Page 90 of Rising Heat

“Go.”

“No chance.” He plants his stick against the boards. “I’ve been waiting a month for one of you idiots to crack.”

“A month?” I bark out a laugh. “You’re dramatic.”

Ryan shrugs.

“Maybe.”

His eyes drift from me to Mack.

“Or maybe it’s the first time in ten years I’ve watched the MacAllister brothers spend more time figuring out how not to hook up with a chick than how to make it happen.”

That’s the first thing anybody’s said all night that doesn’t have an easy comeback.

It’s not as complicated as he’s making it out to be.

Mack and I have always been good at this. Make a move, everybody knows the deal, and keep it moving. Darcy wants us—we’ve both seen it. Hell, I practically kissed her the night I brought dinner upstairs before Mack got home and interrupted whatever the hell that was. The attraction isn’t exactly some great unsolved mystery.

If anything, we’ve probably spent the last week getting in our own heads. Acting like crossing one line is somehow going to change everything, when in reality it’s probably the exact opposite. Maybe once we stop pretending we don’t want her, we can all stop acting so damn weird around each other.

Sleep with her. Have some fun. Then we can go back to acting normal.

Yeah.

That makes a hell of a lot more sense than whatever the fuck we’ve been doing instead.

“Mack!” Ryan yells from the slot. “Either shoot or stop overthinking it.”

Mack lifts his head slowly, like he’s genuinely weighing whether killing Ryan would be worth the suspension.

I’m already laughing before he answers.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Ryan grins through his cage.

“There he is.”

Mack takes my pass at the blue line and absolutely hammers the puck. The shot damn near blows through the goalie’s glove before burying itself in the back of the net, and the bench erupts. Coop slams into my shoulder hard enough to nearly knock me off balance.

“Yeah,” he barks. “He’s cooked.”

I laugh so hard I almost catch an edge.

Mack skates past the bench without celebrating, like he didn’t just try to put the goalie through the net with the puck.

Back to the locker room, the adrenaline’s worn off but whatever the hell’s been following me around all week hasn’t.

The room is humid and loud, half the team already peeling out of gear while steam rolls off shoulders and somebody hijacks the speaker loud enough to make the cinderblock walls hum.

Tape litters the floor. Someone’s arguing over a missed call from the second period. It smells like sweat, adrenaline, and beer already being cracked open before half the pads are off.

I drop onto the bench and yank my helmet free, dragging a hand through sweat-damp hair.

Across from me, Mack strips off his shoulder pads with the same irritation he’s been bringing to basically everything lately.

Ryan tosses me a beer.