Chapter 11

Dash: Are you alive?

After countless rewrites and a couple of hours of thinking over what to send to Madison, that was all I came up with. Are you alive? At least it sounded better than my original, mildly threatening message of: If you don’t tell me where you are in the next ten seconds, I’m going to break the nose of every guy you’ve uttered a word to on campus until you get back in my bed.

Madison apparently made me unhinged.

Madison: Good morning, Big Man. Did you have a good sleep? I know I did. I believe this text answers your question.

Even through texts, she was just so…chipper. Wasn’t her brain frying over what happened between us like mine? Was she just going to go back and pretend like nothing happened? Yes, we agreed to one night, but she was the last person I’d actually expect to go through with the promise. I should be happy about it, but something about her aloofness was ticking me off.

Dash: Where did you go?

Madison: When?

Dash: Really? You’re going to play it like you don’t know what I’m talking about. After everything that happened between us last night?

Madison: What’s so different about last night?

Dash: You know perfectly well.

Madison: I’m just keeping to the rules. One night just between us, right?

My jaw clenched as I clutched my phone, angry with how this was going. In all honesty, not having her in my bed this morning pissed me off, and the fact that she was so happily toying with me now just soured my mood further.

Dash: What’s gotten into you?

This wasn’t like Madison. She was eager. She was a teacher’s pet. If she enjoyed herself, she’d be all over me, trying to get another round in and convincing me we could keep a relationship between us a secret. But she wasn’t, which was starting to make me question my performance.

Madison: If you want to get technical, you got into me.

Dash: Madison.

Madison: Dash.

Dash: You’re being ridiculous.

Madison: Am I? We said one night, right? What’s the problem? We had one night. Did you want me to thank you for it?

Dash: No.

Madison: Thank you, Sir Dash-a-lot. I appreciate you sharpening your sword on me. I think we can both agree it broke through plenty of barriers. *wink* *wink*

Madison: How was that? Is that what you were looking for?

I rolled my eyes because she was driving me insane. I mean, shit. She made me feel like I was overreacting about the entire thing. Like she did this with other guys all the time. I couldn’t figure out where to go next with her.

I ran a hand through my hair in aggravation because all I could think about was Madison. Kissing her was my first mistake, falling for her twisted logic was my second. I could say it wasn’t my fault because there were two things blurring my decision: my dick and her perfume, but that would be a lie.

I’d been thinking about her so much that I was willing to fuck everything up for that one night. I knew it was a bad decision, but I also knew that it would be the best bad decision of my life, so I did it anyway. Having Madison right there for the taking, telling me she wanted me, was too much of a temptation. And yes, I’d love another round, but damn, I’d never imagined I’d be the one trying to feel out if she was interested in it too.

Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.

Cade’s voice was haunting me like when I had a funky smell in my hockey bag, only to find out there was an old banana in there. I knew what I did last night was bad, yet it wasn’t stopping me from talking to his sister this morning. I could lie to myself and say it was because I wanted to make sure she got home safe, but what good would that do now? I’d already slept with her and tasted the forbidden fruit.

I wanted more, and I knew it was wrong. So, so wrong.

Without responding to Madison, I shoved my phone in my pocket as I made my way through the locker room and did the thing I should have done last night. I ignored the temptation.

Most of the team were already ready for practice, but my shower at home took longer than necessary, which was mainly down to the fact that I had a huge boner, and every time I tried to do something about it, all I heard was Cade’s voice in my head.

Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.

The guilt was dripping from my sweat at this point, and I could only hope the feeling would subside the further I got from the event. However, if my feelings today were anything to go by, I was screwed. And not in the good way.

By the time I got to my locker, another message from Madison had come through. The right thing to do would be to shove my phone in my bag and forget about it, but when it came to Madison, the temptation was too great.

Madison: Oh, by the way, did you find my panties? I couldn’t find them, so I had to walk home commando.

My eye twitched, and I did my best to maintain my composure because now all I could think about was how much I regretted not taking more time to taste her and commit her beautifully naked body to memory.

Madison: I hope they aren’t too wet.

I coughed loudly, choking on my own spit, and Erik slapped my back as he walked past me, toward his locker.

“You okay, man?”

“I’m good.” It was strained and a little lackluster, but I was thankful that he hadn’t looked at my phone screen and seen why I was so choked up. When he walked away, I quickly texted her back.

Dash: Can we talk about this later? I need to get on the rink for practice.

