Page 27 of Sinful Mafia Santa

Gage smiles at me through the windshield before he deposits the Gallagher Samson bag in the car’s compact front trunk. He plucks the parking ticket from the window and slips it into his back pocket. Sliding into the driver’s seat, he turns to me with a reckless grin.

“Where to, next? I was thinking Tiffany’s.”

“I don’t need any more presents.”

“I know you don’tneedthem. But I want to give them to you.”

I wring my hands. “I don’t have anything for you.”

“You already gave me a gift, wrapped it in a big red bow. And I fully expect a private runway show of whatever is in that bag.”

I stare out the window.

“Aeryn?” Gage finally says.

I twitch a shoulder to let him know I heard.

“Did I say something wrong?”

I shake my head.

“Did I make a mistake?”

Another shake. Even without turning around, I know he’s studying me. I can picture his narrowed eyes. I pull myself closer to my door, in case he thinks he can just reach out and make it all better.

“Babygirl,” he says, sticking to his side of the car. “I can’t read minds.”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” I finally say. And when he doesn’t respond, I continue. “I mean, I know how to read a feckin’ calendar. I knew the date when I woke this morning. For God’s sake, I’m heading back to Chicago tomorrow, to spend Christmas with the Reardon clan, the way I have every year of my life. But hearing Martha say it… It was ten years ago, Gage. Ten years agotonight. Dresses and Tiffany’s and prancing around in everything you just bought me… It’s not right. It’s not fair. We can’t forget losing Logan.”

“I haven’t forgotten a thing,” he says, his voice dangerously soft.

“But…” I wave my hand toward the trunk and my beautiful new clothes.

“What do you want to do, Aeryn? What can you possibly think will make it all right?”

I say the words before I have time to regret them. “I want to go to Aces Arena. I want to see where Logan died.”

10

GAGE

With holiday traffic, it takes almost four hours to drive to Atlantic City.

Four hours of absolute silence.

Four hours to think about everything I’ve done over the past four days, since Aeryn Reardon walked into my club. Four hours to think about everything I’ve done over the past ten years.

I used to wake up from screaming nightmares about Logan bleeding out in front of that goal. I had to skate the length of the ice, but my blades melted away beneath me. I had to scrape up all his blood, and he’d die if I missed a drop. I had to make him say my name, if he said it I could bring him back from the dead, but he just punched me, breaking me open like a blood-filled balloon.

The nightmares finally stopped when I bought the team—but that didn’t mean I forgot him. There hasn’t been one single day that I’ve walked into Aces Arena and not remembered Logan Reardon. I see him suiting up for practice. I see himshooting the shit with our teammates. I see him throwing back his head and balancing on one skate, shooting an imaginary arrow into the rafters to celebrate a goal.

He was my teammate.

He was my best friend.

When we finally arrive, the arena is locked down. That makes sense. The team is in Buffalo; they should be dropping the puck in half an hour.

I make my way around back to the player’s parking lot. A single security guard is hunched in his booth, eyes lit by a flickering screen. He already has his window open by the time I roll up.