Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
TREY
The plane landed in a flurry of snow. Massive, heavy, wet, icy flakes fell from the sky in rapid succession, covering everything and staying put. The freshly plowed runway, which I saw on our approach, now looked just as white as the ground surrounding it.
Instead of disembarking on the tarmac, the pilot pulled us directly into the hangar. Then his disembodied voice came on overhead.
“Welcome back to Manchester, everyone. Give the ground crew a bit to get us settled, and we’ll have you on your way. FYI, you’re the last ones getting in by air until this mess blows through and gets cleaned up.”
All of us stood as soon as the flight attendant allowed us to unbuckle. We’d been under strict orders to stay seated and buckled in throughout the flight. If I’d been flying commercial, I’d have been pissed. As it was, I still wasn’t all that happy with being stuck in one place for so long.
Trying and probably failing miserably, I watched as Slone stood, stretched out the kinks… Heat filled my face, and laughter bubbled up my throat. Kink! I snickered and snorted when I tried to cover the sound.
“Dude,” Isaiah asked. “Are you high?”
Slone’s head whirled until his eyes landed on me. Those gorgeous brown eyes narrowed as they gave me an up-down, then another.
“I’m not freaking high, asshole. I’m not a fucking idiot,” I said, my voice just shy of yelling.
Isaac, along with Ethan and Ryan, all looked at me, then at Isaiah before looking back at me.
“Fuck all of you. We get tested all the time. Plus, New York could call me up at any moment, and if I’m high when they do, bye-bye to any chance of playing professionally.”
“Alright, Cap, settle down. How do we know you didn’t get roofied last night when you went off with Aiden?” Ethan asked, with the twins nodding in agreement.
Only Riordy seemed to see just how stupid the questions were.
Sighing, I looked at Slone before replying, his gaze already on my face. “I love you guys, but you’re all assholes, and no, I didn’t get roofied. I got plastered all on my own. The place we hightailed it to was pretty swanky.”
He and Ewen smirked as they waited for us to be allowed to deplane.
“Where’d y’all go, anyway?” Isaac asked.
The flight crew saved me from answering. “Right this way, gentlemen. Drive safe.”
I held back, waiting for everyone else to duck through the door, before I pulled out my wallet. “I have very little in the way of cash to tip—”
“Mr. Malachek. There’s no need. The family compensates us very well.”
“Do you have lodging? I don’t mind arranging it, if not.”
The attendant smiled. “Yes, sir. Mr. Bauer arranged our stay when he asked us to get you home.”
I pulled out a card and handed it over. “Alright, then. Here’s my cell number. Use it if you ever need to. Thank you so much. And if you could relay the message to the pilot and copilot?”
The man smiled, thanked me, and ushered me off the plane. I bent forward, ducking my chin as I slogged through the downpour of snow to the terminal. The automatic doors opened with a swoosh, and a gust of wind and snow rushed in with me before the doors closed, blocking out the blustery weather.
“Took you long enough. Were you hooking up?” Isaiah asked.
Jesus, how had I fucked him and his brother for so long without realizing just how shitty they could be? On the ice, they were fabulous. They had my back, and I had theirs. But outside of hockey, outside of getting our rocks off together, they could be complete dicks.
“No, asshole, I stopped to make sure the flight crew was taken care of since they flew through what looks like a fucking blizzard to get us home,” I said as I dusted off what snow I could.
None of us was carrying winter gear. It was nearly freaking spring, and we were in Nashville.
Either way, I couldn’t afford the hoodie I borrowed getting overly wet.
“Speaking of home, we should get going,” Ryan said.
We all nodded. I triggered the remote start and headed out of the terminal to my truck. I was thankful I hadn’t traded the four-wheel drive for the sports car yet.
The roads, once we all got in and took off toward campus, were a nightmare.
Some roads hadn’t been plowed yet, and the interstate was an utter nightmare according to social media, so we decided on a side road that led right to our dorm.
The usually twenty-minute drive took nearly an hour.
By the time I parked outside the dorm, my hands hurt from white-knuckling the steering wheel, and my back and neck hurt from hunching over.
We were all half frozen because Ryan and I rolled our windows down and he had his head stuck out the passenger window to make sure I didn’t run off the damn road.
We hurried through the increasingly heavy snow to the dorm, stomping and dusting our stupid selves off because we weren’t wearing coats while we waited for the elevator.
“So, can we address the elephant in the lobby now?” Ethan asked.
I looked around, then looked at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
They cracked up. Yeah, I was an idiot for checking the lobby for an elephant, but I thought he meant something nutty was actually going on in the lobby. It definitely wouldn’t have been the first time.
“Leave Cap be. He just drove us through a damn blizzard,” Ryan said as he laughed his ass off.
“I need better friends,” I muttered as I stepped into the elevator.
Upstairs, we parted ways, Ryan and Ethan heading to their rooms and Isaiah, Isaac, and I heading to ours.
