppies.
“You can’t be serious,” a figure skater giggled.
Montoya blushed and he shook his head.
“Like never? Never ever?”
“I had braces since I was eleven, I got them taken off in April,” Montoya explained, his words high-pitched. “I was scared of cutting someone’s face open, I saw it in a horror movie with my dad once?—”
“So you’ve never kissed a girl?”
Oh, absolutely not . I knew where the line of questioning was going. And surrounded by a group of giggling girls? With his teammates only ten feet away? I moved to stop it.
Bear snaked an arm around my waist, his breath cool at my ear. “Calm down, mama bear.”
“Do you want to kiss a girl?” she asked Montoya.
He floundered for an answer and the girls giggled again.
“This isn’t how his first is supposed to go,” I pleaded quietly.
Bear drew me between him and the desk, locking me to him with my back to his chest. “You can’t protect him from everything, you need to let him make dumb decisions.”
“Trent and I are on a break…” the figure skater mused. “Do you want to help me make my boyfriend jealous, Caleb?”
And using his first name?! I tried to bolt to Montoya, but Bear was too strong.
She smiled. “Only if you’re cool with it?—”
“I’m cool with it!”
“Oh my god,” I groaned, Bear’s chuckle vibrating my body. A ring of sweat soaked Montoya’s shirt and the figure skater rose on her knees, making sure her friends were filming.
The noise in the lounge quieted. Was everyone watching?
She pressed her lips to his. It was a chaste, small kiss until Montoya folded into her, kissing her like he was worried it’d be the last kiss he’d ever had. She made a little noise of surprise, and he kissed her harder.
The Gladiators erupted in applause and the figure skater pulled away with a giggle. Montoya’s whole body flamed red, and he fell backwards, his back hitting the ground with a thud.
“That fucking kid,” Bear laughed.
“Get it, Kid’s Toy!” Pickles shouted and the room shouted into ‘kid’s toy, kid’s toy, kid’s toy!’
Montoya groaned and put his head in his hands which made the cheering louder. I was mortified for him. In front of everyone. I turned to press my forehead against Bear’s chest. I couldn’t watch anymore—I had my fill of secondhand embarrassment for a loved one.
“How could you let that happen to him?” I mumbled.
“Our kid’s growing up,” Bear chuckled. “We have to let him do stupid shit.”
“Our kid?” I glanced up. “I thought you were the stepdad?”
“That’s for your plants.” Bear tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and my face warmed. “Did you hear that sound she made? After five seconds, Montoya used tongue. DNA tests don’t lie. That’s my son.”
We were tangled in each other’s space, and I was worried he could hear my pulse kick up a notch. “So what does that make me?”
“You’re both mine.”
With three words, Bear swept away the chess pieces of the game we were playing and when he broke away to answer a question about the Wi-Fi, I watched him leave, heart pounding.
Watched him leave in that slutty tank top that showed off his muscles, watched him bend over to help the guy on his laptop.
Warmth pooled while I checked him out.
“Oh,” I whispered.
I really, really wanted to fuck Bear again.
“We’re running into the same problem,” Nick said, raising his voice to be heard over the chatter. “None of these are handwritten confession letters—duh. This stuff’s weird but not enough to get rid of Vernon.”
“Handwritten letters would be nice,” Denali muttered.
“I’m saying—it’s not solid proof. None of it.”
I studied the whiteboard of evidence connected by bright string. Riley’s old schools had no record of him playing hockey. There were too many questions and no answers.
“Okay, then.” I swept back my hair to pull it into a ponytail. “We’ll make it.”
Bear glanced over his shoulder. “Make what?”
“The proof to get Vernon out of here.”