“I won’t.”
“And for the record, we all knew it wasn’t fake. At least not by the end. The way you looked at her…” He shakes his head. “That wasn’t acting. That was a man in love.”
One by one, the others join in. Zayden gives me a fist bump and a nod. Logan tackles me in a hug that nearly sends us both into the foot bath. Even Weston, who I’ve barely spoken to, grunts something that might be “we’re good” before retreating to his chair.
And then there’s Grayson.
He hangs back while the others disperse, his expression unreadable. We’ve never been close—for obvious reasons—and part of me expects him to take this opportunity to twist the knife.
Instead, he walks over and sticks out his hand.
“I was an asshole,” he says. “To Winnie. To you. I spread those rumors because I was pissed that she picked you over me, and that was a dick move.”
I stare at his hand. Then at his face. “You’re apologizing?”
“Don’t make it weird.” He shakes his hand impatiently. “Just take it.”
I take it. We shake. It’s awkward and uncomfortable—exactly how two emotionally stunted hockey players would handle a reconciliation.
“We good?” he asks.
“We’re getting there.”
He nods and walks away, and something that’s been tight in my chest for weeks finally releases.
“So,” Logan says, appearing at my elbow with his pedicure completed, toenails painted a shocking shade of electric blue. “How do we feel? Cleansed? Renewed? In touch with our emotions?”
“I feel like I need to do something aggressively masculine to counteract this experience.”
“Funny you should say that.” His grin is terrifying. “Because I have a plan.”
Two hours later, I’m covered in paint.
Blue paint. Green paint. An alarming amount of orange paint that I’m pretty sure Logan targeted me with specifically.
“Paintball was an excellent idea,” Archer wheezes, hunched behind a barricade next to me. “I’m so glad we did this.”
“You suggested it.”
“I was high on foot massage endorphins. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Across the field, I can hear Logan cackling as he unloads on the rookies, who made the mistake of forming an alliance and immediately turning on each other.
Zayden is somewhere on my left, methodically picking off targets with the precision of a sniper. Weston has gone full Rambo, streaking across the field with two guns blazing, looking like he’s been waiting his whole life for this moment.
Surprisingly, Rhys is terrifyingly good at this. He’s barelyvisible—a ghost slipping between obstacles—and every few minutes, someone yelps as a paintball hits them from an impossible angle.
“I think Rhys might be a secret assassin,” Archer observes.
“I think Rhys might be the only one of us who knows what he’s doing.”
A paintball whizzes past my head, close enough to feel the air displacement. I duck lower behind the barricade.
“This is chaos,” Archer says.
“This is perfect.”
And it is. It’s messy and loud and ridiculous—a bunch of overgrown children shooting each other with paint in the name of masculine bonding—but it’s exactly what we needed.
