Page 5

CHAPTER 3

LOGAN

S taring at the phone, I debated texting him for the millionth time today.

Your dad should want to come to a fucking Stanley Cup Finals game, right?

I felt like a fucking fool when I typed out my message and actually hit send.

Me: You coming tonight? I’ll have a ticket for you at the box office.

Tapping my fingers on the counter, I stared at the phone, wondering if the great Grant York was going to deign to answer me.

I was a tough motherfucker ninety-nine percent of the time, but when it came to my father…well, he was excellent at reducing me to feeling like a sniveling little kid again.

After five minutes, he still hadn’t answered, even though the message clearly showed that it had been read. Sometimes I wondered if he left that setting on specifically for me, just to be sadistic. To let me know that I was so unimportant he couldn’t find time to answer me promptly…about anything.

My buzzer went off, signaling that someone was in the lobby waiting for me, and I frowned…a little, stupid, spark of hope flickering inside me. Maybe it was my dad.

I pressed the button.

“Socks, can you let me up already? There’s a chick taking pictures of me through the glass doors. She’s got the glint.”

I smirked, a sense of fucking relief filling my chest at the sound of my best friend’s voice.

At least there would be one friendly face in the crowd cheering me on tonight.

“Get up here before she starts crying and pounding on the glass,” I teased, proud of myself for not sounding emotional at all.

A minute later, there was a hard knock on the door, and I barely had time to get it halfway open before Asher barreled through like a freight train. “Socks!” he shouted, grinning like a kid on Christmas. And then his arms were around me in one of his infamous bear hugs that could probably crack my ribs if he wanted to.

It had been a few months since I’d seen him, but Asher hadn’t changed a bit. His dark brown hair was a little longer, still that messy “I don’t own a comb” kind of look that seemed to drive women crazy. His green eyes were still their usual mix of mischief and genuine excitement, the kind that always made it impossible to stay mad at him. I could already see the gleam of trouble brewing there.

“Dude, I’m about to play in the Stanley Cup Finals, not a wrestling match,” I grunted, though I didn’t bother trying to push him off. It was Asher. If he didn’t greet you like a golden retriever who hadn’t seen you in years, something was seriously wrong.

He finally let go, stepping back with that wide grin still plastered on his face. “First game of the Finals, man! I wasn’t gonna miss it. You really think you could get through this without me here?”

I rolled my eyes, pretending I wasn’t all emotional at the sight of him.

He cackled and pounded my back one more time before releasing me and immediately heading to the kitchen.

If there was anything I could count on with Asher, it was his appetite.

“You must be the luckiest asshole in the whole fucking world,” Asher commented a few minutes later with a mouth full of chips as he somehow stuffed in another handful in the same breath. I wrinkled my nose when he winked. He looked like a demented chipmunk.

Wait a second. Those weren’t just chips. Those were my fucking chips. My Flaming Hot Cheetos!

What a fucking bastard.

“Give those to me,” I growled, snatching them out of his red-stained fingers. “You know that I have to eat Flaming Hot Cheetos every game day. That’s my last fucking bag.”

He grinned and chewed slowly, really driving it home that he’d managed to down half of the bag before I realized anything.

“And do not wipe your fingers on my couch,” I ordered, shaking the bag at him because despite the fact that his mama had taught him manners, he always seemed to forget them when he was at my house.

Or anywhere, actually.

There was a reason Mama Matthews considered me her favorite child. Her real son was a giant pig.

Asher sighed and made a big show of wiping his hands on a towel before he grabbed my Gatorade and took a big gulp. It was a good thing that I’d gotten used to sharing with him after he’d hit me in the head with an errant baseball when our Little League teams were playing each other. As I’d stared up at the sky and wondered if I was dead, a grinning brown-haired boy with freckled cheeks had leaned over and told me I was an embarrassment to baseball players everywhere and I needed to “man the fuck up.”

We were eight.

We’d also been best friends ever since.

“Why am I the luckiest bastard on the planet?” I asked, popping a delicious ambrosia-of-the-gods Cheeto in my mouth. I could already feel my super hockey powers building.

“Stanley Cup Finals as a rookie? Even Lincoln Daniels didn’t manage that,” Asher said, as he strolled over to my fridge.

I mentally added a “King” to the front of Lincoln’s name. Not that I was ever going to tell a single soul that I did that.

Wouldn’t want to be labeled “a simp.”

The team already had one too many of those. *Cough* Walker Davis *Cough*.

“To say I’m a prime reason for that, would be a lie. The team is literally made of superstars at this point,” I told him, even though inwardly I was preening. Up for Rookie of the Year. Stanley Cup Finals. It wasn’t a bad gig to be me.

Asher raised an eyebrow. “I’m just saying, the Venom didn’t even make the playoffs last season. I think they booed us every inning last game.”

“An appropriate response to seeing your ugly face,” I said with a grin.

He had the nerve to chuck my Gatorade bottle at me.

