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“What do you mean?” Cole asked, moving gracelessly into warrior pose while goose bumps raced across his exposed chest and arms. He was fucking freezing.
“It’s a rule,” Kev said from his other side. “You’ll get bathroom duty.”
“What the hell is bathroom duty?”
Leaning in close, Thom told him, “Boss makes us scrub the bathroom floors with a toothbrush.”
Cole’s jaw dropped. “He doeswhat?”
Both Kev and Thom snorted.
“Do you have something you’d like to share with the rest of the class?” Madigan asked, intimidating in mountain pose in nothing but his boxer briefs, tattoos, lumberjacked muscles, and a brow raised.
“If they swear,” Cole said, wide-eyed, incensed, “you make them scrub the bathroom floor with a toothbrush?”
Bursting into laughter, Tex folded forward so quickly the ratty cowboy hat he almost never took off toppled into the snow.
Madigan’s hands landed on his hips, his tattooed fingers flashing HOPE and FEAR in Cole’s direction. “I do not make them use a toothbrush.”
Patting Tex’s back while his laughter morphed into a coughing fit, Sam said, “That’s true. It’s more like a hairbrush.”
“It’s a cleaning brush,” Madigan insisted. “A perfectly normal bathroom cleaning brush. And I get a new one at Bud’s every month, so it never gets too gross.”
“Did he tell you about the bucket?” A round-bellied, middle-aged white man named Stanley asked, rubbing warmth back into his arms.
“There’s a bucket?” Cole could only stare at Madigan while the rest of the men started cracking up.
“It’s a perfectly normal cleaning bucket. For the soapy water—” Mad cut himself off, ran a hand through his hair. “You know what? Never mind. This concludes Madigan’s Pre-Wedding Snowga.” Glancing down at the still-snowy ground surrounding them, he sighed deeply. “Go get dressed. Breakfast in fifteen in the lodge.”
While the men shuffled through the snow back to their cabins, stopping every so often to hurl slushy spring snowballs at each other, Cole approached the groom. “How are you holding up?”
Madigan’s lips twisted. “It’ll be okay, right? It’ll be good. I won’t have a panic attack at the altar, right?”
“Do you even have an altar?” Cole asked.
“Wehadthat trellis thing. But now, we only have a…” He motioned vaguely in the air. “A spot on the floor where we’re supposed to stand.”
“That’s good,” Cole said. “Much less intimidating than an altar.”
When Madigan reached out, his big fingers wrapping around Cole’s arms, Cole wondered how one man could produce so much heat, like a living furnace. “You have to help me,” he pleaded, his furnace hands squeezing. “I was hoping snowga would mellow me out, but it barely took the edge off.”
Cole frowned. “Of your nerves? Maybe we should go for a run or something.” His frown deepened. “Not like I run unless I’m being chased.”
“It’s not my nerves,” Mad said. “I mean, it is my nerves, but mostly it’s that Ashley is apparently superstitious. She’s insisting we sleep in different rooms and keep our hands to ourselves until we’re married.”
“Ahhh,” Cole said, finally understanding.
“It’s only been five days, and I’m losing it! How did I go from abstaining for years to not being able to survive five days without sex? Every time I see her, every time I hear her voice, I want to tear her clothes off. I don’t know if I’m going to make it until tonight. I’m dying.”
“I thought blue balls being fatal was a myth,” Cole said, his toes going numb.
Madigan’s groan of a laugh was pure misery.
“Look,” Cole said, “you’re almost there. Just think about baseball or paying your taxes or—”
“Leprechauns.”
“That’s…a little niche,” Cole pointed out, trying to stomp some feeling back into his feet, his teeth chattering. “But whatever works. Now let’s go eat Mira’s tarts before my dick falls off.”
