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I’m only half paying attention as the puck comes my way during practice, and I’m not taking stock of my teammates, which is admittedly terrible form. I snag the puck before it passes and spin around, heading down the ice. But Flip is right there, so I slam into him, knocking him down. I should offer him a hand, but I’m pissed that he walked into my bedroom and fucked everything up. If he hadn’t found out, Bea would still be in the loft, and the empty, gaping hole in my chest wouldn’t feel so fucking huge.
He scrambles to his feet and shoves me. “The fuck is wrong with you?”
Coach Vander Zee blows the whistle, but I’m already in Flip’s face. “You got in my way.” I’m not really talking about on the ice, though. The hit was completely my fault.
“I got in your way? Are you even paying attention to what’s going on around you? Or are you so fucking self-absorbed that you do whatever you want without considering the goddamn consequences?” He tosses his stick aside.
“Everything was fucking fine until you got in the way!” I shout, sending my stick flying as well.
Yeah. We’re not talking about the game at all.
Coach blows the whistle again.
Dallas tries to get between us, but we grab each other’s jerseys, elbowing him out of the way.
“I got in the way? I got in the fucking way? You’re the one getting in your own goddamn way!” Flip yells.
“That’s rich coming from you!” I shout back.
Roman skates over and pulls us apart. “This argument doesn’t belong on the ice.”
“What the hell is wrong with you two?” Coach looks to Roman. “You know what this is about?”
“I have an idea.”
Flip’s eyes flare. “You have an idea? You knew what was going on?”
Roman gives him a withering look.
Coach blows his whistle again. Shrilly. Two feet from my ear. “You two shower and change. I want you in my office in twenty. Roman, you go with them and make sure they don’t kill each other.”
I don’t argue. I head for the gate and Roman follows, Flip muttering behind him.
“I can’t believe you fucking knew, and you didn’t tell me,” Flip snaps once we’re in the locker room. He removes his pads, flinging them aside.
“That you didn’t know says more about your priorities than anything, Flip,” Roman fires back.
Flip frowns. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means if you were actually paying attention to something other than yourself, you might have clued in that there was something going on! I haven’t looked at anyone else since Bea moved in with us, dipshit.” I toss my pads on the bench.
“You’ve been lying to me this whole fucking time!”
“No, I haven’t.” Not once has Flip asked me who I’m fucking.
“You were sleeping with my sister behind my back the entire time she lived with us!”
“That’s not the same as lying,” I argue. Which is idiotic. I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway. And kept doing it.
“You betrayed me!” He points a finger at Roman. “And you kept his dirty little secret.”
“Well, considering your reaction, it seems like I made the right choice.” Roman crosses his arms. “I get that you’re upset, Flip, but you need to step back and get some goddamn perspective. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Tristan is a fucking mess. He’s playing like shit, he looks like shit, he’s not eating, and he’s been walking around for the past week with a black cloud of doom hanging over his head, doing a solid impression of Eeyore.”
“Thanks, man,” I grumble.
“I’m trying to help you out, asshole,” Roman snaps, then turns back to Flip. “Do you really think, if Tristan didn’t give some sort of a shit about your sister, that he would be this upset about whatever the hell is going on?”
“He’s upset that Rix moved out and he can’t get into her pants.” Flip storms off to the showers.
Roman shakes his head. “You two are idiots.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “Get your shit together, Tristan.”
He’s right. I’m in this predicament because I can’t be honest with myself about my feelings for Bea, let alone anyone else. But that doesn’t give me a way out of it.
I shower and change, and Flip and I get chewed out by the coach. Flip throws me under the bus and tells him I’ve been sleeping with Bea behind his back. Coach tells us to keep our personal lives off the ice and deal with our shit. If I can’t, I’ll end up on second line for more than just tomorrow’s game.
Flip and I ignore each other in the locker room and leave the arena separately. I can’t deal with being home. Everything about the condo reminds me of Bea. She left half a bottle of her lotion in the bathroom—it fell behind the garbage can—and I routinely sit around sniffing it, wishing she hadn’t moved out. So I end up going for dinner with some of the guys at our local watering hole, including Dallas, Roman, Ashish, and Hollis. It’s the one place we can go and no one makes a big deal about our presence. My appetite is for shit these days, but I order food anyway, hoping I’ll feel like eating it when it arrives. I miss Bea-made meals. I miss Bea period. Hollis gets a salad with cucumbers, and I barely resist the urge to yeet it across the room.
