Great. ’Cause that won’t add to the pressure.She took a deep breath and served.
Ava was good at this game. Damn good, and Regan almost laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the whole situation. Her past with Ava, ending up rooming with her at the retreat, and now playing a game as freaking obscure as air hockey against her. Who would have ever seen this coming?
Ava scored.
Damn it. She was losing. Time to focus. She bent a bit at the waist, concentrated on watching the puck while it was on Ava’s side of thecenter line, rather than trying to track it all the way to her mallet. Her brother had taught her that method of defense and she employed it now, trusting her hand to move the mallet where it needed to be without her having to actually look down at it.
She focused, blocked several shots, then made one of her own.
Goal!
Ava’s facial expression hardly changed at all. How the hell did she do that? No smile. No frown. Just…neutral. Whether she scored or Regan scored, Ava was neutral. It seemed to be her thing.
Except…it wasn’t her thing that morning. Oh, no. When she’d seen Regan topless, her expression certainly had changed. It had been neutral, then had instantly cycled through surprise, shock, approval, desire, and embarrassment. All of them, in the space of about three seconds, and Regan had seen each one clearly.
Yes, she’d seen desire.
She was sure of it, and that put a whole new spin on things, because the rumors about Ava’s sexuality she’d heard years ago while working with her seemed to have been confirmed with just that simple glance at her breasts.
Bam! She scored again.
The only proof it had registered on Ava’s radar was the slight raising of her eyebrows.
That’s right. I will see you looking at my boobs for the rest of this retreat.The thought made her grin as they volleyed, but then Ava came way too close to scoring again, and Regan hunkered down.
Eventually, her quads started to ache a bit, and she realized it was from standing with her legs slightly bent throughout the game…which had been going on for nearly half an hour. It was a tied score, and Ava was about to serve. When Regan glanced up at her face, she was smiling softly, and why the hell that disarmed her, she had no idea, but Ava served the puck directly into Regan’s goal.
Game point.
Shit. Okay. Focus, Callahan, come on.Her brain was screaming at her, so she took a deep breath and served. Clearly, this was the forever volley because it went on and on and on until Regan was sure her arm was going to fall off or her eyes would drop out of her head from the exhaustion of following the damn puck.
She gave it a smack and it ricocheted just right and into Ava’s goal.
“Tie score and game point,” Maia reported to the crowd. “Whoever scores next wins.”
In almost any other situation, Regan might’ve argued the “must win by two” rule, but she was too freaking tired and ready to be done.
“Here we go,” Maia said, apparently reverting to color commentary as the crowd hushed. “Ava’s serve.”
The puck whizzed at her hard and fast, but Regan blocked it, sent it back, though not as hard as she would’ve liked. Ava bounced it off the side, and Regan stopped it, shot it back.
Maia would probably say later that it was the longest volley in air hockey history—and it was pretty fucking long—but much to her own surprise, Regan eventually managed to score, and while she would’ve loved to jump around in celebration, she was exhausted, both mentally and physically. She went around the table to shake Ava’s hand.
“Great game,” she said, meeting those dark, dark eyes. Ava’s hand was hot and infuriatingly not sweaty like Regan’s.
“Back atcha. That was fun. I haven’t played somebody as good as you in a long time.” Her smile was tight, the only clue that she was annoyed at having lost. Regan recalled a time in her life when she was reasonably sure Ava was not human. She was an android or an alien or something, and this tight smile only added to that. Like Ava didn’t quite know how to smile.
Of course, she just lost, so…
Regan decided to cut her a little slack.
“Well, so much for the rest of the tournament,” Madison said with a laugh. “We’re all starving and ready for food and drinks.”
“Iam certainly ready for a drink,” Regan said.
“Vienna’s calling our driver,” Maia said. “That was epic, you guys. Wow. How did you get so good?”
Regan looked at Ava, whose cheeks were tinted a cute pink. Ava spoke softly as she said, “I didn’t love being in my house when I was a kid. There was a youth center a couple blocks away, and I hung out there a lot. Played a lot of air hockey.” She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug, and Regan was surprised to hear her speaking with such modesty. And then those dark eyes locked onto hers, and Regan cleared her throat.
