The Bad Bet (Summer Girls, Hockey Boys #2)

Chapter One Maren

Maren Brooks had exactly seven seconds of perfect footage before a hockey player fell out of the sky.

Not literally out of the sky.

Lake Briar did not have that kind of budget.

But Tyler Donovan came flying off the old rental dock with a pool noodle in one hand, a GoPro strapped to his chest, and the doomed confidence of a man whose brain had never once requested a safety briefing.

Maren kept filming.

Obviously.

The sunset was perfect. The lake was gold. The Ridgeview hockey boys were arranged behind him in a loose, laughing mess of muscle, competition, and poor impulse control. This was exactly the kind of summer content people watched twice and pretended they had not.

Then Griffin Hayes stepped into frame.

Not laughing.

Not posing.

Not even looking at the camera.

He moved fast, one hand catching the back of Tyler’s shirt before Tyler could launch himself fully into what he had just called “aerial brand engagement.”

The pool noodle slapped Griffin in the face.

The GoPro swung sideways.

Tyler made a sound like a goose discovering taxes.

And Maren, professional that she was, did not lower the camera.

Because Griffin Hayes standing ankle-deep in lake water, jaw tight, dark hair damp at the temples, one arm locked around Tyler’s shirt while pure disapproval rolled off him in waves, was the best thing she had filmed all summer.

Which was inconvenient.

Because Griffin Hayes was not supposed to be interesting.

He was supposed to be the team’s human stop sign.

The guy who kept everyone from turning Ridgeview Hockey’s Lake Briar Summer Challenge Weekend into a cautionary tale.

The one who read rules, followed rules, probably laminated rules in his free time, and treated joy like something that needed a liability waiver.

Maren had built a very comfortable opinion of him around that.

Griffin Hayes was controlled.

Predictable.

Good-looking in a stern, regrettably athletic way.

The kind of man who could make a gray T-shirt seem morally responsible.

Which was annoying enough before he ruined her shot by being useful.

“Tyler,” Griffin said, voice low and calm, “what exactly was your plan?”

Tyler dangled from Griffin’s fist, one sneaker scraping the dock, the rest of him angled dramatically over the lake.

“Engagement.”

“You were about to engage with the emergency room.”

Beckett Monroe, seated on the dock with his sunglasses pushed into his hair and two popsicles in one hand, lifted his chin. “I think the noodle would have softened impact.”

Cooper Vale looked up from the canoe he had been pretending not to nap in. “The noodle looked scared.”

“The noodle is fine,” Tyler said.

“The noodle has seen things,” Beckett replied.

Griffin released Tyler just enough that both of his shoes hit the dock.

Tyler straightened his shirt with all the dignity available to a man wearing a GoPro and a foam shark fin strapped to his back.

Maren zoomed in.

Griffin’s gaze snapped to her phone.

For one sharp second, the world narrowed.

Not because anything romantic happened. Obviously not.

This was not one of those lake movies where a girl saw a handsome athlete in golden light and immediately forgot her own name.

Maren liked her name. It looked good in a byline.

It sounded good when people said it like she had done something impossible and made it look easy.

But Griffin looked at the camera, then at her, and his eyes did this horrible thing where they focused.

Fully.

Completely.

Like she had not been another person on the dock, another local girl with a phone, another summer hire trying to make a chaotic weekend look intentional.

Like he saw her.

Maren hated that.

Mostly because some small, treacherous part of her liked it.

“Tell me that is not live,” Griffin said.

Maren lowered her phone two inches. “That is not live.”

His eyes narrowed.

“It is not live,” she said. “It is merely saved forever in stunning quality.”

Tyler perked up. “Can I see?”

“No,” Griffin and Maren said together.

That should not have been satisfying.

It was.

Ava Lane, who had been sitting on the edge of the dock with her legs dangling over the water and Nate Brennan’s baseball cap on her head, laughed into her lemonade.

Nate grinned from beside her. “Good start to the weekend.”

Griffin shot him a look. “You are the captain.”

“Exactly,” Nate said. “I delegate emotional consequences.”

“You delegate everything to me.”

“Because you are good at having a forehead vein.”

Maren checked.

The forehead vein was indeed present.

Excellent content.

She lifted her phone again.

Griffin pointed at her.

“Do not post that.”

“I was not going to post your forehead vein.”

“I did not mention a forehead vein.”

“Interesting.”

Behind him, Beckett leaned toward Cooper. “He has a forehead vein?”

Cooper looked over. “It arrives before he does.”

Tyler gasped. “That’s leadership.”

Griffin closed his eyes for half a second.