Madison: Practice, eh? Are you going to hump the ice, and then stretch your thighs out with your foam roller after?

Dash: Yes?

Madison: The images in my mind right now are obscene.

I shook my head, letting out a hint of laughter before knocking shoulders with one of my teammates. “Sorry,” I mumbled, only looking up when the guy in front wouldn’t move.

Fuck.

I immediately dropped my phone because there was no way he could see what was on my screen. I winced as it crashed to the ground. My only saving grace was that it had an unbreakable waterproof case on it.

“Cade.”

Cade’s wide, grinning face was looking at me like he knew something I didn’t. “Gosh, D. I’ve never seen you like this. Is this because of Reporter Girl?”

“Sure,” I quipped as I dropped to pick up my phone, staring at the blank screen.

“You better watch yourself. You’ve had one night with her, and she’s already got your balls in a vise. Your hair’s a mess, you aren’t dressed for practice, and you’re staring at your phone like a zombie. I get it, she’s probably great in the sack and you don’t exactly get around much, but is she worth screwing up your pretty much guaranteed contract with Atlanta for?” I pressed my lips shut, and Cade’s eyes widened. “Oh, she is. Well, unless she’s sleeping with the rest of us, she’s definitely not worth the extra drills we’ll have to do for your tardiness, so get your ass in gear and let’s go.”

He gestured to my lack of pads, and I rolled my eyes.

“I’m not late. It only takes me thirty seconds to get my padding on, and then I’m done.”

“Thirty seconds? I don’t have much to worry about then. Sounds like Reporter Girl might be disappointed soon, anyway.”

I pushed past him and mumbled, “Trust me, she wasn’t disappointed.” Dumping my phone in my locker, I pulled out my padding and started to put it on.

Cade dropped next to me and shunted my shoulder. “I was just joking. In all seriousness, I’m happy for you, man. I’ve never seen you this happy and disgruntled at the same time. It must mean she’s something special.”

I gulped, because how the hell was I supposed to keep this secret from him for the rest of my life? How could I look my best friend in the eye and not hear ‘traitor’ in the back of my head every single time he smiled at me? What the hell was I supposed to do when Madison and Cade were in the same vicinity?

Cade leaned in. “Word on the street is something big is happening on the ice today. Any ideas on what it is? ”

“Nope.”

“Figured. You’re too drunk on pussy to be concentrating on the fact that the entire locker room has been talking about something while you’ve been glued to your phone.”

“They have?” Sure enough, when I glanced at the rest of the team, they were all in huddles, whispering as they strolled out to the rink. Just as they were leaving, Scotty looked over his shoulder and gave me an uneasy glare.

“Hey, Hendricks. What’s going on?” I called out.

“New guy,” Erik responded for Scotty.

“New guy?” With furrowed brows, Cade looked at me with confusion. We were only a few weeks into the season, so it made no sense that new transfers were already being recruited.

“I guess we should go and find out.” I turned to my locker, pulled out my skates, and started to lace them up. Cade waited, and we made our way to the rink together. Since no one was moving, I pushed my way to the boards and stood next to Scotty, surprised to see a player already on the ice in all black, skating lengths.

With a stick in one hand, he was handling the puck with ease, and as much as I hated to admit it, he was good. Really good. How he was able to transfer here without it becoming headline news was beyond me because he must have been a starter for another D1 team.

Even after scoring from halfway across the rink, he didn’t let the fact he had an audience break his concentration. He was focused and took another puck, ran it up to the other goal, and scored from an almost impossible angle. The guy had accuracy, that was for sure.

Erik let out a low whistle as he looked at Alex with concern. His face was a little paler than usual, which could have been because he was cold on the ice, but I doubted it. He was used to the temperature. No, I assumed Erik looked like he wanted to vomit because the guy was good, and with skills like that, I could only assume he was an attacker, so there was a very real possibility that Erik could get replaced.

When the new guy finally decided to stop showing off, he made his way over to us and let his blades slide across the ice as he came to a stop in front of the door.

His eyes looked familiar, and it was only after he pulled his helmet off that I recognized his off-center nose.

The one I broke.

Henry Newman.

One by one, the team entered the rink, giving the new guy a high-five and a bro hug. Oh, how easy it was for them to accept him, but no one knew what he was really like.

A lying cheater.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, it was just Cade and me left on the side, and we glanced at each other knowingly. Neither one of us wanted to get on that ice with him, but we knew we’d have to.