Last season, Asher had spent exactly one game in AAA before he’d been brought up to the majors. He’d set the single season batting average record for a rookie and was set to be the next All-Star of MLB. He was already breaking all the records this season.

In other words, he was doing just fine himself.

“So, you nervous?” he asked, opening my fridge and reaching in toward?—

“I will cut off your hand.”

He grinned, turning around with one of Mrs. Bentley’s burritos in his hand. “This is it, isn’t it? The deliciousness you’ve been bragging about all season.”

I held up both hands as I approached him slowly. “Just put it down.”

“You can’t have both. Cheetos or burrito. What’s it going to be?”

It felt like I was being asked which I liked better, tits or ass.

An impossible decision.

“I need that for the game,” I told him, making my best puppy-dog face as I prepared to tackle him.

It was universally known that baseball players were major wusses. I could definitely take him.

Asher unwrapped the burrito with a demonic glint in his eye and before I could pounce…he bit into it.

And then spit the huge bite out.

“What the fuck?” he growled, dropping the burrito and clutching his throat as he threw himself toward the sink.

I watched, flabbergasted, as he turned on the water and frantically started washing out his mouth.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked, leaning over to pick up the burrito and examine it.

It took me exactly one second to realize what had just happened.

Something, either sand or kitty litter, was coating the inside of the burrito.

And there was only one person who could be responsible for such an appalling crime, and it wasn’t Lincoln’s housekeeper.

Ari Fucking Lancaster.

As Asher continued to make noises like he was dying, I pulled out my phone and opened the latest group chat.

Me: This means war.

Ari: I just laughed out loud.

Lincoln: ?

Me: I’m serious. I needed that burrito.

Camden: I don’t think I’ve ever been this lost in a conversation.

Lincoln: I doubt that, Hero.

Camden:

Walker: I doubt that as well.

Ari: You would, you simp.

I eyed the sink, where Asher was now lying on the counter, outstretched under the faucet, his mouth open as he continued to dramatically gulp down water. Sniffing the burrito, I threw up a hallelujah for Asher’s gluttonous, thieving ways. The kitty litter was obviously coated with hot sauce—so spicy that my eyes were watering just smelling it.

Me: As enthralling as this is, can we get back on topic?

Lincoln: Yes, please inform us what the hell you’re talking about.

I grinned, typing out a quick Thank you to him because it was good to be polite.

Me: I’d like to report the desecration of a burrito.

Camden: Why didn’t you say it was this serious?

Hmm, I wasn’t quite sure if he was being sarcastic or not.

“Why are you grinning like a loon?” Asher asked, creeping up and scaring the living shit out of me.

“You look like you’ve recovered,” I drawled as I pocketed my phone.

He glanced at the burrito and shuddered. “I don’t know if I can eat for at least twenty minutes after that,” he told me. My eyes widened. That was big news coming from him.

“Maybe ten,” he amended.

That was more like it.

“Glad to see you weren’t scarred for life.”

“Glad you were so concerned for me,” he quipped back.

I snorted, shaking my head, and feeling much more relaxed than I had before Asher had shown up at my door, surprising me for the first game of the Stanley Cup.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, but before I could look, Asher decided to ruin my good energy. All it took was him saying one name.

“Tyler Miller.”

I growled just hearing it.

“Still not his biggest fan?” Asher asked…as he picked up an apple, obviously recovered from his “near-death experience.” In far less than ten minutes, I might add.

“That’s the understatement of the century, Matthews. Literally the century.”

“You didn’t even like Clarissa that much,” he commented, biting into the apple.

Clarissa had been my girlfriend sophomore year of college, and her cheating on me with Tyler Miller still burned years later. I mean, you would have thought I’d have picked someone with better taste than that.

I scoffed. “I’d been dating her for a year, and the bastard slept with her for half of that.”

“You weren’t going to marry her.”

“I could have! He got her pregnant, and she tried to say the baby was mine!”

“That was bad,” Asher said with a full mouth. He swallowed and straightened up from the counter. “You’re right, let’s kill him.”

I raised an eyebrow at how serious he sounded.

But also, I appreciated the support.

Sighing, I shook my head. “Moral of the story, I fucking hate the dude. And the fact that he’s in the series fucking sucks.”

Asher clapped me on the back. Hard. “Man up, get your head in the game, and fucking win. Think of it as a gift that he saved you from eighteen years of misery.” Asher gave me a pointed look as he started singing the second verse of “Gold Digger”…terribly.

“Please, don’t ever do that again,” I said seriously.

He grinned, flashing the pearly white teeth that had been all over the television thanks to him being paid to be the face of a famous toothpaste company.

My alarm rang on my phone, signaling it was time to get to the arena. Unnecessary, since there’d been a countdown blasting in my head all fucking day.

Asher pounded on my back again and then raised his fists in the air, jumping up and down like he was a fighter about to walk out to the ring. “Let’s fucking go,” he yelled, and then next thing I knew, I was also jumping up and down like a lunatic too.

If there was one person that could hype me up, it was my best friend. And yes, I was well aware of how sappy I was being today. I blamed it on the fact that I was about to play the biggest game of my career.

