Page 68 of The Triple Play

“I didn’t. Fuck, I’m sorry,” Xavi added. “I’m so sorry. Genuinely. I wasn’t thinking.”

I took a deep breath in, trying to steady myself, trying to bottle it all back up, neat and tidy, the way I’d always done, always had to do. “Yeah. You weren’t thinking.”

Cole swallowed, slowly lowering his hand from my chest once he’d decided I wasn’t going to hit Xavi. “You’re both right,” he said carefully, his eyes narrowing as my nostrils flared. “Xavi hasn’t gotten as much time with her the last few days. He deserves some. And you’re right for calling him on his words. But we’ve got to figure out something so none of this happens again.”

Xavi took another step back and pushed his fingers through his hair, looking away from me in what I imagined was either shame or irritation.

“This isn’t going to work if we’re getting jealous of one another. And it’sdefinitelynot going to work if one or two of us are hogging Annie more than we should be,” Cole continued, nodding once to me. “So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to be really fucking careful for the next week and make sure she’s not spotted. We’re going to try to give each other equal time with her. But most importantly, you and I are going to go out for a drink, Colton, like you suggested.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Xavi protested, but his words were almost resigned.

“No, he needs to cool off before we go back to the room. It’s notjustfor your benefit, Xav,” Cole said.

“I’m fine,” I muttered.

“You’re not. And that’s okay.” Cole placed one hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently. “Let’s get you dressed and then we can go play a few slots on the strip with a drink. All right?”

I held his gaze, trying to work out a way out of this, a way that didn’t end up with me outside of that hotel room. In honesty, I didn’t want to go for a drink, didn’t want to play slots, didn’t want to be anywhere else but the Bellagio. Didn’t want to be away from her.

“Yeah,” I breathed. “Fine.”

“Xavi, go back to the suite. Spend some time with Annie. Maybe try to figure out a way to keep her out of sight for the Seattle game.” Cole glanced over his shoulder at Xav. “But don’t?—”

The sound of flip-flops padding through the locker room made us all pause. Xavi moved first, eyes wide as he walked toward the shower entrance and peered around the corner. “Hey, Sergei,” he said, his voice a little hoarse.

Shit. How long had he been in the locker rooms? I could haveswornI’d checked to make sure everyone had left.

But more importantly, how much had heheard?

Chapter24

Annie

Two weeks and a day. I blinked and it was over.

It felt like I’d lived a whole different life in that stretch of time, one so far apart from Atlanta and all the heaviness I hadn’t wanted to deal with. The Fire won five of the seven games on the road, tight, brutal games that had me on the edge of my seat or screaming at a ref who absolutely couldn’t hear me, my heart pounding with every slap of the puck. I still wasn’t totally used to being in the crowd for the chaos of it all, seeing the speed and violence and precision in real life instead of on the screen, but god, I’d loved every second of it. It was so much better than catching quick clips on the big screen at Smokey’s or watching with my dad in between writing essays in high school.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually gone away as an adult. My last memorable vacation had been before I got my degree, the summer between high school and college, and although Dad had spent exorbitant amounts of money on it, it wasn’t as satisfying. Dad had taken me to Greece and Italy, but it had just been us. There was no waking up in crisp white sheets wrapped in one or two or even three sets of arms, there were no gentle forehead kisses in the middle of the night or stolen moans.

For the last two weeks, though, I’d played house in hotel rooms, been spoiled on room service, had late-night conversations under dim bathroom lights, and came more times than I could count on all of my fingers and toes. I’d written five new songs.Five, and I was actually proud of them. My notebook was starting to fall apart at the spine from scribbles of chord progressions and chunks of lyrics, and I wasn’t even upset about it.

I hadn’t thought about Elliot more than a handful of times during the whole trip. For the most part, I’d shut my phone off when I was in the hotels, using a spare old one of Cole’s without a sim on Wi-Fi. The weight that had lived in my chest before we’d left had uncoiled just a little. I’d laughed more, slept better, even when I hadn’t slept much at all — and I felt more like myself than I had inyears.

So touching back down in Atlanta felt a bit like waking up from a dream I wasn’t entirely ready to wake up from yet. It meant coming back to real life, using my phone, and going to work.

Most of all, it meant seeing my dad. As much as I loved him, it was still a dread and not a want. I couldn’t help but feel like maybe I’d be able to play him one of my new songs and he’d understand, as insane as that sounded.

But I knew Dad. I knew that wasn’t how it would happen, especially not after his text.

————

Dad: Come by this evening. We need to talk.

No warmth whatsoever. Just eight words with all the warmth of a cease and desist letter. My stomach had been in a knot since the second it had come through, which had conveniently been about five minutes after I’d walked through the doors of my apartment.

I was exhausted from my flight, but I knew the guys wouldn’t be getting home until tomorrow morning at the earliest, and I had nothing else better to do — so I drove the thirty minutes it took to get just outside of Atlanta on I-75, then took the back roads I knew by heart.

The long, winding driveway looked exactly as it always had. Neatly trimmed hedges, a line of white oaks and crepe myrtles guarding either side like the estate needed protection from the troublemakers who didn’t stand a chance of getting past the gates anyway. The grass was a sickly green in that overwatered, landscaped-to-high-hell kind of way, and the fountain in the loop still sprayed like it had any business being there at all. I could still hear Dad screaming at me the day I decided to swim in it when I was seven.

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