“I’m Henry.” He had this forced, fake smile on his face as he waved his gloved hand to the rest of the players he hadn’t said hello to yet. “And I’m looking forward to being on the team.”

He sounded almost nice, but I knew his game. I was pretty sure that was how he convinced Madison that he wasn’t a cheating asshole in high school.

I blew out an annoyed breath because I thought we had gotten rid of this guy. We’d made sure that the rest of the team gave him a hard time in high school after we left, so why would he come here? The college that he knew we attended.

Looking at my teammates, I was surprised at how happy they were. Yes, he was a good player, but how were we going to break it to them that we had a traitor amongst us?

Or at least another one, since I was currently the biggest traitor this team had ever seen.

As Henry talked to a couple of our teammates, Cade pushed past me and skated toward him. When he got close enough, he barged through our other teammates, taking Henry by surprise.

“Oh, Cade. Hi,” Henry said as Cade skated closer. So close that Henry had to skate backward and ended up hitting the board.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Cade gritted out. Scotty was by Cade’s side and pushed in front of him, making himself a physical barrier between the two players.

“What the fuck are you doing, Bright?” Scotty glared at Cade in disappointment. Cade was breathing so heavily, I could see his shoulders moving under the padding, and he was gripping his stick like he was trying to hold himself back.

Henry rounded his shoulders and adjusted his jersey before cracking his neck. He was shaken, but as he stood taller in his skates, I could tell he was trying to hide it with bravado. “We’re old teammates,” he answered to the group.

“Guessing it didn’t end well,” Scotty mumbled.

Henry ignored Cade’s snarls and slid forward, holding his stick with more confidence now. “He hates me because I dated his sister a few years ago. Don’t see what the big deal is. It was just a couple of dates. She’s over it. I’m over it. It was nothing special.” He shrugged it off, and I couldn’t think straight. All I could see was red, because now it wasn’t just Cade who wanted to kill him.

It was me.

Nothing special? Madison was extraordinary, and no one got away with talking about her like that. I hadn’t really registered what I was doing until Henry let out a strangled groan as his body slammed against the plexiglass.

“Whoa,” Erik breathed out, and I turned to see everyone glaring at me.

Whoops, did I do that? Well, shit. Now I needed to come up with a plausible explanation for why I held a grudge against him too.

“He slept with my girlfriend in high school,” I quickly said to no one in particular.

It was then that the whole rink took a simultaneous intake of breath. “Ouch,” Erik muttered with his hand over his mouth. Leaning in, he elbowed Alex and whispered, “Dude, this shit is better than The Baseball Bachelor .” Did he really think we couldn’t hear that in a quiet, echoey rink?

“Sleeping with is a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Henry retorted.

Why was this kid not scared of us? Had he grown some balls since we last saw him?

“I was a gawky sixteen-year-old, and a popular senior girl asked me to kiss her under the stairs. I only realized she was your girlfriend after you broke my nose. You didn’t exactly show her off.”

“He broke your nose?” Erik asked in shock. Really? Was it that surprising? We’d done worse on the ice last week.

Henry nodded and pointed to his rearranged snout, giving me a moment to admire my handiwork. I didn’t usually take pride in giving guys deviated septums, but he deserved it, and I really liked that it knocked off the symmetry of his face.

“Please don’t tell me this is something I’m going to have to tell Coach about.” Scotty sighed. “Because we’re a team, not a reality show.”

“You don’t need to tell Coach Hansen anything. It’s fine. Nothing we can’t get over,” I replied curtly.

“We can be friends, I promise.” Henry’s words sounded like a taunt, but I’d give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

“Why are you here, Newman?” Cade sneered.

Henry wasn’t riled by Cade. Apparently, he’d grown a backbone since we last saw him. “I’m here for the same reason as everyone else. I want to play hockey and win games.”

Scotty pulled Cade back, giving Henry space to stand on his own two skates. “But weren’t you at Southern Collegiate? They win all the time. Why would you transfer here?”

“Because, unlike most of you, I wasn’t eligible for the draft in high school. I don’t have four years to build up a camaraderie with my teammates. I need to prove myself this year, and if I want to do that, I need to find the right team.”

“And you thought a team with me and Cade was your best bet?”

“Believe me, you’re better than the assholes over at Southern Collegiate. We might not be besties, but you can’t deny that we played well together.”

Although his reasoning made sense, I didn’t believe him. How could I? He was a cheat and would have fit right in with those idiots at SoCol. In fact, I had no doubts that he probably arranged this with that college just to fuck with our team dynamic.

