Page 32 of Dangle

Clearing my throat, I held up the drink. “I know very little about football,” I said, with little else to say. There’d been no time for learning anything about any other sports growing up, not with the name Malachek. Well, I knew as much as I could about figure skating without actually being a skater, but that’s what happened when your mother was an Olympic gold medalist several times over.

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes the way the others had. Before he could say much of anything, I lifted my glass. “Thanks again, Tristan. This is great.” Then I wandered back to the seat I’d sat in earlier, making a note to have the guys bring me beer instead of getting my own drinks.

NINE

SLONE

Iclocked the boy the moment he stepped into the suite. The air shifted around me from the moment I felt him in my space. Not like an intruder, more like, fuck…something that was missing, only you hadn’t known what it was until it showed the hell up. God, I sounded fucking ridiculous.

He’d grabbed a beer and headed to the front row of seats and sat by himself, the rest of the guys eyeing him but giving him space. It…Jesus fucking Christ, it worried me. Like I even knew the kid. But it did. For the rest of the game, my attention stayed split until he stood up and took Ryan’s plate.

Eyes followed every step his feet took like I did whenever the team tapped me as the sniper for a mission. My mind documented his every move, every interaction, the way he carried himself…just everything.

So when he stopped in my direct line of sight to order a drink from the sexy as fuck bartender who was eons younger than me and whose eyes lit up, I pushed my plate away. The chair scooted back as I leaned forward, elbows rested on the table, arms folded over each other.

I tried to appear invested in the conversation going on around me. The Holts were talking hockey with the boys. Ewen, Priest, and Cam were talking about the latest craziness ourbuddy Hayden was up to with his husband, Declan, and their wife, Marcie. The three of them worked and followed Katie Carter across the country along with a couple of former Navy SEALS, Adam and Brock, who we also knew since Ewen, Priest, Cam, and I worked for Katie for a while. It’s how Priest and Cam met Bauer and Gavin. But other than a few muttered words and nonsensical hums and umms, my attention focused in on Trey and the bartender who grew more and more frustrated the longer the two interacted.

That would’ve worried me too, except Trey’s gaze met mine and stayed there while the bartender mixed whatever drink Trey ordered. When he tipped the dude, Trey turned back to him and the two of them laughed and talked.

“Your boy?—”

I interrupted Priest by protesting his labeling. “Not my boy,” I said.

Ewen, Priest, and Cam laughed. I ignored them. But then the bartender’s eyes met mine over Trey’s shoulder, and Trey turned slowly to gaze at me over his shoulder.

“Busted,” Ewen and Priest said.

“Fuck,” I groaned, blushing, rolling my eyes, and sitting back away from them so the urge to punch them in the throat didn’t get past the locked gate I had it behind.

Trey turned back around to the bartender, and several moments passed filled with more flirting than I cared to witness. Then his shoulders tightened, squared, the loose-limbed laughing kid turned to stoic marble, and he walked away, leaving the sexy bartender staring after him longingly. At least that’s the way it looked, and I hoped like hell I didn’t look the same when I watched Trey. Though that ship had sailed, if the looks my buddies gave me were any indication.

“Holy fuck!” Trey yelled, jumping to his feet, beating his fists against the glass.

Every eye in the suite not down next to the glass turned.

“Holy smokes, folks. A game-tying goal from Aiden Mercer with assists from MorrisonandSamuelson! Aiden Mercer is living up to his hype.”

“That he is.”

I pulled my gaze from Trey’s happy, smiling, beautiful face to watch the jumbotron. For a moment, the screen is filled with Aiden’s beaming face being dogpiled by his teammates, but then it cuts to the replay.

Shane Morrison skated side-by-side with a huge forward from Vancouver. They tore up the ice toward the net. Out of nowhere, Aiden Mercer bypassed Shane, flipped backward, and as he blazed across the ice from east to west in front of first Shane and then the guy from Vancouver, who had no fucking clue Aiden was there, Aiden swiped the puck right off the guy’s stick. The puck turned into a blur as he immediately passed it without even a glance. Gavin trapped the puck, passing it back to Shane, who pushed it over the blue line. Aiden flew toward the goal with Gavin and all three Vancouver forwards on his ass. Shane nudged the puck toward Aiden, and he was gone. The goalie and defenders didn’t even have a chance. Aiden scooped the puck up on his blade and slung it into the top corner of the net.

“He hit the NHL ice like he told the entire league to hold his beer.”

“You’re not wrong. On top of that, watching Samuelson, Morrison, and Mercer on a line together, you’d think they’d been playing together for years instead of a few weeks. The three of them almost seem to share the same brain.”

Those of us in the suite who weren’t sitting in the front row with Trey already rushed the glass. The hockey boys crowded the glass beside Trey, all of them beating the shit out of the glass. Isaiah and Isaac pushed the sliding glass panes of theowner’s suite open wide. The Maulers pushed through the opening as soon as the window opened in front of them. All of them screaming, “Go, Mercy!” The glass beating turned to beating the walls under the windows like they would the boards if they were on the bench for the goal.

Their presence didn’t go unnoticed, and soon their faces filled the jumbotron as they celebrated their friend and former teammate’s goal.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Prince of Hockey is in the house. Manchester Mauler and number one draft pick for the New York Warden’s, Trey Malachek, is in the owner’s suite cheering on his friend and former Mauler teammate, Aiden Mercer!”

“With what appears to be several of his MU teammates.”

The jumbotron screen split. On one side were Trey and his teammates pointing and screaming at Aiden down on the ice, while the other shows Aiden as he points back at them. All the boys’ faces are wreathed in smiles.

“Holy shit, we’re tied,” Bauer said, his hand covering his mouth, when the second period ended less than a minute later.