Page 13 of Rule 1: Never Accidentally Marry Your Teammate

If Boston decides they don’t like me, I won’t get this chance again.

Maybe if I’d partied with my roommates, I would have developed some tolerance to alcohol.

I catch a glimpse of Finn in the mirror, his eyes rounded, and bile rises up my throat all over again. I strangle it down.

I am fine.

I grit my teeth and glare at the room. I’ve waited my whole life for this chance, and no headache, no nausea will stop it.

FINN

Noah looks miserable and furious and awful, and no one goes near him. I sure as hell don’t. I invited him to that party. I hosted that party. And I served him that drink.

Guilt beats against me.

This is my fault. Noah’s first day playing for the NHL, and I got him drunk the night before.

I haven’t been hungover, truly hungover, since I was a teenager, back when drinking was illegal and hasty, and I was getting to know the effects of shots and figuring out pacing, but I remember the pain. Pain that so doesn’t fit with a major athletic event that will be watched by tens of thousands of people live and watched by hundreds of thousands.

Tension bubbles in the air, likecarbon monoxide buzzing around us.

Our line hasn’t meshed in practice. The clank of weights sounds like a broken clock barreling unevenly, and Axel’s smiles grow further apart as the game time grows closer. Even he’s getting nervous, and he’s never nervous.

Troy joins me on the treadmills. His biceps bulge after his weight training, and he wipes sweat from his brow with his tank. “New guy looks terrible.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

Troy arches an eyebrow.

“I think I made that cocktail wrong,” I admit.

“What did you make him?”

“Tequila sunrise.”

“Well, that’s just tequila, orange juice and grenadine syrup.”

“Orange tequila.”

He turns to me. “You made it with tequila, orange tequila, and grenadine syrup?”

“Uh...huh.”

Troy snorts. “Bad idea, dude.”

“It’s supposed to be a favorite drink of babes.”

“Then why were you giving it to him?”

“As practice!”

“Madison was right there. Madison would have known you’d massacred that. Dude, that’s a drink you give to people youwantto get drunk.”

“Why would I want someone to get drunk?”

“You shouldn’t want anyone to get drunk, obviously. But back in the last century, that was a thing.”

“And tequila sunrise gets people drunk?”