Page 163 of Forbidden Hockey

“I’m good, son. Tell whoever made these ribs they’re divine.”

“Mhm,” he hums and disappears again.

I thought they were at odds. But even more troubling, why are there so many Elkingtons in my restaurant, acting like they run the place? This is my restaurant, dammit.

Using the wet nap someone provided him with, he cleans up as best he can. But without the sauce covering his fingers, the damage to his knuckles is more pronounced. Dark bruises blooming beneath scraped skin.

“What do you want from me, Elkington? And don’t fucking say my friendship. I’ll never trust us enough to be friends.”

He shrugs. “I’ve never trusted anyone a day in my life. Trust wasn’t a requisite for my friendship.”

“I’m supposed to believe that all you wanted was my advice?”

“You can believe whatever you want to.”

Unless my advice wasn’t what he was after. I’ve never been able to get a good read on Maxwell, which was unsettling enough; trying to parse out what he really wanted from me sent me down dark conspiracy theories I don’t want to think about.

“Did my advice help you?” I try. Maybe if he has to tell me what he learned, I’ll catch him in a lie.

“It did,” Maxwell says, eyes scanning the rib bones for more meat. There isn’t any, they’re picked clean. For once, there’s no ulterior motive gleaming in his eyes. He’s somewhere else. “Rhett had a stutter when he was little—he doesn’t know that. His mother and I didn’t tell anyone.”

He leans back, still off in that faraway place. “I wouldn’t have cared if he stuttered forever—it was endearing and he was perfect just the way he was. But the things I’d already seen by that time … I know what the world does to people with vulnerabilities. It destroys them. I worked with him myself, made sure nothing would ever hurt him. We were best friends. But then along came an ice dancer, and Rhett was gone.”

I’m still waiting for the part where he learned something. It’ll come, right?

“Logan was right, I was hurting Rhett. But I was only doing things that you would do, so I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong.”

“Whoa. I’ve never tried to make my son get married on national television.”

“That may have been a tad extreme.”

“And how would you know what I would do with my son?”

Maxwell sighs long and suffering. “This is where we differ, you have more heart than I do, but I’ll lay it out for you, bestie.”

He really needs to stop calling me that.

“When I infiltrated Rhett’s new friend group?—”

“Infiltrated?” Only Maxwell would say infiltrated instead of “I fucking spied on you”.

He waves a hand as if it’s nothing. “Anyway, you intrigued me as soon as I’d read your file from my private investigators, and I had them dig up everything on you they could find. One thing in particular got my heart going—Dash was under a conservatorship for a little while. Under you.”

No. No fucking way will he say he got the idea from me. That’s bullshit.

“Maybe your little files lacked some fucking context. I was afraid he was gonna kill himself, asshole,” I hiss. It takes all my restraint not to fucking strangle him.

“The whole time?” He raises a brow.

I can lie to Maxwell, no problem, but not to myself. “Not the whole time. I might have used it to get him into therapy,” I admit. I’m in this now, I might as well see where he’s going with it.

“I knew it! Don’t worry, I get it. I getyou.We do what’s best for our children, no matter what.”

I’d love to argue with him, but that’s what I told myself, too. I don’t have a single regret either. Dash is a lot better now, and that’s all that really matters.

“Don’t worry, Nolan. I admire you for it. It’s that kind of tenacity that keeps our children safe. But unlike my son, your son accepted you. I had to see you two in action.”

Instinctively, my hand rubs over my chest where the lion tattoo is. I didn’t make that decision lightly. I was so fucking scared of losing him. I didn’t want to control his life, I just wanted to keep him safe.