“Jenner and Braxton get to come too.”
Braxton let out a whoop from behind me. “Free foodanda show? This day just got a whole lot better.”
“I’m so happy I might cry.” Jenner clapped his hands. “Watching Maddox eat crow is a rare treat.”
“Can it, Knight!” Maddox barked. “In this building, I’m your coach, not your best friend. You’d do well to remember that.”
“Fair,” Jenner mused. “I can hold it in until we reach our destination. It’ll be worth the wait.”
Gotta love my buddies for having both my and Gemma’s backs. They weren’t going to let Maddox off easy, especially since his apology would likely be uttered through gritted teeth to appease his wife.
“I’ll be at Archer’s. You idiots can meet me there.” Our coach turned on his heel and walked away.
Jenner gripped my shoulder. “You know, if Gemma hadn’t looked so shell-shocked yesterday, I’d have started a slow clap for the way she got Bristol to go off on Maddox. No matter how tough he likes to act, it’s nice to know she’s got his balls in a jar.”
My laughter echoed throughout the room. Yeah, she sure did.
The middle of the day was quiet in a place like Archer’s. With staffing on the light side, Maddox was at the bar ordering our food while the rest of us settled in at a table in the back corner.
Jenner eyed his best friend. “You’d think he would have learned his lesson after the shit he pulled with Evie.”
When I’d joined the team a few years back, Jenner had been single—miserably so. He and Evie were divorced, and she was living back with her family in Oklahoma. But she came back, and they’d remarried. Maddox, being the protective brute that he was, hadn’t taken it easy on the woman who’d broken his buddy’s heart, giving her a hard time until Jenner was forced to set him straight.
“If Dakota were here, she’d say his heart was in the right place,” Braxton said. “Even if she spent all of last night commiserating on the phone with Bristol, validating the choice to kick him out of their bedroom until he made it right.”
Stretching my legs beneath the table, I sighed. “Kinda botched the great first impression I was hoping for after talking up how the team is one giant family.”
Braxton snickered. “Pretty sure you made up for it with animpressionof your own.”
Jenner’s brows drew down. “What are you talking about?”
Cracking his knuckles, Braxton sat back in his chair. “Oh, I was just minding my own business, having doubled back to the locker room because Dakota’s phone must’ve fallen out of her jacket when we grabbed them to go home, when I heard this weird banging sound.”
“Banging sound? Like pipes knocking or something?”
“It was louder than that, a heavier thumping almost.” His whiskey eyes sparkled, watching me shift in my seat. “I was able to trace it to the physical therapy room. But you can imagine my surprise when the door was locked.”
“Wait. That door’s never locked,” Jenner remarked with a tilt of his head.
“That’s exactly what I said!” Braxton’s lips curved into a wicked grin.
Yeah, he was lining up for the kill. And I knew better than to try and stop him. The minute I opened my mouth yesterday inside that room and made Gemma come so loud her screams still echoed in my ears, I knew what we did would circulate. A hockey team was no better than a bunch of high-school girls when it came to gossip. They ate that shit up.
Jenner placed his crossed forearms on the table, leaning in. “Did you ever figure out what it was?”
Braxton slid his gaze to me. “Why don’t you ask Goose?”
“Why would I ask—“ Jenner’s brown eyes went comically large. “No fucking way!Youwere the banging? Or should I say, the one doing the banging? In the physical therapy room?”
“The fuck?” Maddox’s booming voice had all three of us whipping our heads to face him, identical guilty expressions on our faces. His narrowed eyes landed on me. “Don’t you have a home?” He dropped into a seat, arms folded, expression stormy. “You seriously couldn’t control yourself?”
Jenner tried to come to my defense. “Aw, come on. You know what it’s like at the beginning, when it’s all hot and heavy, and you can’t get enough of each other.”
Maddox held a hand up, silencing him. “I know the lines get blurred because you play a game for a living, but that’s our place of business. You need to treat it as such.”
Braxton fake coughed. “Says the guy who was getting blown under his desk with McCall in the room.”
Well, shit. This just got interesting. Time to grab the popcorn and see how this plays out.
