Elias holds the bear closer, eyes shining. “I’m taking him to finals,” he adds solemnly. “He’s good luck. And smarter than Tyler.”
“I heard that!” Tyler yells from the locker room.
“He did too!” Cole cackles.
I step behind Elias, wrap an arm around his waist, and lean in to kiss the side of his sweat-damp temple. “You’re ridiculous,” I murmur against his skin.
“Tell Captain Jr. that,” Elias says, and shoves the bear in my face.
I take it.
God help me, I take the bear.
And now I’m holding a teddy in full Reapers gear while reporters snap a hundred pictures of my feral, ridiculous center. My husband-to-be. My brat. My everything.
Captain Jr. included.
The restaurant’s got low lighting, white tablecloths, and some poor piano player in the corner trying to bring ambiance to a room full of hockey gremlins in matching black-on-black. We’re not subtle. We’re not quiet. And we’re definitely not behaving. The staff gave up five minutes in, after Cole climbed onto the booth to yell at Shane for eating all the breadsticks.
I’ve got one hand on Damian’s thigh and the other wrapped around Captain Jr., who’s seated proudly next to my water glass, his tiny Reapers jersey freshly stitched with C.J. across the back. Thanks to Viktor, who mumbled something about “branding” and then stabbed his steak like it insulted him.
Cole’s leaned across the table, eyes bright, voice loud. “You realize you’re officially Reapers lore now, right?” he says between sips of something suspiciously neon-colored. “Like twenty years from now, they’re gonna have trivia nights, and one of the questions is gonna be ‘Who is Captain Jr. and who’s his slutty dad?’”
I raise my glass. “It me.”
“Tragic,” Shane mutters. “The downfall of modern hockey.”
“You’re just mad I got a teddy bear and you didn’t.”
“Shane has a rabbit foot keychain,” Tyler pipes up from the next table.
“That thing is cursed,” Shane deadpans. “I won’t sleep with it in the room.”
Cole snorts soda through his nose. Damian sighs beside me like he regrets every choice in his life that led to this dinner, but I catch the twitch of his lips anyway. I squeeze his thigh under the table. He doesn’t say a word, just covers my hand with his, thumb stroking along my knuckles.
One more game—that’s all we need. Win the next one, and we’re in the finals.
I glance around the table—Cole still chirping, Shane muttering, Mats and Viktor sharing a plate like war buddies, even Tyler, for once, not looking like he wants to die. We’ve been through war together. Blood, broken ribs, bruised egos. I’ve bled on that ice for them. They’ve bled for me.
Cole’s glass is empty. I hear the slurp, the straw scraping desperate against ice. And the moment it happens, his eyes dart. His gaze lands on Viktor’s glass, half full, crystal-clear, sweating down the side.
He’s already leaning before anyone can stop him.
“Don’t—” I start, too late.
Viktor just arches one heavy brow, watches with the patience of a man who already knows exactly how this ends. Cole grins, holds eye contact, and grabs the glass.
“Cheers, Petrov,” he says. “Sharing is caring.”
Viktor says nothing. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t warn him. And that should’ve been the clue.
Cole takes a sip—a siplike he’s downing mango daiquiri #2.
Then it hits.
His eyes blow wide as he chokes—once, then again—and then the coughing starts, full-body and brutal, that lungs-on-fire kindof hacking usually reserved for near-drownings or melodramatic movie deaths. He slams the glass down, grabs a napkin like it might save him, eyes watering, voice strangled beyond hope.“WHAT—IS—THAT—JET FUEL?!”
Viktor’s smirk could cut glass. “Vodka,” he says, like that explains everything. Which it does.
