Page 78 of Call the Shots (For The Arena #1)

JUNE

NOW THIS IS UNHEALTHY

Upcoming finals meant staying away from the team after hours. It was awful but it had to be done. At least Bear could be counted on for the highlights. In the middle of a study session with Willow, my phone rang.

“Hey, wifey.” Bear grinned, face close to the screen.

“Did you call her wifey?” Denali asked, his voice muffled. “Do you hear the words that come out of your mouth, or do we just have to suffer through them?”

Bear ignored him, setting his phone down for me to see the charcoal-colored suit, styled perfectly over my boyfriend’s broad shoulders. My eyes widened, taking him in.

“We need gameday suits for the season!” Elijah belted, striding into the camera’s view, wearing a navy-blue suit, raking a hand through his dark curls. He grinned when he spotted Willow. “PRUITT! Take a look, Ruthless on the streets, leave ‘em speechless in the sheets.”

We burst into laughter but that stopped with Fridge’s arrival, in a burgundy suit that rivaled everybody’s, and Nick, in dark green. The boys looked so good but where was…?

“Kid’s Toy!” Elijah shouted. “Front and center!”

Bear grabbed someone’s arm off screen and brought Montoya over. He ducked his head, blushing with a nervous smile. I couldn’t believe it. He was supposed to be Baby Montoya! I didn’t recognize this man in a suit. Who was this?

“ Montoya. ” Willow’s hands flew to her mouth. “Purple never looked so good.”

“He’s growing up,” I groaned. “I can’t handle it.”

Bear dusted him off. “He looks good, doesn’t he?”

“We look good as fuck,” Elijah boasted. “This fucking season’s ours.”

After their big shopping trip, I left Willow and grabbed dinner with the boys at Gianna’s . It wasn’t hard to figure out where to sit. They were laughing so loud, people nearby were giving them dirty looks.

“June!” Elijah waved me over. “Did Bear tell you yet?”

“Nice, Elijah.” Nick thumbs-upped him. “You should win an award for subtlety.”

I slid into the empty seat next to Bear. “Tell me what?”

“Nothing.” He draped an arm over my chair. “Don’t worry about it.”

“That’s comforting,” I teased.

“Tell her,” Elijah insisted. “If June doesn’t like it, we can switch venues. Don’t spring it on her like divorce papers at a baby shower.”

“He has a point,” Fridge agreed.

Bear sighed, finally turning to me. “So—uh—your going-away party, we kind of rented a place for it.”

“Ooo, exciting.”

“Like the whole team chipped in to put down money—and, uh, it’s…your house.”

For brief moments, the guys stopped messing around and shoveling pizza in their mouths. It was a table of eager faces, everyone gauging my reaction while I realized what he meant.

They rented my old house.

Different emotions swirled inside. That wasn’t really my house anymore, especially now that the garden was gone, but they put in the work to rent it for the party. I didn’t even know how they got past Xavier’s oversight.

“That means a lot to me,” I said truthfully to everyone around the table. “I know we don’t want to say goodbye but thank you for making the end so perfect.” I glanced towards Bear and wrapped an arm around his waist, careful of the bruises. “Thank you.”

He reached down for my chair, sliding it closer. His warm brown eyes were soft as liquid chocolate. “I love you, baby.”

“I’m a great wingman,” Elijah sighed happily and picked up a piece of pizza, chomping at the cheese. “It’s like strategic or something, it takes a special kind of intelligence.”

“And you have so much in abundance already,” Nick agreed, shoving a breadstick in his mouth.

Footsteps strode to the table and the conversation hushed when none other than Sloane interrupted us. My favorite waitress at Gianna’s, a curvy redhead who always remembered my smoothie order. She glared at Elijah. “I can’t believe you’re making me do this.”

Elijah swallowed his bite the wrong way. He coughed. “What?”

“Where is it?”

“Where’s…huh? Who?”

Sloane snuck a look at us, her cheeks red with embarrassment. “I’m not laughing, Eli. I don’t care about your stupid plans, trying to make me jealous—give me back my charm.”

“Jealous?” Elijah tried to scoff. “Why? Are you jealous?”

“I know you took it!”

A waiter called Sloane over and she had to leave for another table, obviously not happy about it. Everyone turned to stare at Elijah.

“I knew it! ” Fridge slammed his fist on the table. “You’re not dating Willow. If you were dating her, or that girl, you’d be bringing her everywhere! I knew it—I fucking knew it?—”

“Yeah.” Bear nodded. “That’s it.”

