Page 23

HAYES

“You did what?” I gape at Jacob, my fingers tightening around my helmet as he adjusts his gear like he didn’t just drop a bomb on my life.

“I jerked off in front of Riley.” He pulls his helmet over his smug face like this is all normal behavior.

My brain glitches. I blink, and Shawn folds over with laughter, nearly falling off the bench. The sound grates against the roaring in my ears, and I glare at him until his laughter dies, leaving only the faint wheezing of a man teetering between the poles of hilarity and fear.

“And she did what ?” My voice drops dangerously low.

“She passed me the tissues and told me to come on my belly.”

Malik and Buttons stomp past us, oblivious. “Get your asses in gear,” Buttons mumbles. “Coach is raging. Must have had a row with the wife.”

Coach’s bad mood would usually freeze me in my tracks, but I’m already frozen. I imagine Jacob and Riley having a moment while I was upstairs sleeping. “Why the fuck would you do that?”

“The healing effect of the orgasm,” Jacob replies, sweeping his arm out like he’s presenting a Nobel Prize-winning discovery.

Shawn snickers, shaking his head as he grabs his stick, but I take hold of his arm before he can follow the others onto the ice. “Don’t you go anywhere.”

“What?” Shawn grumbles, his brows pulling together. “Jacob’s inability to keep his cock in his pants has nothing to do with me.”

“Says Mr. I like to watch.”

He raises his hands in surrender. “I do like to watch.”

Jacob reaches for his stick, but I snatch it away. “What the fuck is going on here?” I demand, pointing the stick between them like a weapon of war. “You both want Riley now? Are you trying to muscle in on my girl? Because if that’s the case, we’ve got a big fucking problem.”

“I asked her if she’d like to be the meat in our triplet sandwich,” Jacob says casually, like my eyes aren’t already bugging out of my head.

“You did what? ”

Shawn bites back another laugh, which only makes my rage bubble higher.

“I suggested we all help her out with her little problem?”

That’s it. That’s the thing that takes me from simmering anger to a full-blown nuclear meltdown. Jacob knows something about Riley that I don’t. Did she confide in him? Was that before or after he got his dick out in front of her? My chest tightens, and it’s not jealousy; it’s something worse—betrayal, confusion, and the sharp edge of possessiveness forming an unholy mix.

“What little problem? I grit out.

“Her unpopped cherry.”

I choke so hard, I nearly drop Jacob’s stick, spluttering so badly I have to thump the center of my chest to tug in a rasping breath.

“She told you she’s a virgin ?”

“She might have let it slip.” Jacob inspects the tape on his gloves like he’s got all the time in the world.

My chest tightens further. My eagerness to get her naked last night is colored a lot differently by that little factoid— the way I touched her, and the things I wanted to do to her. Suddenly, my eagerness is reckless. She didn’t confide in me when we were intimate.

Did she feel more comfortable with Jacob?

The thought is a sharp shard that pierces, knowing we’re both virgins, but neither of us were honest enough to admit it. I swear under my breath, but before I can interrogate him further, Coach’s voice booms from across the locker room.

“ICE, NOW,” he roars. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HAVING A MOTHERS MEETING WHILE YOUR WHOLE TEAM IS OUT THERE WAITING FOR YOU?”

“Sorry, Coach,” we all say in unison. With my insides twisted into knots, I follow my brothers onto the ice, my brain still stuck on Riley and Jacob and their midnight confessional.

And the tissues. The fucking tissues!

***

Practice starts fast at the kind of pace that doesn’t leave room for thinking, which is good because my thoughts are a tangled mess of Riley, Jacob, Shawn, and every idiotic word that came out of their mouths.

We’re split into groups for drills, and I’m skating laps when I notice Jacob leaning lazily against the boards and chatting with Shawn like he hasn’t got a care in the world. He laughs. He fucking laughs, and I snap.

“Skate harder, Drayton!” Coach yells, but I’m already heading straight for Jacob.

By the time he realizes I’m coming, it’s too late. I shoulder-check him into the boards hard enough that he stumbles.

“What the fuck?” Jacob spins on me, his eyes narrowing.

“You think this is funny?” I hiss, keeping my voice low so that Coach won’t overhear.

“No,” he says. “But this. This is funny as fuck.”

His flippancy lights a fire that rushes into my hands. I shove him again, harder this time. “Why can’t you just keep your hands—and your mouth—to your fucking self.”

Jacob shoves me back, his gloves flying to the ice and his eyes the color of glaciers. “You wanna go?” he growls.

“Bring it.”

The next thing I know, we’re tangled in a mess of fists and elbows, shoving and cursing as the rest of the team skates to a halt.

“Enough!” Coach bellows, but it’s Shawn who pulls us apart, grabbing Jacob by the back of his jersey and hauling him away from me.

“Cool it!” Shawn snaps, stepping between us. “What the hell is wrong with you two?”

“He started it,” Jacob mutters, wiping his mouth with the back of his glove.

“Bullshit!” I snap, but Shawn holds up a hand to shut me up.

“Coach is watching,” he warns, jerking his head toward the bench. “You wanna sit out the next game? Keep this up.”

The team skates closer as Coach approaches with the face of a raging bull. Murmurs of confusion and curiosity ripple through the group, but we’re ordered back into play with the threat of a game suspension if anything like that happens again.

The drills are sharp, fast, and aggressive—exactly what Coach wants, but the second the whistle blows, his glare rests like a brand on the back of my neck. Try that shit again , he dares. Try it and see where it gets you.

Practice finishes with the air between me and Jacob crackling like a live wire, sparking enough that the guys who usually love drama stay out of it.

