“Don’t look at me that way. I’m fine,” I argued. Goose bumps raced over my arms and I shivered.
“You’re most definitelynotfine.” Ren’s hold around my shoulders tightened and he made a sound at the back of his throat. “You passed out last month and you’re not eating pizza. Only psychos don’t eat pizza.”
“I eat it, just not right now. The season’s really kicking in and I need to train. I need to get bigger. Pizza is trash.”
His face said he didn’t believe a word I’d said. “You’re already big.”
“But I need to getbigger.”
“Why?” Oli pressed a kiss against my bare bicep. My sleeves had been hacked off purposely, by the designer of course. “Ren’s right, you’re huge.”
“What’s that?” Ren cupped his hand around his ear. “Did you just say I’m right?” He stuck his finger in his ear and twisted it around like he was cleaning it out, then leaned closer.
“Fuck you,” Oli grumped back immediately.
Something warm and gooey settled behind my ribs as I watched them argue. Oli and I still hadn’t completely forgiven Ren for his scheme to break our hearts, but we weren’t exactly mad at him anymore, either. We had plans set in place for him to prove how sorry he was, and one of those involved going tosee his Uncle Errol and Barber tomorrow night. While Ren and Barber had spoken once, there was a lot of tension to resolve, and Ren had yet to meet the crazy uncle who’d taken Barber in when he’d first moved to New Gothenburg.
“Who’s playing tonight?” I stared at the TV. The New Gothenburg Blizzards were obvious in their blue-and-white uniforms, but their opponents were in yellow and there were several teams with that color.
“They play the Skyhawks.” Ren raised an eyebrow at me, then went back to scrolling on his phone before he made a sound of triumph. “I’m joining them.” He turned the screen so Oli and I could see. On his phone was a logo of a hockey player standing tall over a city while holding his stick. Around the picture were the words “The Homeward Bladezillas.”
“Are you kidding me? What’s with these names?” Oli groaned. “You can’t pick a team based on their logo. What if they suck?”
Ren’s laughter bounced off the walls. Mr. Wiggles, his ferret, glanced up from a sock he was dragging around and scampered toward us. “They’re fucking great. Beer leagues are fun, so they don’t have to be too serious.”
Mr. Wiggles was pure white and agile, and he climbed straight up the arm of the couch, across Ren’s lap, and to me. He wiggled and circled around my thighs before he settled into a ball there. While I’d hated him at first—okay, maybe I wasscaredof him—I’d become his favorite, and he made sure Oli and Ren knew, too. Whenever we were together, Mr. Wiggles came to me for cuddles and pets.
He was turning into my baby.
“When are you going to call them?” I scratched behind Mr. Wiggles’s ear, watching in amusement as he shifted in excitement, despite trying to sleep. I was his stepfather and I didn’t hate it. He was the cutest damned thing that ever existed.No clue how I’d ever been terrified of him, and I hated how much I loved him. Ren wasalmostas cute as Mr. Wiggles.
“Tomorrow. See if they need a defenseman. It says here they’re having tryouts. The season started for the beer leagues last week, but they’re short on players.”
“Will you have time around work?” Oli leaned forward, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. He’d joined Ren as his apprentice at Revenge Tattoo recently, and while he’d been practicing on fake skin, he wasn’t getting any better. He was struggling, despite Ren giving him tips and trying to teach him the tricks of the trade.
“Yeah, I got the boys to help me.”
He was referring to his employees, Flint and Wylie. They’d come from LA to support his new location. I’d gotten to know them while I’d hung around there after my hospital adventure. They were good guys. Softer than Ren, but still smart as hell and funny. They also took care of Oli and I liked that.
“I miss hockey,” Ren said.
He’d told us slamming into people on the ice helped with his anger issues, and we’d encouraged him to join a team. I still didn’t know a lot about Ren’s family, but his parents weren’t great and his siblings—minus Barber—were assholes. Actually, Barber could be an asshole, too, but he was more the kind you wanted to laugh at than punch in the face.
“I don’t understand hockey,” Oli grumbled, staring at the TV again. They were lining up for the face-off with McBride against the Skyhawk’s center, Kolosov. It would be a good game tonight, even though neither team was mine. Sure, I lived in New Gothenburg, but I loved the Waves. I didn’t know why I preferred the LA team. Maybe I liked the players better.
“The Blizzards traded for a new goalie,” Ren said, mostly to me. We regularly talked about the sport, especially after I’d found out he was the best friend of Ripley Thorne, one of theforwards in LA. “Copeland is from the Rapids, and from what I’ve seen, he’s fucking good. His average of shutout games is high.”
I nodded. I’d heard about the trade for Copeland on the sports YouTube channel I watched occasionally. Rumors were that Copeland was pushed out of Toronto because of bad blood with his teammates, but no one really knew what happened. Copeland’s brother had a past of sleeping with teammate’s wives, which sent him to the AHL, but from what had been said, Copeland wasn’t that way.
Oli sighed dramatically, but the corners of his mouth flicked up as he scratched the side of Mr. Wiggles’s head. Mr. Wiggles made a sound, somewhere between content and annoyed that his sleep had been interrupted. It was Oli’s way of distracting himself from the sports talk he wasn’t interested in.
What meal plan did the hockey players follow? Were they about getting bigger with muscle? I supposed it depended on their position. Maybe I should get Ripley’s number from Ren and talk with him about it. Though, I couldn’t guarantee Ripley wouldn’t report any conversations back to Ren. The last thing I wanted was for Ren to be worried more than he already was. It was stupid. I wasfine.
The sportscasters talked a mile a minute as the game started. I settled deeper into the couch, caught between the warmth of Oli and Ren, enjoying every second. While Oli was slimmer, with compact muscles he’d been working on, Ren was taller and bigger, biceps bulging in a way that made the ink on his skin stand out. It helped that he was wearing a sleeveless muscle shirt like me, giving my eyes lots of flesh to feast on.
“Holy fuck!” Ren sat up straighter and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. The sudden shift nearly sent me crashing onto the couch and my attention spun to the game. I’d lost focus for mere seconds and all hell had broken loose.
They replayed what had happened and I watched with a wince as London Winney, the Blizzards’ right wing, went down on the ice hard. He’d smashed high against the wall from a hit by a Skyhawk and fell backward. The Skyhawk tried to catch him, but he missed, and Winney slammed onto the hard rink with his head.