“Mm-hmm,” I confirmed.

“You two know?” Denali asked.

“I know too,” Montoya added.

“ What? ” Elijah jerked over. “You don’t know anything?—”

“We’re roommates, Elijah. I know where you hide the photos.”

Fridge choked on his drink. “ Photos? ”

“Uh-huh.” Montoya nodded. “They’re in his jacket’s inside pocket, he carries them everywhere.”

No one moved. I’d spent so much time with the boys, I could see the cogs moving behind their eyes.

Messages were passed with only a raised eyebrow, a narrowed glance.

Bear barked out Fridge and Nick’s names and they held Elijah down in his chair—it was that quick.

Elijah swore at all three of them while Bear leaned over the table, rifling through his pockets.

Bear ripped out the photos and I couldn’t believe it.

They were clearly old photos of Elijah and Sloane and were painful to look at. Most of them had Sloane dodging the camera. The only ones where she wasn’t hiding were the ones where they were giving tipsy smiles at a bar or a party, and Sloane cozied up to him, eyes twinkling for the camera.

“Haha! We’re laughing like fucking hyenas, haha!” Elijah snapped, gathering up the photos. “So funny, I forgot to fucking laugh!”

Fridge put his head in his hands. “Now, this is unhealthy.”

I took another bite of pizza. “Elijah, you’ve been on and off with Sloane for so long. When are you going to let this go?”

“Shit,” Fridge muttered. “I know where the charm is.”

Elijah’s eyes snapped to him. “No, you don’t.”

“Yeah, I do. I’m the goalie, I see everything. I always wondered why you spend so long on your laces.”

Elijah’s mouth fell open so fast, his jaw cracked. “I—I? — ”

“Before practice, he loops it through his skate’s laces,” Fridge informed us. “Elijah, you need to give it back to her and leave this girl alone. Actually, if you don’t, I’ll tell her you have it, and you’ll have to give it back anyway.”

“Do you need a knife for your dinner?” Elijah spat. “Or do you want to use the one you buried in my back?”

“Okay, that’s enough, guys,” Denali warned. “Elijah and Sloane will work it out, we don’t need to do it for them.”

Another waitress came over with a strawberry milkshake, two straws, and gestured to our table. Bear crooked his fingers, motioning her closer, and she set it between us. Not only strawberry—but with rainbow sprinkles too.

My face burned. “ Oh. ”

Denali groaned, obviously trying to change the subject. “I’m so tired of watching you two swap spit.”

“Yeah, I’m tired of it too,” Elijah muttered, flipping us off. “That’s what I want!”

I took a bite of the whipped cream—arguably one of the best parts of a milkshake—and had to hold back the moan. It was so good. And so thoughtful. Bear was definitely getting a blowjob later. He smiled above me, swiping at the corner of my mouth with his thumb, tasting the whipped cream too.

“Do that in your dorm, ” Denali said. “Not everybody wants to see?—”

“If we can’t talk about Elijah’s creepy fixation, I guess I’ll ask the question everybody wants to know.” Fridge shifted his chair, his focus on Denali. “What happened between you and the girl who gave you a complex?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about?—”

“Fridge.” Elijah bumped the back of his chair. “You’re always talking about minding your own business but then you?—”

“No, I can talk about this because there’s nothing to talk about,” Denali said. “The truth is, I’m not like most of the guys on the team. I don’t discuss sex and relationships constantly and I don’t base my life around?—”

“What’d you and that girl do to each other?” Fridge interrupted.

“I didn’t do anything to anybody. ”

“So you were born bitter?”

“Okay—yeah—I had a girlfriend, so what?”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing!” he insisted, his face red. “It was long-distance, I took buses to see her, and I wrote love letters .

Who the hell writes love letters these days?

" He grabbed his drink, his shoulders tense. "She had some personal stuff going on, and one day she dropped me out of the blue, but whatever. I did everything right! I wasn’t the problem!”

I gazed at Denali, surprised. “Oh…Denali.”

Fridge narrowed his eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

Denali bristled. “I’m not lying?—”

“Then that’s not the whole truth.” Fridge rolled his eyes. “You can’t flash your wound every fifteen minutes and get shocked when somebody asks why you haven’t sewn it up?—”

“Fuck off, Fridge,” Denali muttered, heading to the bar.

Elijah gave Fridge a long look. “Sometimes you can be a self-righteous prick.”

“You’ll always defend Denali, your opinion means very little to me,” Fridge said, leaning back in his chair. “He’s hiding something. I don’t know what it is, but that’s not the whole story.”