Hat Trick (Legends and Fury #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

MICAH

“For five million dollars, would you send…”

“Yes. Yes, I would,” I answered before my teammate could go on. I was tired of this game, and I had no idea why Antoine had decided to play it here, of all places.

His voice was barely audible over the thudding music, though my ears were well trained to hear even in the most dire conditions. And while I wouldn’t exactly call a nightclub dire, it was starting to feel that way.

This was the last place I wanted to be after a game that went twenty minutes into OT, but I was trying to be supportive. It wasn’t often we found nightclubs on roadies that were accessible enough for everyone on the team.

This place wouldn’t win any ADA awards or anything, but from what the guys had been saying, there were lights on the floors illuminating the path to the bar and the bathrooms, and there weren’t a lot of tripping hazards, so no one had fallen on their faces yet.

Though the night was young and everyone was barely into their second drink.

But we were celebrating, and I was just glad most of my teammates were too fucking blind to see the fake-as-fuck smile on my face.

“Fuck off, Adams,” Antoine said, nudging my elbow. “Let me finish.”

My hand found the bar, and I leaned my elbow on it. The music wasn’t loud, but the bass was a lot. It was thudding through my chest like a second heartbeat. Normally, I didn’t mind getting lost in a whole-body experience, but right now, my life wasn’t normal.

I was talked into this fuck-ass night because we’d lost against New York again, meaning the season was still kicking our ass—just like last year—and our plan to rebuild was crumbling to dust like old bricks.

It didn’t help that I wasn’t really a nightclub kind of guy.

I’d done this a few times to try and get out of my head, but all it really did was make me feel anxious and lost in a sea of bodies.

But Antoine and Dani had a hard-on for EDM and the smell of sweat and knock-off perfume, so here I was, trying to wing all the men who were going to get laid, all the while acknowledging that wasn’t going to be me.

That was never going to be me.

“Are you going to finish, or—” I pressed when I realized he’d been silent for way too long.

“Right. Uh…” Antoine leaned into me. “For five million dollars, would you send a relative to jail?”

I almost laughed. Normally, I got these questions from him in the locker room and occasionally brought them home to try out on my brothers, but while Jonah and I were doing better now that our dad was safely in a memory care facility and our mom decided to fuck off for good, Jonah and I were still barely on speaking terms.

“I’m basically paying five million dollars for that right now.” My dad wasn’t in jail. From what I’d heard, the facility was a posh-as-fuck place that was costing my brothers and me more than my goddamn signing bonus per year.

But the point stood.

“Your life is sad,” Antoine said.

I lifted my middle finger and shoved it close enough against his face to where I knew he could see it. He laughed and licked the side of my palm.

“Ew. Fuck you, bud.”

“Not my type.” He squeezed my shoulder, then said, “I’m gonna go dance. Have fun humping the bar.”

“I hope you stub four toes,” I called after him as he left me. Dani had gone who the fuck knew where, and Freddie, the backup goalie who rarely left my side, had already grabbed an Uber back to the hotel.

I was not a fan of New York. It was busy, the streets were narrow, and the sidewalks were even worse. It was filled with tourists who didn’t give a fuck about white canes, and the people on the subway were an experience I’d rather not have more than a few times a year.

If the league started making noise about trading me here, I would fucking quit.

“You look thirsty,” came a voice to my right.

I sighed and debated about turning my head. Most able-bodied gay dudes freaked the fuck out when they got a look at my face, and maybe it made me a dick, but I used that a lot when I didn’t want someone trying to pick me up.

And it worked almost every time. I wasn’t like Jonah. I didn’t have prosthetics to mask the fact that I had no eyes. I had no real idea what I looked like, but I knew I wasn’t as aesthetically pretty to sighted people the way my brothers were.

And showing that off was a very quick way to send dudes running.

The ones who stuck around after that? Some of them might have been the non-ableist unicorn who wanted to love me for who I was, but most of the time, they were just dudes curious about what it would be like to fuck a blind guy.

And I was so over being someone’s experiment. That way always led to pain. And to creeps who didn’t know when to quit or how to take no as an answer.

Turning my head, I waited.

And waited.

After a beat, I reached out, but the air in front of me was empty.

“Don’t make that face,” someone else behind me said, voice barely audible above the music. “He wasn’t worth it. And he was ugly.”

I turned my head again and leaned in closer to hear better. “You think that matters to me?”

