Page 51 of Ruthless Game

Silver plated. Skinny band. The tiniest of diamonds in existence, like a speck of sparkling dirt. But it was all I could afford. I’d had to pay for it by taking multiple dogwalking jobs over the past six months and fixing up the Schwartzes’ neighbor’s deck, and still, when I forked over the cash, I was embarrassed. The clerk who worked at the jewelry shop side-eyed me.

“You’re a little young for an engagement ring, aren’t you?” he’d asked as he counted the bills.

My jaw went hard, even though I was worried that’s what everyone was going to say. What Emma’s parents were going to say.

Maybe what Emma herself would say.

I love you, Max, but we’re just kids and maybe this isn’t forever …

I shook it off. She’d never. She loved me. We were committed to this for the long haul.

“When you know, you know,” I told the clerk, who sighed but put the ring in a small, velvet box and slid it into the shop’s fancy bag.

“Well, congratulations. Or good luck.”

The unspoken you’re gonna need it followed me out of the store and onto my bike the Schwartzes had bought me. As I rode back to their house, I pictured Emma’s face in my head as I got down on one knee and asked her, imagined the feel of her hand in mine when I slid the ring onto her delicate finger, the feeling of her lips pressed to mine, the sound of her soft voice.

Yes, Max. Yes, I’ll marry you. Yes.

The feeling of her bare skin when I finally touched her.

We’d waited. I’d waited for to be ready. Not that I didn’t want her. I wanted her bad. Our frantic makeout sessions always ended with me in the shower, jacking off so hard my dick and hand hurt after. I couldn’t wait until I’d be inside her, but the timing needed to be right. For both of us. I was a virgin, just like her, and I wanted our first time to be magical, something we’d recall with fondness when we were old and gray.

But the ring wasn’t so I could finally fuck her. The ring was so I’d know she was mine, no matter what. I’d wanted to propose probably since I first met her, and definitely since I’d first kissed her, but I’d waited until we graduated last week to make it happen. Her parents were gone for the weekend, so it was just us and Jeffrey—the perfect time to make all our dreams come true.

With that thought, I biked so hard and so fast, I was home in half the time it usually took. Emma would be on her way back from swim practice soon, and I wanted to beat her there, so I could set up flowers and candles. Make it special and memorable.

Parking my bike by the front porch, I ran up the steps, more eager than I’d been when I’d laced up my first pair of skates. The house was empty, almost uncomfortably so. Turning on Noah Kahan to fill the silence—and because Emma loved Noah Kahan, almost as much as I love you, she’d tease—I set up candles around her bedroom and ripped rose petals off the stems, strewing them on every surface. I stuffed a few bouquets in vases I’d found in the kitchen.

That done, I surveyed the room. It wasn’t as perfect as I wanted it to be. Emma deserved to be proposed to in a hotel room at sunset, and then to have sex for the first time on five-million-thread-count sheets. But I was a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks, and this was the best I could give her.

Not good enough. You’ll never be good enough for her.

I shut that voice down.

Where did I go? Did I kneel on the rug and wait for her, or sit on the bed and get on one knee when she walked in? I paced back and forth in the bedroom, hands unsteady as I tried to decide what to do.

Kneel. That was the right choice.

I got down on one knee, taking the ring box out of my pocket to look at it again. It was as pathetic as the first time I’d seen it, but Emma would love it anyway. And as soon as I could, I’d buy her the biggest, fanciest rock I could find. Hell, I’d buy her a diamond every year once I hit the NHL. I’d give her every single thing she ever wanted, just to make her happy, because making her happy was my duty.

Just like she made me happy.

I love you, Max. Always and forever.

At that moment, my phone buzzed. There was a text from an unknown number, with a video link.

Probably spam.

I went to delete it, when a second text came through.

You’re going to want to see this, Max.

Only Emma called me Max.

So even though there was a voice screaming in my head not to look, that something was wrong with it, I needed to check.

I swiped the text open.