Page 132 of The Fall

I think he’s talking about me, but when I look at him, he’s got his shit-eating smile pasted on and he’s staring at Blair. Blair kicks him beneath the patio table. I laugh.

“Okay, okay,” Hayes says. “You wanna hear a real one? Like peak superstition bullshit?”

Of course I nod.

“Calle, you remember Benny?” He gives me the details while Blair groans. “Big guy, skated like he was being chased by bees, total ass on ice. Anyway, Benny believed—fully, no irony—thatif he didn’t eat an egg salad sandwich before every game, we’d lose.”

I laugh, and Hayes doubles down, lowering his voice. “So we hid his sandwich. Dude, he was so fucking stressed. He was certain we’d lose the game.”

“Did you?”

“We won so hard. It was an eight-to-one blowout. Benny didn’t speak to any of us for two days.” Hayes sits back, regal as Lily in her dinosaur throne room. “Kid couldn’t live in ritual forever.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” Blair snorts.

Hayes angles his bottle toward Blair. “Hey. That door, man?—”

“It’s warped.”

“It’s cursed.”

“It sticks, it’s bad construction.” Blair rolls his eyes and then turns to me, popping his eyebrows.

“How long have you guys played together?” I ask.

Hayes doesn’t answer right away. Blair taps his water bottle with a finger, soft as a thought. “Eight years, almost nine,” Blair says first.

“Eight years of being the magic behind the curtain. His success as a captain is entirely—entirely—thanks to me?—”

Blair squeezes the remnants of his water bottle across the table, soaking Hayes.

“Man.” Hayes, dramatically, shakes his head. “I’m nice to you once a year and this is the thanks I get.”

Blair’s smile is wicked.

I drag my palms over the top of my thighs, and a shiver traces over my skin, an echo of lips trailing kisses. The not-memory hits without warning—his mouth on mine, the way his hands framed my face like I was something precious. I blink, forcing myself back to the present.

Blair’s eyes haven’t left me. There’s something knowing in them, like he can read every thought scrolling through my head. “Kicks, you play cards?”

“Oh here we go,” Hayes groans.

I nod. Everybody in hockey plays something. Maybe not great, but it’s a rite of plane rides and layovers. Somewhere, there’s always a game going. Whether the rules are followed… that’s a different story.

“The problem with Blair,” Hayes says, already grabbing a deck of cards and a set of chips out of a patio cabinet, “is that he remembers what cards you played two hands ago. And two weeks ago. And two months ago.”

“I never cheat,” Blair says. “Not once.”

Hayes tosses a deck onto the table. “You don’t have to.”

Blair quirks an eyebrow at him as he reaches for the cards and starts to shuffle.

“Ten bucks says you can’t keep the reds ordered high-to-low.”

Blair draws the top card: ace of diamonds. “How much are you down to me?”

“Like, eleventy-million buckaroos and a sandwich.”

“A sandwich?” I laugh.