In the locker room, the tension is unbearable. Everyone’s quiet at first—just the sound of skates hitting the ground, pads being stripped away from sweaty bodies, and the occasional muttered curse. But it doesn’t last long. Malik, of course, can’t leave well enough alone.

“So,” he says, leaning against the lockers with the kind of smirk that begs for trouble. “Are we gonna talk about that little brother-on-brother beef out there, or are we all pretending it didn’t happen?”

“Shut up, Malik,” I mutter, yanking my gloves off and shoving them into my bag with more force than necessary.

“Seriously, though.” Buttons glances between Jacob and me like he’s trying to solve a puzzle. “What’s going on? You two were fine yesterday.”

“This is Drayton shit,” Jacob says, his voice so firm that everyone drifts away.

I shower and fume, scrubbing shampoo into my hair with force and toweling myself so roughly that the skin around my neck stings as I pull on my shirt. I steal glances at Shawn and Jacob as they dress in silence next to me, their faces locked in the same tension.

I toss my bag over my shoulder, and my brothers do the same, and we trudge outside like three grumpy bears. We climb into Jacob’s car, slamming the doors harder than we should, trapping ourselves in a pod of tense silence.

As soon as Shawn pulls the passenger seatbelt across his chest, he twists around, fixing both of us with a look. “We need to keep this calm, all right. I don’t remember seeing you guys like this before, and never over a woman.”

“Hayes hasn’t kept shit from us before,” Jacob grumbles.

“So that’s what this is? You’re getting back at me for wanting a private life?”

“Can’t handle a little competition.”

“Competition?” I scoff, my voice rising. “You’re out of your goddamn mind.”

Shawn slaps his hand on the dash. “You’re not going to solve anything this way,” he says. “Coach should have benched us for that display. We’re just lucky he wants to win more than he wants to parent our asses.”

Jacob snorts, dropping his head back against the chair. “I’m calm. It’s Hayes who’s losing his shit over nothing.”

“Nothing? You’re the one who turned Riley into some kind of—”

“Don’t say it,” Shawn warns, cutting me off with a pointed glare.

“What?” Jacob interrupts, smirking now, like this is all a joke to him. “A distraction? A problem? Because she’s both of those things, and you know it.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“And you’re so besotted with her you can’t see straight,” Jacob fires back, his voice suddenly harder.

The car goes silent, and I grip the seat to keep my hands from doing something stupid. For a second, all I can do is stare at him. He doesn’t look smug anymore. He looks serious. Like he’s daring me to deny it.

“What’s your deal, man?” Shawn’s voice breaks the tension, his tone lighter but still wary. “You gonna keep dancing around the issue, or are we all just gonna sit here and watch you implode?”

I drag a hand over my face, breathing out a sigh. “You wouldn’t get it.”

“Oh, we get it.”

“Listen.” Jacob leans closer like he’s trying to climb through the gap between the seats, his voice low and steady. “You’re pissed because you think I’m trying to take something from you . ”

“Aren’t you?” I cross my arms over my chest.

“My point is, you’re acting like we’re at war over her, but we’re not. We’re brothers.” He pauses, letting that word hang in the air between us. “No woman should come between us—apart from, you know, between us. ”

There it is—the thing I’d been bracing for but still not ready to hear.

Shawn’s head jerks up, his eyes wide with disbelief. “He’s not ready for this.”

“Why not?” Jacob shrugs like it’s the most logical thing in the world. “We’ve shared everything else. Why not Riley?”

I stare at him, slumping under the weight of anger and confusion and something I don’t even want to name.

“This isn’t just some girl, Jacob. Riley’s not a puck bunny. She’s special,” I say quietly.

“I know that.” His voice is softer now. “That’s why it works. We have a shared history, and she has enough balls to take us all on. I think we’d be better off if we stopped pretending it’s some competition and just shared. We’ve spent our whole lives on the same team. Why should this be any different?”

I want to tell him he’s insane, and that the very idea of sharing Riley makes me want to punch him all over again. But then I think about her laugh, smile, and how she looked at me last night like I was the only person in the world.

And I realize maybe he’s not wrong. Already, the pull of loyalty to Riley is strong. I’d do pretty much anything to make her smile again, even lie to my brothers. The issues that are festering between us aren’t sustainable. And there’s something else that I haven’t wanted to admit to myself.

I suspect that Riley might be open to the idea. Last night, she volunteered to care for Jacob and didn’t seek me out when he was jerking off in front of her. She went on a date with Shawn and kissed him. And she didn’t rage like I expected when she caught him watching us.

Maybe she’s messing with us all, wanting us to get competitive and fight? Could she be hoping to break us apart?

Even as the thought crosses my mind, I discount it. Riley’s a straightforward person who wouldn’t bother with the effort it would take to be that manipulative.

A car full of girls honks us, and they wave as they pass. A week ago, Jacob would have followed them to get numbers. Shawn would work his magic, cracking a joke or sixteen, making everyone comfortable. But neither of them notices. Then Shawn lets out a low groan, dragging a hand over his face. “You two are gonna be the death of me, you know that?”

Sweeping my hand through my hair, I consider our options.

Tell Riley she’s out of our lives because she’s causing a fracture between us? No, absolutely not.

Tell Jacob that Riley’s mine and risk the current fracture becoming worse.

Or talk to Riley and see if she’d want to be a part of Jacob’s idea. It seems crazy, but maybe that’s the only way I’m going to get what I want: Riley in my life and a healthy, positive relationship with my brothers.

Unity. It’s what we promised to each other. After our dad died and our mom chose a new relationship over us, we committed to be family for each other forever. I can’t and won’t go back on that vow. I just hope Riley will understand.