Page 14 of The Triple Play

His gaze snapped back to me. “I don’t know what kind of game you think I’m playing, but I docareabout her.”

I took another step to my left, cutting off his view of her completely. “Then maybe you should act like it.”

“Sheneedsa ride home.”

“She can ride with me,” I said instantly, not even thinking twice about it. There was room in Cole’s Escalade. She’d have to put up with sitting in the backseat with Xav, but I was sure he’d shower her with plenty of attention.

I felt Annie tug, just barely, at the back of my jacket — a warning.

Elliot let out a sharp, bitter laugh, the sound cutting through the muffled quiet of the alleyway. “Right. Perfect. So she’ll leave withyouinstead?” He shook his head, his glasses sliding down his nose again, but he pushed them back up with a single finger, his nostrils flaring. “Fucking unbelievable. She’s not a puck bunny, Miller, or at least I didn’tthinkshe was one until she walked off and came back with your goddamn number. Hell, she doesn’t even pay attention to the games half the time. What do you evenwantwith her?”

My pulse hammered in my veins, tickling my wrists, my neck, thundering in my ears. I didn’t flinch at his words, but he was pushing buttons I didn’t realize mattered to me, buttons I wasn’t sure he even knew he was pushing.

“She’s not like the other girls in there,” he spat, his words angry as if that was somehow meant to be an insult to me, an insinuation that my standards were too low and somehow it was a problem that she was above them. “She doesn’t need to be caught up in all this shit. It’ll go to her head. She’s not some fan girl looking to score with a player, she’s just trying and fucking failing to make it. She’s not like you.”

It took everything,everything, in my power to keep myself from slipping into the mentality of being on the ice, the idea of tackling him to the goddamn ground sounding better and better. I took a step forward, not even noticing I’d moved until Annie pulled harshly on my jacket, a strong, silent warning to not do shit about this.

But god, Iwantedto. I wanted to beat his face until he was black and blue.

“Colton,” Annie said, her voice wavering as I refused to take a step back. I glanced back at her over my shoulder, my ponytail brushing against my neck, and steeled my jaw. Her eyes weren’t on me the way Elliot thought they were — they were just wide andconfused, like she was still trying to process everything, and I could tell she didn’t have it in her to watch this carry on, to watch this play out. She wanted this situation to be over.

I swallowed down the urge to drive my knee into his balls and turned back to Elliot, taking a deep breath to calm myself at least a little. “You need to leave,” I said, my voice level but hard. “You don’t get to talk to her like that. Not now, not ever. Go home.”

Elliot hesitated, his jaw working. I couldseethe wheels turning in his head — he wanted to keep arguing, wanted to make his point, wanted to take Annie home and keep his prize at the end of the night.

But he wasn’t going to win this.

“Annie,” he said, his tone bitter and cold, hoping for something, anything. But all he got in response was silence.

“Get the fuck out of here,” I snapped, my voice rising, my patience wearing thin. It was sharp enough that Annie flinched, her grip on my jacket tightening instinctually. “Go.”

Chapter7

Cole

“Swear to god, if Colton's cornered her somewhere,” Xavi said, setting his empty bottle down on the counter for the bartender to collect, mumbling a quickthank youas it was taken. “We should probably make sure she’s not trying to escape him.”

I wanted to insist that he’d just gone to the bathroom and would be back any second, but I’d been checking on the swinging door beneath the badly paintedRESTROOMSsign for the last minute or two and hadn’t seen him. I let myself scan the room quickly, looking for a head of auburn hair so I could at least confirm she wasn’t with him, but didn’t find anyone her height wearing the same clothes.

A part of me felt bad for stepping in and insisting on playing that stupid game to get them to cut the shit. Colton was obviously into her, and if I hadn’t been a grumpy ass about getting thrown in the penalty box during the game or taking them to Smokey’s, maybe I would have just taken his side and told Xav to cool it. But I hadn’t. And I didn’t necessarily regret it — Annie was nice to talk to, and I couldn’t deny that the way she’d looked at me had gone to my head a little. Sure, I was used to flames trying to throw themselves at me, but most of the time they were either closer to my age or questionably young, and it never sat right with me.

But her… she’d blushed when I spoke to her. She’d looked confused that I was even speaking to her, but not in a way that was an insult. It was better than that.

But I probably shouldn’t have stepped in Colton’s way on it.

I glanced back at the swinging door, Xavi’s idle chatter falling on my deaf ears, and caught sight of a shaved head and glasses pushing through the door into the obscured hallway with an air of anger coming off him in waves.

Shit. The boyfriend.

I didn’t know where he was going, but he was probably in search of Annie, and I couldn’t deny that a part of me worried she would be on the receiving end of that anger.

“Xav,” I said, cutting him off mid-sentence as he rattled on about something relating to Colton. “Would I be insane to follow him?”

Xav turned to me, his brows furrowing, a strand of black hair falling forward into his face. “Who?”

“Elliot. Annie’s boyfriend,” I clarified, tipping the top of my bottle toward the swinging door. “He just walked in there. Looked mad as hell.”

“Nope, let’s go,” he chirped all too eagerly, pushing off the bar in an instant.

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