Well, he had another thing coming if he thought he could do that.

But then another thought passed through my mind. Did he know Madison attended Covey U? Was he here to try to get her back? That wasn’t going to happen. I’d kill him if he fucked with her.

“Bright! Off the ice,” Coach hollered. “If you can’t play nice, then you can’t play at all.”

“But—”

“Don’t ‘but’ me.” Then he pointed to me. “You too, Bridges. I think you both need to cool down.”

“What did I do?” I snarled.

“You pushed the new guy into the wall. As much as I’d like to see that hot head of yours come out more during games, I don’t want you using force against teammates. Teammates. Remember that word. Nothing comes before your team.”

I shook my head and skated beside Cade as we made our way off the ice to our punishment. Cade didn’t have a problem bumping shoulders with Coach as we skated past. “If you don’t want a reaction like that, then maybe next time you should consult team members before you change the roster. Where’s he going to go? All the lines are full.”

Cade had balls, I’d give him that.

Coach sighed. “Coaching by committee is not a thing here. You need to get your head out of your ass and remember that I get paid to make decisions about the team. Not you. You play for as long as I allow you to, and if you keep acting like a petulant child, you’ll be off the ice until next semester.”

Cade grumbled as he put his guards on and stomped through the locker room before whacking his stick against the bench and breaking it in two.

“Calm down, C,” I said, sitting on the bench in front of my locker.

“How the fuck do you expect me to be calm when that asshole is out there playing on our team while we’ve been relegated to the weight room?”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the locker, trying not to think about it.

“He fucked your girl in the school hallway, and you’re acting like it was nothing.”

“They weren’t fucking, and he was right. He did me a favor,” I replied, thinking about Madison. The only good thing about catching them was that she found out he wasn’t all that into her. Oh, and I suppose it also gave me a reason to threaten guys with murder if they hurt Madison. “Amy’s out of my life, chasing someone else’s jersey.”

“And he’s right back in ours, being the worst teammate possible.”

“It’s going to be fine, Cade.”

“I want to murder the guy, so I’m not sure how you can say that it’s going to be fine.”

“Murder? Really? Don’t you think that’s a little overdramatic? Maybe he’s right. Maybe we need to forget everything that happened in high school.”

Cade glared at me, shaking his head. “He broke my trust by dating my sister behind my back, and then he cheated on her with your girlfriend. Do you know how many nights I had to listen to Madison thinking she was sobbing so quietly I couldn’t hear her because of that guy? He deserves more than that broken nose you gave him.”

My fists clenched because Cade had never mentioned that to me before. I had no idea Madison was so upset over that idiot. Sure, she cried when she found him cheating, but I thought that broken nose had made her feel better.

“I agree,” I replied without question and swallowed down the lump in my throat. If Henry deserved more than a broken nose, then I deserved to burn in the pits of hell for all eternity.

Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.

Guilt riddled my bones because what made me better than Henry in all of this? Arguably, I’d done worse, and not because I’d slept with Madison, but because Cade wasn’t just my teammate. He was my best friend. Why the hell did I let my dick do all the thinking last night?

“But if we want to take Henry down, then we’ve got to be smart about it. Beating him up is exactly what he wants. That gets us benched, and then he’s got the higher ground. Think about it.”

“I don’t want to think about it. I just want to punch him in the nose.” Cade glared and pointed at my face. “He better not live with us.”

I nodded. “He won’t. There’s no room on our floor, but I’ll speak to Scotty when he’s off the ice, just in case.”

Cade shook his head, pulling his skates and the rest of his gear off before heading to the showers, muttering annoyances to himself. I leaned my head against my locker and closed my eyes.

Henry wasn’t here to play games. Not on the ice, at least. I would figure out what made him transfer, but that wasn’t my top priority right now. Madison was. She’d been hurt by Henry before, and now he was back. Someone had to tell her that he was here, and it felt like I was the only appropriate person to do it. Cade thought she trusted me after all and wanted me to see what was up with her, giving me the perfect excuse to see her without suspicion.

So I was going to do it. I’d see Madison, warn her about Henry, and then leave. What was the worst that could happen? I inwardly laughed because I knew damn well I was only making up these excuses in my head because I wanted to see Madison again. Even if it was for just a minute.

I had it bad. I knew that, and even though I wasn’t sure how this was going to end, I couldn’t stop myself from finding out.