Page 10 of The Triple Play

God, he hadnoshame whatsoever.

Xavi snorted at him as he held his bottle to his lips. “He’s a coward, by the way,” he said, his eyes flashing to mine. “Your boyfriend. Sending you all the way over here to get some autographs instead of doing it himself? Weak.”

My nose crinkled. Elliot wasn’tweak, he was just… “Elliot’s just shy.”

Cole’s huff had me snapping my head up to him, watching as he crossed an arm over his chest and rested his elbow on it, lifting his beer bottle slightly. “He didn’t seem shy in the slightest when he interrupted our conversation.”

I gripped the napkin a little tighter, Colton still spinning my pen like a fidget toy. “He probably just thought you were more approachable.”

Xavi chuckled, but it was Colton’s roar of laughter, those little face-framing pieces swaying around his cheeks, that caught me off guard. “Oh, yeah, sure,” Colton wheezed. “The big, scary old man issofriendly.”

I narrowed my eyes at Colton, embarrassment and irritation creeping in from Xavi’s comment. “He didn’t seem that big or scary or old when he was talking to me.”

The corner of Cole’s lips twitched upward at that, but he hid it almost immediately with a swig of his beer.

Xavi chuckled lightly to himself, his knee swaying from where he’d perched his leg on a barstool’s footrest. “If you say so,Annie.”

I didn’t quite understand why the three of them were talking to me as if they were already drunk, as if they’d come in during one of my shifts and shared a little too much after pounding down beers. I was surprised they even remembered myname. I’d chatted with them a handful of times, but that was it, really. It was… strange, but I couldn’t deny that a part of me liked the attention at least a little bit, even if they were definitely thinking I was a puck bunny before I told them I was getting the signatures for Elliot.

Were they able to read my mind and see all the dirty images of themselves in there?

Almost sensing the shift, Colton swooped in immediately. “Well, if I must,” he sighed dramatically, plucking the napkin from my hand and scrawling his name across it in big, looping letters. Then, with an exaggerated flourish, he scribbled something else and grinned as he handed it back to me, the napkin hanging from where he pinched it between his first two fingers.

Slowly, I took it from him, looking down at the fresh signature, the bleed of the pen through the thin layers.

His fucking number.

I lifted one unimpressed brow at him. “Seriously?”

He laughed again, his voice booming over the low music and the hum of the crowd. “Just in case,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “You know, if you ever need any… I don’t know, hockey advice?”

“Hockeyadvice? I’m a musician.”

“I know, sweetheart,” Colton chuckled, winking at me before passing the pen over to Xavi. “Sorry we missed your show, by the way.”

“You have to stop calling me that,” I said. That was the best I could do to stop them thinking I was a puck bunny.

Xavi leaned forward, abandoning his relaxed pose against the bar, and plucked a fresh napkin out of my hand. He signed his name on the bar top, the letters neat and precise, before passing it back to me without a word.

I looked down, and low and behold, no number. I swallowed, the taste of something bitter invading my mouth.Why does that… bother me?

It shouldn’t have. It really shouldn’t have, because I had a boyfriend, a boyfriend who apparently needed me to do his dirty work for him and put myself in an uncomfortable situation where I had to ask to get NHL players to sign napkins for his benefit. A boyfriend who had barely paid attention to my set and had been far too into the game to help me set up.

But he was still my boyfriend. I stilllikedhim, even if he pissed me off sometimes.

“Uh, thank you,” I said, the words feeling a little wrong in my mouth as I took a step back. “I’ll see you guys around, I’m sure.”

I didn’t wait for them to respond before slipping back into the crowd — but not before I noticed the way Xavi still clung to my pen, clutching the top of it between his teeth.

Elliot was on me the moment I’d cleared my way through the crowd of mostly women, his hands aggressively yet carefully pulling the two napkins I’d gotten signed from my grasp. His brows furrowed under his glasses as he looked at them, Xavi’s first, and then Colton’s.

“What’s this?” Elliot asked. His voice was even, but Iknewthat tone. The controlled kind, the kind that meant he was already irritated and waiting for me to say something that would justify it.

I blinked at him. “An autograph, Elliot.”

“No shit.” His jaw twitched as he looked down at it. “Why did he put his number on it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and ouch, yep, okay — that was definitely a lie. But it was better than telling him Colton clearly had his eyes on me when Elliot was practically fangirling over the three of them moments ago.

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