Dangle (Manchester U Maulers #1)

Prologue

TREY

January

My dick woke up the day I turned thirteen. He’d made his presence known before that, of course. I wasn’t stunted or anything, but that day was the day he stood up and pointed at someone real and said, “That. I want that.”

That turned out to be a mindfuck of epic proportions.

Proportions I was nowhere near mature enough to understand when I walked into the arena my father built, supposedly as an engagement present for my mother.

My father wasn’t that nice. He just didn’t want to share the arena my grandfather built for my father when he was born.

Because that’s what you gave a newborn. A massive hockey rink that loomed over your home, visible from your bedroom window.

From your damn bed. As if living in the shadow of a famous NHL star wasn’t difficult enough.

The arena and the ice weren’t my epic mindfuck.

No, the mindfuck that screwed up my head came from what I found in my family’s arena.

And it wasn’t just the beautiful fourteen-year-old Russian figure skater, Danika Orlova, with her long blonde hair pulled back in a low bun showing off her flushed, radiant face, or the pink lip gloss shining on her lips.

No.

Danika messed with my head, sure. But what really did me in was her pairs partner.

At fifteen years old, Sergei Kuznetsov was two years older than me—tall, strong as an ox, all lean lines, and chiseled Slavic features.

He was beautiful, and my reaction to him was confusing as hell.

He spoke little English. They both did, but they’d been sent to the States to train over the summer with Russia’s figure-skating darling-turned-supermodel, my mama, Oksana Petrova.

That was the day I figured out my dick didn’t care about gender. He liked what he liked. And he especially enjoyed watching—

“Trey!”

Two voices, one male and one female, blended together and pulled my head from my ass or from the asses on the rink with my mom.

“Sorry, Mom!” I called over my shoulder as I hurried around Mom’s rink toward where my dad stood waiting.

Fudge.

He looked pissed. He was pissed. I knew that look well—birthday or not. Bag skates were in my future.

“You’re late,” Dad said, his hand gripping my shoulder as he pushed me through the door.

“Sorry, Dad.”

He stopped me with a look and said, “What’s the rule?”

I sighed. “Sorry, Coach.”

Yep. A birthday filled with bag skates. So many, many bag skates. It wasn’t the first birthday I spent that way, nor was it the last. Hopefully, this birthday didn’t turn out the same, although I didn’t hold out too much hope. My father had been in a mood since I arrived.

Moonlight streamed through the large bank of windows in my bedroom, bathing the room and me in the soft white light.

I pulled on my workout gear, staring out the window.

The rink loomed in the distance—large, imposing, suffocating.

The longer I looked at it, the smaller it made me feel.

It also reminded me I probably spent more time in hockey rinks, especially that hockey rink, than I had in any other place in the whole damn world, including my own house.

I came awake this morning as I did every morning—with a huff when the alarm on my phone chirped. I never needed to look to know what time it was. The same time that alarm went off every day for most of my pathetic existence.

Five thirty in the morning.

Did it matter that today was my birthday? Nope. It never mattered. Not even if it were Christmas, or my grandfather’s funeral, or any other important event in my life. Hockey came first. Always.

“Happy birthday to me.”

Time to get to work.

Abso-fucking-lutely not.

Yet another birthday starting the way all the birthdays I remembered living through had: wake up and pull on my workout clothes while staring out the window at my family’s legacy.

My destiny.

My obligation.

I didn’t want to be here. I tried my damnedest to get out of it. Used every excuse I could think of, that my roommates and D-men could think of.

The hockey season was in full swing.

I’d just gotten back to school from the Christmas and New Year’s break.

The team had planned a bonding event.

Granted, that last reason wasn’t anything all that different from the usual shit the team got into when we stayed on campus: hang out, play video games, drink beers, and if we were lucky…fuck.

And in that one thing in life, I was always fucking lucky.

This break also included rest. A lot of rest. This late in the season, we were all babying minor injuries.

And in our starting center, Aiden Mercer’s case, major ones.

Doctors had placed Aiden on concussion protocol after a car accident the night before Thanksgiving, but they planned for him to return for the next game.

Thank God.

With playoffs right around the corner, this break meant dialing in our nutrition, too.

Every one of us would be eating until we were sick.

Because by this point in the season, every player on the ice struggled to keep up their calorie consumption.

Battling the weight loss during the season never ended.

But was I with my team, doing all the things I needed to do to get ready for the ramp-up to the playoffs?

No.

Had any of my excuses worked?

Not a single one.

Mom got it in her mind to host an event, supposedly a twenty-first birthday dinner for me, limited to family and friends. Not sure what family or friends she meant because we had very little family, at least none I liked or knew very well, and she hadn’t invited a single one of my friends.

But my father’s old cronies showed up to hang out.

They always came.

And he always shoved me in front of his hockey buddies. He’d make me listen while they droned on and on about this game or that series.

If that was all they did, fine. It was bad, but manageable enough. But that’s not all they did. They did what he did. They ridiculed, second-guessed, and asked me stupid, asinine questions.

This birthday was no different.

So, yeah. Instead of hanging with the boys, I was home. In New York. In a house built on razor-sharp edges and white ice, surrounded by opulence and grandeur.

Darkness enveloped the obnoxiously massive mausoleum of my family home as I stumbled through the halls at the ungodly hour when the night sky turned from midnight to daybreak, highlighting all the shades of gray along the journey.

Not bothering to turn on the lights on my trek to the kitchen, I did my best to wake up. But I felt dead. Like this house felt dead. So unlike most of the homes I visited over the years of my friends and teammates. Their homes felt alive with life and love.

“Glad to see you haven’t turned lazy besides queer.”

Holy fuck!

I froze. My eyes dropped closed, and my lips rolled into my mouth while my heart kicked into overdrive.

The beat was so fast I felt jittery and overstimulated.

My old man got some sick, perverted satisfaction out of startling me.

He’d done it for as long as I could remember—both on and off the ice.

He claimed it would cultivate my reflexes.

Or he was a giant fucking prick.

Same difference if you were talking about Donnie Malachek.

Forcing my hands to unclench, I grabbed a water and sucked the plastic until it collapsed, draining the bottle dry. Another water, an overnight oats, and a protein shake the cook had meal-prepped and set aside in the fridge for me came out next.

“Even if you have turned into one of those faggots who refuses to keep your private life fucking private.”

His voice sent electricity dancing over my nerve endings, yet again.

I ignored him because responding would only add fuel to his fire.

Instead, I held myself in check, making sure not to react so as not to give him the satisfaction.

To downplay how he affected me, I pulled a spoon from the drawer, planted my ass at the island instead of sitting at the breakfast nook table with him.

Being too close to the man was stupid when he was in this mood.

So, I ignored the asshole while I shoveled oats and guzzled the water and shake.

“Just like you to ignore good fucking advice.”

I wouldn’t react. I couldn’t. Taking his bait would only make things worse.

Despite my guts churning and the buzzing in my head, and just how much I wanted to punch the asshole, I held my tongue.

Pushed all the negative shit his words churned up in me away and kept eating my breakfast. The first of many, many, many meals I’d eat today.

As soon as I finished eating, I dropped my dishes in the sink and the trash in the bin, and headed out to the rink. The Frozen Four waited for no man. And I planned to be ready.