“...Shit,” Cole mutters.
“I want to talk to your handler,” I say slowly. “Move, Vance.”
Cole chokes on his own spit. “Handler?! Handler?! I’m not a German Shepherd!”
I stare at him until he groans, grabs Elias by the arm, and drags him toward the door. “C’mon, curls. Let’s go get the angry invalid his damn tea before he tries to propose with a heart monitor strapped to his chest.”
The second the door clicks shut, Viktor grunts, standing there like the wall he is. “Handler, Kade? Really?” he says, flat.
I smirk, shifting against the pillow. “Am I wrong?”
Viktor exhales through his nose like a man who’s witnessed every war crime this team’s ever committed and still somehow stuck around. “Unfortunately not.”
He moves closer. “What do you need, captain?”
My smirk fades. This part’s serious. “I need you to get the pants I was wearing when we crashed. Nurses probably have ‘em in a bag somewhere. I need you to take the ring.”
Viktor goes still.
“And I need you to book me a room in the same hotel you’re staying in for the next game.”
His brows lower. “Kade…”
I meet his stare. This man has been my best friend for years, he knows I won't back down no matter how much he glares at me. But he tries anyway.
“You’re in a hospital bed,” Viktor says flatly. “Plugged to damn wires. You flatlined twice. You can’t walk across the room, let alone into an arena.”
“I’ll handle it,” I say. The kind of tone that ends conversations. “Just do it.”
He watches me like he’s reading the real answer in my eyes, in my posture, in the way I haven’t flinched once since I said it. The silence stretches, long and sharp, until it’s nearly unbearable. And then, finally, he nods. A single, clipped motion of understanding. “You better not die on the way there,” he mutters, but there’s no heat in it. Just grit.
I grin, slow and crooked. “Not planning on it.”
Viktor turns toward the door, all solid muscle and quiet violence, already shifting into motion before I speak again. “Petrov.”
He pauses mid-step.
“Thank you,” I say simply, the words rough in my throat but honest. He grunts, that low, familiar sound that means without ever saying it, and walks out.
Five minutes later, the chaos returns. Correction, the chaos explodes through the door.
Cole’s arms are full of snacks, two drinks, and what looks suspiciously like an entire tray of fries. Elias is balancing a steaming cup of tea, a juice box, and a plastic-wrapped muffin with all the concentration of a surgeon.
They stop dead. “Where did he go?” Cole asks, eyes flicking around as if Viktor might be lurking in a shadow, ready to smite him for breathing.
“What do you care?” I tease, raising an eyebrow.
Cole glares. “I don’t. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t about to shove me into traffic.”
Elias snorts and sets the drinks down on the rolling tray. “Okay, tea, juice, extra napkins, and a questionable hospital muffin that I’m ninety percent sure is made of glue.”
“You spoil me,” I rasp.
“Shut up and drink.”
I let him lift the cup and bring the straw to my lips, just to see him grin. I could do it myself. My hands work fine. But he’s smiling again—really smiling, so I let him. Even when he starts feeding me bites of the muffin.
“Open,” he says.
