Page 26 of Never Dance with the Devils

I frown slightly, disagreeing with her on principlebecause the one who cheats is always wrong in my book, but she keeps talking. “I thought I was encouraging him, but in hindsight, I was definitely breaking him down slowly—telling him how he needed to improve his interview skills and his resume, buying clothes for him as though what he had wasn’t good enough, and coaching him on how to act at networking events, essentially babying him like I was his mother. If I’d been older or wiser, maybe I would’ve seen that I was being condescending, or if he’d been able to communicate how he felt, maybe he wouldn’t have decided I was nothing more than a pretty meal ticket.” She tilts her head, considering her words like they’re the first time she’s had that thought. Who knows, maybe it is.

“In the end, we broke each other in different ways. I don’t know if he learned anything, but I did. I don’t do rescue mission men anymore, only men who can stand toe-to-toe with me and can take it in stride when I don’t cradle their egos or hold my tongue for their feelings’ sake. I’m me, unapologetically. People can either handle that or leave, and usually, they don’t get the option to choose. I do it for them.”

She just slapped about a million warning labels on her forehead, put up some yellow hazard tape around her heart, and raised a whole marching band’s worth of red flags while telling us to approach with caution because she definitely bites. Each signal is more concerning than the last, like she’s been told her whole life that she’s dangerous, hard, unlovable. But I heard the thread woven through her words too—that she wants to find someone strong enough to stand at her side. She just doesn’t think he exists. The good news is… hedoes, times two, sitting on either side of her. We’re like the Powerball Jackpot of men for her.

Because if there’s one thing Maddox and I both are, it’s strong. Not physically, although we’re that too, obviously, but mentally. Yeah, I’ve been through some shit and done the hard work to address it, but as professional athletes, if we crumbled every time a coach told us off, we would’ve never made it. I can handle Kayla at her worst. Hell, I welcome it.

“Girl, I like it when you tell me straight out. I can take it,” Maddox vows, thumping his chest. “Good, bad, ugly,dirty… bring it on.”

“Nothing bothers you, does it?” she asks, laughing lightly as she shakes her head. “Alright, Mr. Tough Guy, we shared our dark and dirty pasts. What’s your story?”

She leans toward me, like it’s the two of us against him, and I instantly wrap my arm around her shoulders and grin at him cockily. “Yeah, we’re trauma bonding here. Whatcha got?” Considering I already know the answer to that question, I’m taking twisted delight in making him admit it.

Ducking his head, he confesses, “Is it shitty if I say, nothing? I’m boring as fuck. I’ve got a good family and had a non-damaging, storybook sorta childhood. I’m an only child, my parents are still together and love each other in disgustingly adorable ways. Now that they’re empty nesters, they like to travel around in an RV I bought them with my signing bonus, ‘seeing America’, as they call it, from various national parks. I think they’re in Yellowstone right now?” He shrugs like he’s not one hundred percent sure, but I know he has an app to keep track of their location, always making sure they’re safe.

“They send me pictures of trees and trails and sunrises like each one is completely different from the last ten they sent me. I’ll most likely get one tomorrow saying that the picture doesn’t do the clouds and colors of the sky justice, but it was ‘just so pretty’ that Mom had to share it with me.” He chuckles like his mom is so silly for that, but it’s obvious that he can’t wait for the message to come through. He’s even shared some of the better ones around the locker room. “I think it’s their payoff for all they went through getting me through youth hockey. Dad coached my hockey team when I was little, both of them came to all my games through high school, and now, they watch from wherever they are. Dad sends me a ‘good game’ text after every one, and Mom asks if I had fun and if I’m eating enough.”

“I forget how much I hate you sometimes,” I grumble. My family is good too, both my parents and my sister, and I’ve helped them out too, but Maddox truly won the parental jackpot.

“Same,” Kayla agrees with a wry smirk.

“There are no romantic skeletons lurking in my closet, unless you count being thirty and never having actually had a serious relationship?”

“I do count that as a character flaw,” I offer, holding up a hand helpfully, and Kayla laughs at our comfortable teasing.