Maren captured that too.

Not because she was cruel.

Because she was an artist.

And because Lake Briar Summer Challenge Weekend needed a heartbeat. That was why Denise had hired her in the first place.

Four days. One lake. One hockey team with too much energy and too little fear.

Alumni showing up tomorrow. Fans and families arriving tonight.

A Lake Briar Cup competition on Saturday and a final showcase on Sunday that would decide bragging rights, social ranking, and, based on Tyler’s current mood, possibly who got banned from renting paddleboards for life.

Maren’s job was simple.

Make it look fun.

Make it look big.

Make it look like Ridgeview Hockey was not just a team, but a whole summer feeling people wanted to be part of.

The problem was that Griffin Hayes kept removing everything interesting before she could film it.

He had stopped Beckett from staging a dramatic fake drowning in three feet of water.

He had confiscated Tyler’s megaphone after one announcement that began with, “Ladies, gentlemen, and emotionally available lifeguards.”

He had denied Maren access to the roof of the snack shack for a wide sunset shot, even though she had only said the word roof once.

Quietly.

To herself.

From twenty feet away.

The man had safety radar. It was unnerving.

Maren turned her camera toward the lake, where the last of the sun scattered gold over the water.

The Challenge Weekend banners rippled from the rope line near the beach.

Someone had hung string lights between the posts on the dock, though they were not on yet.

The snack shack glowed in the background with its striped awning, open window, and handwritten menu board that still listed “emotional support fries” because Ava had refused to erase it.

It was perfect.

Almost.

It needed one thing.

A spark.

Not a pool noodle concussion, despite Tyler’s commitment to the craft.

Something sharper. Something people would talk about. Something that showed the team’s personality instead of a sanitized version polished until it became beige.

Maren glanced at Griffin again.

He was standing with Tyler, arms crossed, listening while Tyler explained something with huge hand gestures and absolutely no relationship with reality. Griffin’s face was stern, but his body had shifted slightly toward the edge of the dock, between Tyler and the water.

Protective without trying to look protective.

Responsible in the most irritatingly attractive way.

Maren took another photo.

Ava appeared at her shoulder. “That one you can post.”

Maren startled. “Do you float?”

“Snack shack training.” Ava sipped her lemonade and looked out at the dock. “Also, you stare louder than most people.”

“I am not staring.”

“No?”

“I am assessing visual assets.”

Ava’s mouth twitched. “That’s what we’re calling Griffin now?”

Maren lowered the phone. “Griffin Hayes is not a visual asset.”

Ava looked at him.

Griffin had taken the GoPro off Tyler’s chest and was holding it above his head while Tyler jumped for it.

Ava looked back at Maren.

“Sure.”

Maren refused to smile. Refusing was an underrated discipline. Griffin would probably approve, which made her smile anyway.

Traitor mouth.

“He keeps killing my best content,” Maren said.

“He keeps preventing head injuries.”

“Those can coexist.”

“Not usually.”

Maren sighed. “The whole weekend cannot be smiling group shots and Nate saying leadership things while everyone pretends Tyler is not in the background attempting crimes.”

Ava followed her gaze toward Tyler, who was now trying to convince Beckett to hide the GoPro in a basket of lake towels.

“No one pretends that,” Ava said. “We just accept Tyler as weather.”

“That is why I need better content.”

“You have the team.”

“I have chaos, pretty light, and a captain who knows how to look charming on command. That gets us through one post. Maybe two if Nate holds a paddleboard and smiles at someone’s grandmother.”

Ava’s expression softened in the annoying way of a woman who had recently fallen in love and now believed everyone else was simply one honest conversation away from emotional ruin.

“Maren.”

“No.”

“I did not say anything.”

“You thought something.”

“I did.”

“Stop.”

Ava lifted one hand. “All I am saying is Griffin does not usually look at people the way he looked at you just now.”

“He looked at me because I filmed evidence.”

“He looked at you because you are you.”

Maren rolled her eyes so hard it deserved medical coding. “That sentence came with violins.”

“It came with experience.”

“No, your experience involved fake dating, public bets, Trevor Hale being the human version of a paper cut, and Nate deciding romance counted as cardio.”

Ava smiled. “That is a pretty accurate summary.”

“My situation is different.”

“You do not have a situation.”

“Exactly.”

“You are still looking at him.”

Maren turned immediately toward the lake.

Too immediately.

Ava laughed.

“Rude,” Maren said.

“Accurate.”

Maren pointed her phone toward the banners and took three unnecessary photos to prove she had professional priorities. Her phone buzzed with a text from Denise.