Chapter 3
chapter three
Dabbs woke up to pitch-darkness and a tangle of limbs.
And not in the sexy way.
The Zervudachis had pitched three tents in their yard once they’d all returned from The Striped Maple. Brie, the eldest of the Zervudachi siblings, had arrived just in time to claim one for her and her kids. Bellamy and Jason had claimed a second, which had left Dabbs and Ryland sharing a third.
Dabbs hadn’t had time to worry about that before the kids had announced that they were all sleeping in the same tent.
As he and Bellamy had left Maplewood, Dabbs had second-guessed leaving his dogs with a teammate for the night. Now that he was part of a human puppy pile?
There was no way the dogs would’ve slept comfortably in this tent that currently held seven—including three jacked hockey players—but that technically only fit four.
Hell, Dabbs hadn’t been sleeping comfortably.
He quietly disentangled himself from someone’s arm and someone else’s leg.
At least, he assumed it was someone else’s leg, otherwise that person was contorted into a pretzel around him.
He unzipped the tent, crawled out, re-zipped it, grabbed one of the flashlights that had been left out for middle-of-the-night pee breaks, and slipped into his flip-flops.
His beers had caught up with him. He was going to burst if he didn’t take a piss in the next ten seconds.
The exterior lights on the house provided enough illumination to navigate the yard, so he rounded the fire pit they’d set the tents up around, then clicked on his flashlight when he neared the tree line.
Stepping into the forest in the middle of the night wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat. Shadows stretched every which way and twigs snapped under his shoes. Between the rustling of the foliage and the chittering of night insects, it wasn’t anywhere near as silent as he expected.
He didn’t venture too far into the forest—firstly, he didn’t want to stumble across the farm’s tapping lines. Secondly . . .
It was creepy as fuck.
He went far enough so that no one coming out of the tent would spot him and relieved himself against a tree. A couple of moths, attracted by his light, settled on the flashlight, and he gave it a shake once he’d tucked himself back into his boxers.
“Get out of here, you annoying—ahhhh!”
He jerked backward, stepping on his own flip-flop in the process. He landed on his back, sprawled like a dead starfish. The flashlight went flying, and Jesus fucking Christ, there was someone in the forest with him. He was about to be murdered by a forest-dwelling serial killer and—
Laughter reached his ears. He grabbed for the flashlight, shone it at his murderer, and—
“Ryland?”
“Oh my god,” Ryland croaked through his guffaws. “Oh my god, that was the funniest shit I’ve ever seen. Ahhhh!”
That last was clearly meant to be an imitation of Dabbs.
“Jesus fuck, Ryland. You asshole.” Heart hammering fast enough to burst out of his chest, Dabbs slumped back against the ground.
Then pictured creepy-crawlies creepy-crawling all over him and practically flew onto his feet.
“What the fuck are you doing out here?”
Ryland wiped away tears of laughter. “Taking a piss. What else? God, I wish I’d recorded that.”
“Asshole,” Dabbs reiterated without any heat.
Chortling, Ryland pointed with his cell phone flashlight. “Your missing shoe is over there.”
Grumbling, Dabbs stooped to flip it over, then stuck his foot inside. He hadn’t even noticed he was missing it.
“I’m guessing you’re not much of an outdoorsy person.”
“I’m an outdoorsy person,” Dabbs muttered, shaking debris out of his other flip-flop.
“I grew up in Northeastern Ontario. You can’t live there and not be an outdoorsy person.
Not a huge fan of people sneaking up behind me in the woods in the dead of night though.
Way to make a person think they’re about to be murdered with their dick hanging out. ”
“Sorry,” Ryland said, though he was clearly holding back more laughter. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you heard me. Besides, there’s nothing more dangerous in these woods than Mabel.”
“Mabel is . . . the local forest fairy?”
“Ha! No. That’d be cool though, wouldn’t it? Actually, do you want to see something cool? Come with me.” He turned, heading deeper into the forest.
His heart still not back to its normal rhythm, Dabbs followed after him, shining his flashlight in every direction. “So who’s Mabel?”
“Oh, just our local cryptid,” Ryland said, his steps heavy on the underbrush. “We call her the Maplewood Monster. She’s a tall and leafy forest creature. Jason swears he saw her in these woods when he was a kid.”
Dabbs hunched his shoulders, unable to ignore the sensation of eyes on the back of his head. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Shh.” Ryland stopped and pressed a finger to his lips. “You’ve got to be quiet,” he said softly. He crouched, pointing ahead. “Look there, in that crevice. It’s a red fox den.”
