His eyes stayed on me another second too long before he said quietly, “You really hate hockey players that much?”
The question caught me off guard.
I tossed the ping-pong ball lightly between my palms. “Hate is the wrong word. I grew up around athletes, so know is more fitting.”
“They’re harmless.”
“Says the athlete.”
That got another small, real laugh out of him.
“I’m serious,” I said. “You all have this thing.”
“What thing?”
“The ego. The addiction to attention. The inability to act normal for more than six minutes at a time.”
“Six is generous.”
“And hockey players are the worst.”
“That feels targeted.”
“It is targeted.”
His smile deepened slightly, and those dimples assaulted me without remorse. “You saying I’m a stereotype, Bennett?”
“I’m saying I’ve met enough hockey players to know better.” I lifted the ping-pong ball and pointed it at him. “And my name is Bliss, not Bennett. I’m not your goalie.”
Something shifted in his expression then. Like I’d finally said something nobody else usually did. Before I could think too hard about that, Briggs shoved another drink into my hand.
“Hydration,” he announced.
I smelled the glass and almost passed out. “This is vodka.”
“Potato water.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Cade looked mildly horrified. “Don’t encourage him.”
“Too late,” I said.
And somehow, despite the noise and the people and the constant interruptions, talking to him still felt weirdly easy.
Natural.
The room exploded again around us after Rider missed the shot, Briggs screaming loud enough to qualify as a public disturbance while somebody somewhere near the kitchen started chanting for tequila like they were trying to summon it from a mythical underworld. Music pounded through the walls. People shoved past us carrying drinks. Someone nearly tripped over the edge of the couch and recovered with the unearned confidence of a man who absolutely should not be trusted near stairs. From somewhere upstairs, the mysterious hot tub guy screamed one more “Hot tub!” before a girl yelled back that nobody trusted him near bubbles unsupervised.
Hockey House felt less like a party and more like a controlled structural failure with neon Fury lights.
Beside me, Cade watched the room with that same calm expression that somehow never fully cracked no matter how loud things got around him. Like the chaos didn’t touch him the same way it touched everyone else. Or maybe he was just better at hiding it, because every time I thought I had him figured out, he did something inconveniently quiet and observant that made my brain trip over itself.
Cade Mercer did not move like the rest of them. Briggs filled rooms by detonating inside them. Easton watched Aura like his life had quietly rerouted around her existence. Rider looked like boredom had been carved into a person and given good cheekbones. But Cade stood in the middle of all that noise like he had been built to withstand impact.
Which was deeply unfair, considering I was trying very hard not to find him interesting.
I turned toward him slightly, raising my voice enough to cut through the music. “Okay, this is officially impossible.”
