Page 46 of Unrivaled

Then he made the mistake of glancing at the comment section.

His hair looks so good asdf;lkajd;sflkja;dsf, read the first.

My mans discovered shampoo! Happy for him!said the second.

How dare other people notice how good Max’s hair looked. And if theydidnotice, they should be giving Grady the credit, not Max.Andit was more likely theconditionerthat was making the real difference here—

Grady realized this was not helping his pregame chill session and turned off his phone.

When the puck dropped, Grady was as in the zone as he ever got against the Monsters. He played center while Max played wing, so they usually didn’t cover each other during five-on-five.

But when teams had the kind of heated history theirs did, penalties happened, which resulted in—

“Hey, bud, miss me?” Max shouldered into Grady as Grady cleared the puck into the offensive zone. “I missed you. That’s why I coaxed Coop into that little slash—”

Because of course Max had drawn the penalty, standing in the paint in front of the Firebirds’ net and hacking at the puck until Coop had enough.

Grady didn’t reply. He was busy covering Max’s center, who was trying to carry the puck into the Firebirds’ defensive zone.

Grady stick-checked him, stepped over Max’s attempted trip, and followed the puck toward the Monsters’ net. The goalie blocked his shot, but Zipper got a piece of the rebound before the goalie froze the puck and the ref blew the whistle.

Max made an exaggerated sad face at Grady. “I thought we had something special, bud.”

With great effort, Grady managed not to bite through his mouth guard.

Zipper nudged Max farther away from Grady, as though Grady needed a string-bean winger to fight his battles. But Zipper was full of piss and vinegar—not unlike Max had been when his rivalry with Grady started.

Maybe they shouldn’tbothstart shit with the same guy. Especially not when Coop was already in the box and would still be there for another minute and a half.

“Hey.” Grady used his stick to separate them before Zipper could earn an additional penalty. “He’s not worth it. Chill out.”

Max turned up the act. “Baby, how could you?”

Not worth it.He took a deep breath through his nose and skated to the faceoff circle.

“Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you!” Max yelled at his back.

Grady won the faceoff, but Max intercepted Zipper’s pass back to him, and they had to haul ass to defend in their own end.

By the time they killed the penalty, Grady was fuming and exhausted. It didn’t help that Max shoved the puck under Barny’s pads and into the net fifteen seconds after the penalty expired.

Coop pushed him. Max pushed back. The game deteriorated from there.

Six penalties and forty-three minutes later, the final buzzer sounded. The Firebirds won 3–2, on the strength of a three-assist night from Grady.

Naturally Max one-upped him by getting both of the Monsters’ goals and by goading Grady into taking a cross-checking penalty when Zipper was already in the box. The Monsters’ second goal had come on the resulting five-on-three advantage. Max blew him a kiss when he skated by the penalty box, and Grady could still hear the smug lilt in his voice as he said, “C’mon, Armstrong, we both know you want to hit me harder than that.”

Maybe Grady did, but he didn’t have to be proud of it, and Max didn’t have to bring it upduring a game. That felt dirty and unfair.

He did his postgame routine on autopilot. Fortunately his brain reached for “no comment” by default when reporters asked what Max had said to get a reaction.

Grady hated that it happened often enough that it had become an automatic process, though. He’d thought he was making progress keeping Max from getting to him. Mostly he was annoyed with himself because he expected Max to use their sex life against him on the ice and it had worked anyway. He shouldn’t be upset.

But he was. If that made him weak or emotional or whatever, fine.

When he finally got out of his team duties, he had twenty-five minutes to meet Max before the Monsters’ bus left.

He could skip it. Max would probably get the message. But if Grady was going to go home pissed off, he wasn’t going to be the kind of pissed off that had held his tongue all night. He was going to be the kind of pissed off that had given Max a piece of his mind.

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