Page 105 of The Triple Play

Annie’s head tilted as she swallowed. “Who is it?”

“Erin Stewart,” the woman said. “I run Freebird downtown. I was hoping to talk to her about setting up a gig.”

I nearly choked on the bit of bacon I was chewing. “One second,” I coughed, practically sprinting around the side of the counter to pass the phone to Annie.

“Who…?” Annie asked, reaching out hesitantly to take it, her eyes wide as she stared at me hacking up my bacon.

“Freebird,” I choked.

She nearly dropped the phone as she scrambled to take it from my hand. Her body slid off the chair immediately, already pacing, naked as the day she was born. “Hi, this is Annie?”

I moved to the window behind us and pulled the blinds, my heart thudding in my chest. I didn’t know a damn thing about Freebird, but Annie needed whatever this was, needed someone towanther to perform at their venue, needed the boost to her confidence. She hadn’t played a single venue since that first night at Smokey’s, and I knew she’d been itching to.

I listened to Annie’suh-huh’s, herhmm’s, herokay’s, but it was when a grin started creeping across her cheeks that I felt my chest tighten just from the sight.

“Yeah, I’d love that,” Annie said. “Pencil me in. I’ll be there. Thank you so much!”

She hung up the phone and set it back down on the counter, her eyes wide as she stared at it, her chest rising and falling in slow, measured breaths. “Annie?” I asked.

She blinked and turned to me. “Please tell me you don’t have a game next Saturday.”

My lips quirked upward. “We don’t.”

Annie launched herself at me, her arms flying around my neck, her body lifting off the ground, and I caught her on a bark of laughter, holding her tight to my chest. “You havenoidea how big this is!”

I slid my hands down over her ass to her bare thighs, hiking them up around my waist. “Oh yeah? Tell me everything,” I grinned.

“Paid, for one. And Freebird is, like,massive. Not in size, but notoriety. A lot of artists have been picked up there, Xav, like,so many. And they livestream shows on their socials!” Her arms tightened around my neck, but she pulled her head back, looking up at me and blinking too fast with glassy eyes. “And it’s aSaturday. That’s huge.”

“Are you kidding?” I laughed, hugging her tighter, my chest aching with pride. “That’s amazing. That’s—fuck, that’s better than amazing, that’severything.You’re gonna own that stage, baby.”

I pressed my forehead against hers as she laughed, her voice choking with excitement and tears and the whirlwind of emotion she had to be feeling.

“You deserve this. You do. God, you do.” I glanced at the clock on the stove, only the slightest bit deflated that Cole and Colton wouldn’t be off the ice just yet. “We can call the guys in a bit and tell them. They’re going to lose their minds.I’mlosing my mind.”

She grinned, her teeth raking over her lower lip. “Thank god you answered my phone.”

Chapter38

Colton

“…I’m saying one of us should propose.”

The clank of a weight machine being racked echoed through the room immediately as Cole sat up, looking like I’d smacked him with a dumbbell.

Xavi froze mid-sip of his protein shake, eyes wide, and slowly lowered it from his lips. “What?” he said. “Like, marriage?”

I glanced at the door of the arena’s gym. I’d already done two loops of the room, making sure there wasn’t another soul in here, but I was worried about that door opening at any second. And this wasn’t exactly something we could talk about at home with Annie there. “Yeah,” I said, crossing my arms and leaning back against the wall, sweat drying down my back. “One of us. Her. Married. Before the mess with the team and Elliot and her dad blows up in our faces.”

Cole blinked at me, his muscles tight from the weights, his brows raising. “Jesus, Colton, that’s not a small thing to just throw out there.”

“I know. Iknow,” I snapped, immediately regretting my tone and flicking my hand in an apology. “But think about it. She’s pregnant. We’re all living together. We’re getting followed around by her psycho ex and her dad’s probably a few weeks away from just sending the goddamn feds or some shit and claiming we abducted?—”

“Iamthinking about it,” Cole interrupted, his voice a little quieter now. “I just… honestly, out of the two of you, I wasn’t expecting to hearyousay it. I thought it’d come from Xavi.”

“Yeah, well, apparently I’m last for everything,” Xavi grumbled, rolling his eyes as he sat down on the bench. Poor guy hadn’t stopped throwing his annoyance in our faces over being the last to sayI love you.

I pushed the strands of hair that had slipped from my ponytail back from my face, a little frustrated, a little wired from saying it out loud. “I know it’s wildly fast. I know it’s insane. But she deserves the safety of it, the security,” I explained. “We know she’s going to start properly showing soon. She won’t be able to hide it under a jersey at games for that much longer. It’s only a matter of time before someone notices, and it leaks, and the team throws us under the bus for creating a scandal. But if she’s engaged to one of us? If we’remarried? It’s not some scandal. It’s just… I don’t know, unconventional.”

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