“Oh, cool,” Dabbs whispered, forgetting all about forest monsters and middle-of-the-night forest-dwelling serial killers.
He squatted next to Ryland and peered into the darkness.
There, in a small mound of dirt partially covered by fallen tree branches, was a hole roughly the size of a dinner plate.
He kept his flashlight pointed down so he didn’t disturb the den, but he could’ve sworn a set of bright eyes peered back at him.
“I know. Neat, right?” The awe in Ryland’s voice had Dabbs narrowing his gaze on him.
In the glow of their flashlights, he looked...unguarded. Wide-eyed, a soft smile on his lips, his arms loose by his sides.
The entranced expression on his face was the most genuine that Dabbs had ever seen him.
Ryland was always so . . . vivacious. He was gloss where others were matte, sparkle where others were dull. But although they’d played against each other for years and had attended many of the same league events, Dabbs didn’t know him very well.
He found that he wanted to. There was something about Ryland’s blunt honesty and raw zest for life that made Dabbs want to pull back Ryland’s layers.
Looking at him now, kneeling in a carpet of twigs with the wind gently ruffling the leaves overhead and an owl hooting eerily nearby, Dabbs had a feeling that Ryland might show him some of his layers if he asked.
At six feet tall, Ryland was a few inches shorter than Dabbs.
His oval-shaped face with thin, pink lips and a strong nose should’ve graced the covers of magazines.
His skin was perpetually the color of a summer tan; his rich brown hair tumbled around his head in loose waves, falling over his forehead; and his hazel eyes, unfathomably dark in the middle of the night, were often lit with laughter.
And the nose ring gave him an edge that was—somehow—both sexy and cute.
He was beautiful. Dabbs had always thought so. But he could be attracted to someone and not act on it.
The trouble was, he was physically attracted enough to want to act on it, and after tonight’s brief bout of flirting at the pub?
He wanted Ryland’s hands on him and his own in Ryland’s hair. He wanted to taste Ryland’s lips, press his fingertips into the divots of Ryland’s back, stick his nose in Ryland’s neck and inhale his scent.
But they couldn’t work. Ryland was flashy and loud. Thrived as the center of attention.
And Dabbs just wanted to fly under the radar as much as he could. He didn’t need his private life splashed all over social media for everyone else to dissect.
Dabbs opened his mouth to ask how Ryland had found this fox den when Ryland murmured, “When I was a kid, I wanted a pet so bad.”
The information, offered freely, had Dabbs clacking his mouth shut.
“But after my parents divorced . . . well, my mom didn’t want a pet, not even something as innocuous as a goldfish. And my dad . . . he had the farm, plus three kids undertow five days a week.”
“You never had a farm dog?”
“Right? It’s unnatural not to have a dog on a farm.
I used to leave food out on the back porch and pretend the foxes were my pets.
Jason caught me one night, and man . . .
you should’ve heard the lecture I got about why I shouldn’t feed the wildlife.
He was such a know-it-all about it,” Ryland said fondly.
Dabbs could picture it—a miniature Ryland Zervudachi, pushing hair out of his eyes as he put out the evening’s leftovers, desperate for a quick glimpse of the local wildlife.
Was there anything left of that little boy in this version of Ryland?
Dabbs wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there was.
“Do you have any pets now?” he asked.
“Nah.” Ryland shifted, and the twigs cracked under him. “You know what the season is like—I’m on the road too much to have a pet. Yet somehow, you’ve managed two. Who watches your dogs while you’re traveling with the team?”
“I’ve got a roster of dog sitters I can call on.”
“Have any of them ever not been available?” Ryland asked. He stood, gesturing for Dabbs to do so as well, and began to lead the way back to the house.
“No,” Dabbs replied. “But there’ve been last-minute cancelations. There’s no accounting for life getting in the way, you know? I’m lucky that there’s usually someone in my organization who can watch them if I have a cancelation. What kind of pet would you have?”
“A dog,” Ryland said instantly over the sound of their feet crunching the underbrush. “A border collie or an Australian shepherd or a Samoyed. A medium-sized dog I’ll easily be able to find when it inevitably gets lost on the farm.”
As they walked out of the forest, Dabbs took in the two-story farmhouse, the farm shop several yards away, a well-maintained shed, a barn he was guessing held equipment, and a lawn mower a person could sit in. “I can’t picture you as a farm boy.”
“Probably because I was never a farm boy.”