Page 20 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys
I catch up with Sage in the hallway.
She has her bag slung over her shoulder, hair fraying at the edges from the static.
She stops when I catch up. “You ready for three days of team building?” she asks, her voice holding a laugh.
Hands stuffed in my pockets, I lean in just enough so only she hears. “I’m ready for you.”
She lets the words hang, then walks off, pace unhurried, like she knows I’ll follow.
Outside, the snow is falling again, fat flakes sticking to my jacket.
I watch her head disappear into the swirl, and I think about what it means to want something enough to risk breaking the ice you live on.
The retreat is three days away, but I already feel the crash coming. I don’t know if I want to stop it.
I don’t know if I can.
All I know is I want to see what happens when we’re both out of excuses, both out of rules, and nobody left to blow the whistle.
4
GREY
The lodge looks nothing like the brochure.
They say “mountain rustic,” but what they mean is: spent three million on antler light fixtures and ran out of money for everything else.
The place smells like fake pine and real dust, and if you squint, you can still see the stains from every corporate retreat that came before us.
The only reason anyone is excited is because the schedule saysno curfewin red ink, but I know what that means—Ryland is going to wake us at five for trust falls and war games anyway.
I hate these things.
All the forced bonding and fake concern about our “mental fitness” that’s really just them praying we don’t get caught vaping or fighting in public.
I step over a pile of branded duffel bags dumped by the entrance.
A documentary camera swings my way and I snarl at it, hoping they’ll use the footage.
Beau is already holding court in the main hall, feet up on a driftwood table, voice dialed up for maximum echo.
Finn’s nowhere to be seen, probably staking out the best room or ignoring the welcome lecture in the gym.
I take the stairs two at a time, hoping the upper floors are less haunted by management’s good intentions.
No luck.
Even up here, every twenty feet there’s a motivational poster.Rise Above. Hustle. Relentless.
The last one is mounted crooked.
I wonder how long it would take to find a ladder and hang it upside down.
On the second-floor landing, I catch a glimpse through a warped window: the entire mountain slope is melting into slush, so even if the ropes course was a real thing, we’d all just die of exposure.
I hear someone yelling below—Ryland, probably, already threatening to make us run drills in the snow.
I duck through a fire door and end up in the staff wing, which is where the air changes from chlorine and Axe spray to something faintly medicinal.