Feeling much better than I had earlier, I danced my way down the hall to get ready for the game and to kick Tyler Miller’s ass.

* * *

I walked into the locker room, noting the intense air in the room. Fuck, I didn’t usually get nerves. But this? This was the big time.

“Rookie,” Lincoln said with a nod, as he sat in front of his locker, wrapping tape around the handle of his hockey stick.

I nodded back, trying to look chill, cool, nonchalant, so to speak.

Lincoln Daniels was just a few years older than me, but he was the man.

I’d fucking wanted to be him for years. MVP almost every year, led the league in scoring, and a million endorsement deals. Who wouldn’t want to be him?

Another thing I was never going to admit, obviously.

“Well, you don’t look like you’re going to faint, that’s a start,” Ari, the burrito violator, remarked as he eyed me, looking cool as a cucumber leaning against his locker, already fully dressed.

Glancing around the room, I could see that most of the team was already dressed. Fuck, how early had everyone gotten here? We’d been doing practice, press conferences, social media videos, and about a million other promotional things since we’d won the Conference Finals. No one had told me that getting to the arena four hours early was a thing, too!

“Ah, there it is, the panic is properly settling in,” Camden, our other star defenseman on the team, tossed out.

“On a scale of one to ten, how badly are you shitting your pants right now?” Walker Davis asked, sounding way too casual as he strapped on one of his goalie pads.

“Since when are you so concerned with the state of my briefs, Disney?” I asked. “Not that I’m wearing any.”

Ari groaned in disgust, but all four of them were still eyeing me as I slowly walked to my locker.

All right…this was suspicious, my eyebrows rose because…

“What’s the fucking bet?” I growled.

Almost identical blank stares appeared on their faces. My jaw dropped. “I can’t believe you bet on me. Which of you were on my side?”

“Who do you think?” scoffed Ari, rolling his eyes so hard I was surprised they didn’t get stuck there.

I made the mistake of staring hopefully at Lincoln, and it was a mistake I paid for immediately.

Ari jumped up, his finger waving at me. “I knew it! I knew you were just like him!” His finger moved to Walker who was also staring hopefully at Lincoln.

This was a fucking disaster. So much for my plan of playing it cool.

“When are any of you going to give me the proper respect I deserve? I need simpage, people. And lots of it,” Ari snarled.

I shook my head in disgust…and amusement as I turned to my locker and started to get ready.

“So, Rookie, I don’t think we ever finished our texts this morning…how was breakfast?” Ari asked, his voice becoming innocent as he came up beside my locker.

“It was great,” I responded mildly. “Best I’ve ever had.”

Ari looked confused for a minute, before a big grin spread across his face. “Someone else ate one first, didn’t they?” He snorted and then began laughing so hard that he about fell over.

“I could have died,” I said indignantly, all my good intentions of acting cool going completely out the window.

“No one’s died because of a little kitty litter and hot sauce, Rookie,” Ari said, ducking the water bottle I’d just thrown at his head.

“Yeah, Rookie, stop being so dramatic,” drawled Camden.

“That was excellent simpage, Hero. Ten gold stars for you,” Ari said approvingly.

Camden preened, even though I knew he had no idea what the stars even meant. There seemed to be a moving target in this group as we worked to get into the Circle of Trust. Sometimes it was points, sometimes it was stars. Sometimes it was—well, it was a lot of things. This reward system was very confusing.

But it also worked very well. I was almost at the point where I’d do anything to add to my bank of rewards.

Hence, how I’d ended up posing in my briefs for Camden’s eighty-something-year-old friend Geraldine one night.

“Someone could have died,” I continued…as a terrible thought hit me. “Please tell me that was fresh kitty litter,” I begged, horrified at the alternative. I mean, Asher was still alive and not throwing up as far as I knew—and he’d eaten almost an entire rotisserie chicken after that—but still.

“What do you think I am? A monster?” Ari said, looking affronted.

“Wait…that’s what your inane text was, Rookie? Ari desecrated one of Mrs. Bentley’s burritos?” Walker suddenly asked in a horrified voice.

I waved at him. “ That was the proper response. Horror. Dismay. All the things!”

“Something like that could mean Mrs. Bentley cuts off her supply,” Lincoln said as he glanced at his phone, a video of Monroe—his wife—playing on the screen.

Ari stared at him, looking like he’d just been brutally betrayed. “You wouldn’t.”

Lincoln glanced up from his phone, his lips curled in amusement. “I would.”

I saddled up next to Lincoln and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “He would,” I said sternly.

Ari grinned, shaking his head. “Remind me never to include you in a joke, Rookie. Your presence gives it away immediately.”

I growled, but before I could say anything, music began to blare over the speakers.

Fuck, if T-Swift was already playing…I needed to get ready.

Hurrying back to my locker to finish getting my uniform on, the locker room erupted with dance moves that would have been embarrassing in most cases.

But we were the Dallas Fucking Knights.

So that was obviously not the case.