Once inside, I muttered something that I didn’t know and turned toward my side of the room, the side I shared with Aiden Mercer until a few short weeks ago.
Now, I had the whole side to myself. I’d moved my desk into his room, bought some bookshelves and a couch, and created a cozy homework spot.
I studied better and retained more information if I didn’t study on my bed or even in the same room I slept in.
Why that mattered, I didn’t know; I just knew it did.
So, as much as I missed Aiden, even though I’d thought he was a prude—boy, was I wrong—I enjoyed having both rooms on this side to myself.
“You’re really just going to walk away without saying anything to either of us,” Isaiah said. The tone of his voice told me all I needed to know about how he felt about the situation.
I sighed, my eyelids twitching and fluttering with the mounting frustration I felt at being questioned by my friends. Did we have no boundaries? Yeah, we fucked, and often, but we weren’t a couple. Or throuple, rather.
“What do you want me to say? What do you need to know?” I asked.
They looked at each other—Isaiah and Isaac—then turned back to me.
Occasionally, they creeped me out with the way they moved like mirror images of each other.
The three of us met in kindergarten. We played Mini Mites together and in every league and on every team since.
We were many of each other’s first. Isaiah, my first blowjob.
Isaac, the first guy I fucked. And back to Isaiah as the first guy to fuck me.
Even with all that, we had never been more than friends with benefits, so I wasn’t sure what they were so torn up about that they were doing that creepy synchronized movement shit they did.
Isaac began, “Trey, you took off last night, man—”
Only for Isaiah to cut him off. “With some fucking guy probably twice your age.”
“And…” I prodded, still not sure what they were getting at.
“Dude, you know what? Fuck it, never mind,” Isaiah said before he stomped off.
Isaac watched his brother go, then turned back to me. “If you’re done with our situationship or whatever the fuck you wanna call it, maybe tell us instead of fucking around with other people.”
“What the hell are you talking about? The two of you were acting like we were a couple or throuple or whatever. We’ve never been that to each other.”
Right?
Isaac shook his head with a humorless laugh. “You can be a fucking prick, you know that?” He turned and followed his brother.
Fuck my life. God, I was such a fucking screw-up. How the hell did I miss this?
The longer I stood there, the more I realized I couldn’t leave this until morning.
I needed to talk to them. I needed them to understand I had to make changes in my life if I wanted to make The Show.
And as much as my old man and his old man had screwed with my head and made me second and sometimes third and fourth and twenty-second guess myself, I knew I wanted that NHL contract.
It was my lifelong dream, and I wouldn’t get it if I didn’t figure my shit out and buckle down.
Stalking toward their door, I knocked. And knocked again. And again.
“Guys, don’t be like this. Let’s talk.”
“Go fuck yourself, Malachek.”
This was bad. Really fucking bad, and I hated it.
I hated that I messed this up so royally.
They were my best friends. Or the closest thing I had to best friends.
And I had no one to talk about it with. I’d not been exclusive with them.
Hell, they’d caught me fucking other people so many times since we started screwing around with each other.
And not once had they mentioned there was a problem with it.
They never even acted like they had an issue with me fucking other people.
So, what was the issue this time? Was it Slone? Was it his age or something else? Did they know he owned a kink club, and that was what triggered this response?
“I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”
The door flew open, and Isaiah—bigger and hotter-tempered than his brother—stood in the opening. “Because, of course, it’s all about what Donald Malachek III wants. Fuck what anyone else wants, needs, or fucking deserves as long as Donnie’s little boy is happy.”
“Okay. I probably deserve that.”
“Not probably,” Isaiah said, “you do. You’ve been fucking the two of us separately and together for ages, and you go off and hook up with some guy you just met—”
“It’s not the first time I’ve hooked up with someone else, and it’s never made a difference to either of you. What changed?”
Isaiah sighed. “The guy, he’s not a one-and-done kind of guy. He’s a fucking Master or Dom or some shit. You’ve never hooked up with someone who wouldn’t approve of you…of us.”
“His buddies—”
“Maybe in a two-way relationship with two other guys, but they aren’t the ones warming his bed.
They aren’t his slaves or submissives or whatever kinky ass shit he’s into,” Isaac added from deep inside the bedroom, my view of him blocked by Isaiah still standing in the doorway.
“Allyship doesn’t mean he would condone it with his partner or whatever role you’d fill for him. ”
“Guys—” I began, only for Isaac to cut me off.
“Trey, you’ve been our best friend since we were five years old.
You think we don’t know what excuses you’re getting ready to spout?
We do. We’re not mad you found someone. You’re right.
You and we have fucked around with plenty of others.
We just thought you would have the decency to tell us you were ending it before you started something with someone else that was more than a hookup. ”
“Isaac—”
“Goodnight, Malachek,” Isaiah said, following his brother’s example and interrupting me before shutting the door in my face.