The Ex Games(34)
Author: Jennifer Echols

We both started away from the door as the mountain lion leaped against it, howling, all fangs and claws and wild eyes.

Very small wild eyes. Four of them.

It wasn’t a mountain lion at all. It was two tabbies.

There were a few seconds of stillness, just Doofus and me panting in the large, quiet room, and bemusement that I had exploded with my wet dog into a filthy-rich family’s grand home. We faced a huge rock fireplace that I recognized from the Krieger Meats and Meat Products TV commercial so many years ago, with Nick giving the camera his winning smile, his mother blinking pleasantly into the camera, and Mr. Krieger inviting the public to taste Krieger Meats, from their family to yours. Happier times for Nick and his parents.

Feeling a pang for all of them, I gave Doofus’s wet, cold fur a stroke. I wasn’t sure what to do now. I still needed to find out whether Nick was okay. And there were still attack cats on the prowl.

I was about to detangle myself from Doofus and survey the damage we’d done to Nick’s palace when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Someone was lying on a leather couch facing away from me. A blond head eased ominously into view. Nick’s father! Oh, no! He would take me for a stalker. Now Nick would really think I was chasing him!

Or not. Mr. Krieger took out one earbud. He cackled in a high-pitched witch voice, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog Toto, too!”

“Uh, Doofus,” I corrected him.

He pursed his lips quizzically. “Come on. It wasn’t that bad a joke.”

I didn’t bother to explain. I wouldn’t need to get along with Mr. Krieger in the future. Something told me I would never find myself eating Thanksgiving dinner with these people—and wait until the owner of Krieger Meats and Meat Products found out I was a vegetarian! I just wanted to satisfy myself that Nick was okay, and then get out. “Hi, there!” I beamed. “Did you order a redhead and a dog?”

“Hayden O’Malley,” he purred.

“Yes, sir.” He knew who I was? Doofus was licking my face.

Mr. Krieger pulled out his other earbud. “I know all about your challenge with Nick. My money’s on you, literally. Nick’s a quitter.”

I blinked at him, not sure what to say to that. I’d never heard a parent say something so mean about his child—and something so untrue. I reminded myself that his wife had left him the previous weekend, and he was probably not in the best of moods. If Nick had hidden his injury from his dad and hadn’t yet told him the challenge was over, I didn’t want to be the one to clue his dad in and mess things up worse for Nick. I said carefully, “Yeah, the girls at school are always pushing him down on the playground and telling him not to be such a baby.”

Mr. Krieger sat up straighter on the couch and glared at me. Great. I was definitely not getting invited for Thanksgiving now. At least I’d made my point, and I thought he’d heard me.

“Is he in?” I prompted Mr. Krieger.

He swept his hand dramatically toward a wide staircase, then reinserted his earbuds and sank back onto the couch, dismissing me. I supposed this meant I was invited in? Or at least not thrown out? Doofus and I righted ourselves and walked past the couch and up the stairs. Doofus’s claws clicked on the stone and echoed against the vaulted ceilings.

On the second story, windows overlooking the ski slopes lined one side of the vast hallway. The other side was an endless stretch of doors. I headed toward the open door with light flooding out onto the Navajo rug. But I stopped short when I heard Nick talking inside. There was a pause, and then he talked again. He must be on the phone, which is why my own call had gone straight to his voicemail.

“I love you, too,” I heard him say. “’Bye.”

My heart stopped. Had he been on the phone with Fiona? Or some new snowbunny I hadn’t yet heard about? Whoever his new girlfriend was … it wasn’t me.

shred

shred

(shred) v. 1. to tear up the slopes 2. or Hayden’s heart

Before I could react, he called, “Come in.”

I froze like a rabbit, just as I had outside the men’s locker room at the health club yesterday. This time Nick really had caught me.

I couldn’t very well run away. Mr. Krieger knew I was there. Finally, I sauntered forward and lounged in the doorway with my arms crossed on my chest. After all, I’d caught him telling someone he loved her. Someone other than me.

He lay with his legs on his king-sized bed and his body folded forward off the edge, toward the floor, in what looked suspiciously like a cockamamy approximation of a Downward-Facing Dog. The players in the huge football posters all around the room seemed to rush toward him, taunting him, while he lay helpless in the center of the circle and tried in vain to stretch his back.

I’d discovered so many new sides of Nick in the past few days, and now I was seeing another. His dark hair had been long the whole time I’d known him. I’d never glimpsed the nape of his neck, but here it was, bare to me as his hair touched the floor. Doofus sauntered over and licked Nick’s face. Squinting against the dog slobber, Nick grumbled, “You may be a lot of things, Hayden, but quiet isn’t one of them.”

I sniffed. “Oh, yeah? You weren’t very quiet on the phone just now, either.”

He eyed me. Even from his upside-down viewpoint, he must have been able to see I was jealous. “That was my mom,” he explained. My heart started beating again, painfully. I kept my face carefully neutral, hiding how freaking relieved I felt that he hadn’t given up on us and moved along to another girl. Not yet, anyway.

“She’s staying with my grandmother in Phoenix.” Nick sat up on his bed with a groan, looking hurt and adorable in a tight T-shirt and track pants, his hair a disaster. “What are you doing here?”

“I just happened to be in the neighborhood, walking my dog …” This was sounding lame. “… several miles from my home, in the middle of the night, in the snow. And I found myself in your backyard.”

His eyes flew wide open. “With the cats?”

“If that’s what you call them.”

“You came over because you feel guilty for yelling at me at the half-pipe.”

I did. He didn’t have to sound so smug about it, though. “I do feel sort of guilty for yelling at you at the half-pipe,” I admitted, “but—”

“But,” he broke in sarcastically.

“But,” I continued over him, “I’ve had good reason in the past to think you’d called me a name like that to your friends.”