“Me too. Definite red flag,” she agrees.

Unbothered by our verdicts on the matter, he continues, “I dated here and there. Had a few casual girlfriends in my younger days, but basically, my whole life has centered around hockey. I made playing professionally my goal on my eighth birthday and never brokefocus. Me and hockey, we’re like this.” Maddox crosses his fingers. “Always and forever.”

She looks to me for confirmation, and I nod. “He’s telling the truth. Bor-ing!” I deadpan.

“Then I return to my original question, which you so deftly attempted to side-step. How’d this happen?” Kayla asks, swinging a pink-tipped finger from me to Maddox as she sits back in her chair, still close but not touching either of us. Her eyes have gone shrewd, her face stoic, and I recognize that we’re entering the interrogation part of the evening.

If Kayla has questions, which I’m sure she does, well then, we’ve got answers. I already told her the worst of it, and I’ll tell her whatever else she wants to know to get inside her again. My PIN number? 1230. My biggest fear? Roller coasters, and not being able to play hockey anymore. My most embarrassing moment? Tripping over my skate lace and missing the game-winning goal when I was in the Pee-Wee leagues, because while sprawled on the ice, crying my eyes out, I’d looked up and realized the most popular girl in school, the one everyone had a crush on (including me), was looking right at me. I’d been eleven, and it was catastrophic as far as I was concerned.

Not trusting my ability to say the right thing, I stay quiet, giving Maddox the floor.

“Yeah, about that…” he says slowly, “we told you we’ve done this before, but to be clear, notthis.” He waves a hand at the three of us around the table, his confidence cracking for the first time. “Dinner dates and swapping life stories? Totally virgin territory here.” He means he doesn’t do those things, but he also checks in on me to see how I’m handling all this.

He knows this is the first date I’ve been on since Eliza, which should be a big deal, but it pales in comparison to this being the first date I’ve ever been on as one in a party of three, which is what Maddox is tip-toeing around too. We haven’t done this, wouldn’t have even considered it until now. Until Kayla.

She has this energy, like she’s made up of chaos at her core but is uniquely able to control the wildness by the sheer strength of her will. Mixed in with a ladylike presence that makes me want to treat her like a princess and filthily fuck her at the same time. And I like never knowing what’s going to come out of her mouth, whether something polite or something sharply targeted.

I can’t help but want to be around her, and I’m pretty sure Maddox feels the same way. We didn’t discuss the logistics of a three-way date, the same way we never discussed them for a threesome. We winged it then and we’re winging it now. So far, I think it’s going pretty well.

“Just a Mad-Trick, right?” she says like it’s a serious ‘gotcha’.

Fuck. Spoke too soon.

“Ooh. Straight for the jugular, huh?” Maddox winces, grabbing at the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Okay, first of all, and this seems particularly important, we didn’t name it that,” he rushes to explain. “We didn’t even know about it, and when some girl called it that, rightafter, I might note, saying it was a blend of my first name and Riggs’s last, we were…”

He looks at me like I might have a description, and I shake my head, not sure what we were—surprised,horrified, both? In the biggest hurry of our lives to get that girl out of our bed? That one, for sure.

“There’s a whole Reddit page about you two, you know?”

I nod reluctantly, all too aware. Once I got over the initial shock, I basically decided to ignore it, but now, I hate that Kayla saw that before talking to us. It makes it sound like something it’s not, like Maddox and I are something we’re not.

Trying to make sure she understands that this is different from whatever she read about us, Maddox says, “As you can imagine, after Eliza, Riggs was pretty fucked up.” He pauses to give me a chance to argue that fact, but I blink slowly, silently agreeing. “And I was forcing him to go out, sometimes with the team and sometimes, without. Just to keep him from hyper-focusing and crashing out. There was a girl who wanted to take us both back to the hotel—her idea, and that night, we were just drunk enough to do it. Neither of us had ever done anything like that, but it… worked. Like it was just an extension of our friendship, you know? And while the suits on the team and in the league aren’t exactly happy about it, we’re not doing anything illegal. So it kinda became our thing.”