Page 94 of What Are the Chances
“I started sleeping with Riley again.”
Levi frowned. “You already told me that.”
I cleared my throat. “I mean repeatedly.”
“Nice,” Ryan smirked at the same moment Levi cautiously said my name.
I offered Levi a casual shrug. “You told me to loosen the reins.”
“That didn’t mean hook up with your ex.”
Tripp gave Levi a nonchalant glance. “Well it paid off, didn’t it? He’s been gold the past few games.”
I squared my shoulders, gesturing helplessly. Tripp had a point.
“It’s not a problem now while he’s killing it on the ice,” Levi said. “But if things change, if things go to shit with Riley again, then he’ll become a fucking liability out there.”
I grimaced. “About that. Things kind of went to shit last night.”
Levi groaned. “What’s going on between you two? Is it just sex?”
Slowly, I shook my head. It wasn’t. At least not for me. It never could be with Riley. After the first night on her couch, I think I’d known I was fucked from then on. I couldn’t do things halfway with her.
Levi seemed confused. “I thought she was dating Tanner Holbeck?”
I guess he’d jumped to the same conclusion I had after our game.
Ryan nodded his agreement. “I thought something was going on when I saw him picking Riley up the other night.”
That was news to me. I still wasn’t convinced there wasn’t something going on there, but Riley had assured me they weren’t together, and I trusted her.
The conversation died off when two girls walked into the ice cream shop. I lost Tripp entirely. His gaze shifted to track the movement of them.
“Fuck,” he whisper-yelled, slinking in his seat. “That girl’s from my class. I’ve been trying to hook up with her for weeks. Of course I’m running into her while I’m on amanlyfucking ice cream date with my friends.”
“Steer into the skid,” Levi said. “Go buy her dessert.”
An optimistic look of curiosity shifted Tripp’s face. “You think that’ll work?”
“Fuck yeah,” Ryan agreed. “You’ll practically be on a date without asking her on a date.”
The logic was a bit of a stretch. Tripp didn’t seem to think so though. He edged out of the booth.
“She’s with a friend. Come wingman me.”
Ryan didn’t need convincing. He slipped out of the booth, following Tripp.
Once they were gone I shuffled around, sitting opposite Levi instead of beside him. He was watching me guardedly, as though waiting for me to fill him in on the rest of the story. We both knew it was longer than I had let on.
“Riley’s mum died,” I told him. “The night of our draft party she wasn’t blowing me off. She was with her sick mum.”
The look of pity on my best friend’s face was slightly sidetracked by the ice cream in his hand. It was stealing all his masculinity.
“I thought I hated myself for cheating on her, but that was nothing in comparison to how I feel knowing I wasn’t there for her,” I admitted.
When I thought of Riley alone at the hospital, and again at the funeral, it made me want to puke and punch something simultaneously.
Levi sighed. “I get it. When I think of Grace getting the call her parents had been in an accident, it makes my head fucking spin.”
