What I was not expecting was to find three men on the other side. Cole and Crew flanked my husband, whose arms were slung over their strong shoulders while they struggled to keep him upright.
Levi’s pupils were blown wide, and when his eyes landed on me, his lips curved into a loopy grin. “Whoa, you’re pretty.”
The stench of alcohol on his breath was so strong I took a step back, waving a hand before my face.
Leveling his teammates with a glare, I shouted, “What the hell, guys?”
“So, we had a little incident,” Cole began as they shuffled into the house as a unit.
I scoffed, trailing behind them as they made their way up the stairs. “Is that what we’re calling my husband getting wasted?”
Crew peeked back at me. “Okay, that part is our fault. But the reason behind it is legit.”
“Can’t wait to hear this,” I said under my breath.
They crossed the threshold of the owner’s suite, dumped Levi onto one of the armchairs in the small sitting area, then turned to face me.
“I take it you didn’t watch the game?” Cole hedged.
I shook my head. “No, why? What happened at the game?”
The twins shared a look.
Cole pulled out his phone. “Maybe it’s better if we show you.”
“Fuck, I can’t watch it again.” Crew shuddered, a hand shifting to cover his fly. “The sympathy pains are real.”
A video began playing, and Cole turned his screen around so I could watch. It was what I assumed was footage from tonight’s game, showcasing the Surf in white jerseys and their opponent in dark green. The players moved so quickly that my vision began to blur, and it was almost impossible to track the tiny black dot of the puck as it was passed across the ice.
“That’s Levi there.” Cole pointed to my husband. “And here it comes . . .”
Tilting my head, I continued to survey the action. “Here comes what?”
In a flash, one of the guys in green shot the puck, only to have Levi move into its path. The speeding rubber disc made direct contact with his groin, and a scream of horror clawed its way up my throat upon impact.
Holy shit, that had to hurt.
“Yeah.” Cole grimaced, turning off the clip shortly after Levi was seen collapsing to the ground.
“When the team doc took him to a training room to assess the damage, we could hear his howls all the way from the bench,” Crew added.
My eyes flitted to my husband, who was now passed out and snoring. “Don’t you guys wear cups?”
“We do.” Cole reached into his pocket to produce said piece of protective athletic equipment, and my eyes widened when I saw that the curved plastic featured a spiderweb of cracks, some so severe that they left holes. “But it isn’t meant to hold up against a seventy-five mile-per-hour wrist shot.”
“Jesus,” I breathed. I knew hockey was a violent sport, having heard about the heavy hits and fighting, but this took it to a new level.
“Probably saved him a ruptured testicle, though. Gotta find that silver lining.”
Placing my hands on my hips, I narrowed my eyes on Levi’s teammates. “And letting him get drunk as a skunk was part of the medical treatment for an injury of this nature?”
“Poor guy kept ice on his balls the entire flight home, but every tiny bump in the air made him whimper like a kicked puppy,” Crew said. “We figured a few drinks would at least let him sleep tonight.”
“A few? He couldn’t even walk when you brought him home.”
“It was three shots of tequila max, I swear.” Cole held his hands up. “But what he failed to mention before we took him out was that he tossed back a couple of painkillers on the plane.”
My irritation was immediately forgotten as fear gripped me in a chokehold. Unfortunately, I was intimately acquainted with the dangers of mixing alcohol with prescription drugs, and even though the man had been a pain in my ass since the day we met, he didn’t deserve to die in his sleep because his friends lacked sound judgment—despite having good intentions.