“I don’t know what matters to you.” The guy’s voice was raspy. I couldn’t tell if it was on purpose or not, but he was still there, so…I guess that meant something. “Why don’t you tell me?”

I had no idea what to say. Generally, I preferred to avoid conversations like this with strangers. Or conversations with strangers at all. But I was out, and I was a little bit tipsy and tired of being stuck at the bar.

“Are you ugly?”

He burst into laughter, and I could smell his cologne, which was oddly familiar, feeling a strange trepidation crawling up my spine as he swayed into my space. “No. Want to dance?”

No. But in spite of my reservations, I answered, “Yes.”

Then I stuck out my hand, and he slid his into mine.

His fingers were rough and calloused, and his knuckles were bony.

He clearly had no idea what he was doing, too, because he tugged me off the barstool and into a crowd of people.

I knocked left and right into writhing bodies, and a few people swore at me, but eventually, we were in some kind of open space, and he put his hands on my hips.

“Are you a good dancer?” I asked, pitching my voice louder.

“No. But everyone’s drunk, so who cares.”

I wasn’t drunk. But I also wasn’t a good dancer. I’d never bothered to learn. I’d always moved the way the music told me to move, and I got mocked for it a lot when I was out in sighted spaces, so it was easier to stick to the bar to avoid the bullshit.

I kept one hand on his shoulder while his gripped me around the hips, and it was…it wasn’t nice, but for a minute, I wasn’t thinking about all the things that had been overwhelming me lately.

Which were too fucking many things.

Things causing my anxiety to ratchet up, being in an unfamiliar place like this. Things happening I couldn’t talk to my brothers or my friends about. Things that were eating me up inside that had no outlet.

“You’re in my spot,” came another voice. Over the music, I could barely hear him, but I could recognize his voice enough that my blood started to run cold.

It was a person I’d been running from. A person who had been chasing me for over a goddamn year now.

The voice belonged to the guy who’d once pinned me down and laughed in my face when I couldn’t perform the way he expected. A voice that, when I told him to get fucked, started making my life a living hell.

“Who the fuck are you?” my anonymous, rough-handed, skinny-fingered dance partner demanded.

“His boyfriend.”

“Oh shit,” the guy said.

“No, he’s fucking not—” I started, but there was no point. The safe guy was gone, and in his place was the last man in the world I wanted to be in my space. Hunter’s own, much softer fingers grazed a touch down the side of my neck.

I felt instantly sick and tried to pull away, but I realized my mistake immediately. I had no idea where I was, no idea which way I was facing. My drink, cane, and phone were at the bar.

Fuck, I was such a moron. I never let go of those things in public. Never.

But I was buzzing and tired, and a possibly cute guy wanted to dance with me. This was why I never let my guard down. I was now lost at sea, and my only buoy was the man who’d spent the last several months stalking me.

“How the hell did you know I was here?” I demanded when Hunter dragged me closer to him. I tensed, trying to pull away, but his grip turned into iron.

“I always know where you are.”

“That sounds like a felony,” I hissed. I gripped his shirt and tried to shove him off me, but he was stronger. He was stronger on the date he’d hurt me too.

I was more clever back then and very good with my knees. I had decent aim for a man who was blind from birth, so the blow had connected with his balls.

I laughed all the way home, where I promptly threw up on my kitchen floor and spent two hours scrubbing it clean with a bottle of bleach. My hands were raw for days.

“Micah, Micah,” he murmured, dipping close to my ear.

“Seriously.” I shuddered and tried to pull my face away from his. “Stalking is a crime.”

“Mhm. But it’s not really stalking unless you can prove it. Besides, you were the one who asked me out.”

“Once. Then you turned into a literal psychopath.”

“Is that why you couldn’t get hard?” he asked, then laughed. “Because you don’t like it a little wild?”

I almost laughed. Wild was not the word I’d use to describe what he’d been doing. But I knew that right now, he was trying to get a rise out of me, and I wasn’t going to play his games.

“I’m leaving.”

“It’s very crowded in here,” he said, pressing his lips against my ear. “I can walk you out if you want.”

“I want you to leave me the fuck alone!” I shouted.

“And I want—”

“Sorry,” came someone else, and then there was a new hand on my side, yanking me away from Hunter. “You holding my boyfriend. Why?”

Oh fuck. I knew that voice too. I knew it a little too well for my own liking. Ivan Maximov.

Vanya.