Chapter 15 Scotty
Scotty
There was a cage match between mortification and gratitude happening the whole way home, with neither emotion willing to tap out.
In the span of hours, these two strangers had given me more genuine care than I’d received from any man who’d claimed to love me.
They pulled me out of a wrecked car. They distracted me from the smoking crater that used to be my engagement.
They made me forget my own name for a while.
And how did I repay them? By crying on them like I was the emotional finale of a mid-season drama.
I wasn’t a crier. I handled things. I deflected with sarcasm. I packed my emotions into neat little boxes and shoved them onto high shelves. But today I apparently decided to take a baseball bat to every coping mechanism I’d ever installed.
Hunter and Ryder didn’t exactly help by cracking something open inside me first. They set something free, and unfortunately, that release manifested in tears.
That wasn’t happening again.
Earlier that day, while driving back to Evercrescent with my entire life shoved into the back seat, I made a very clear and mature decision.
I would not get involved with another hockey player.
I loved the sport. It was basically a family heirloom at this point.
But loving hockey and dating hockey players were two entirely different hobbies, and I had already failed one spectacularly.
I used to hear stories about guys cheating and think Ken would never do that.
He felt safe... at the start, at least.
Safe, it turned out, was just code for emotionally constipated and secretly a jerk.
Hockey players might have bodies sculpted by the hockey gods themselves, but they came with a fan club of puck bunnies, testosterone-soaked locker rooms, and the kind of swagger that only comes from seeing your own highlights on SportsCenter.
I could be a fan without making two of its star players my next life mistake.
All I needed was sleep. A reset. Morning light and a functioning brain.
They’d been exactly what I needed tonight.
A distraction. A reminder that someone could still want me.
I could let it be that. A chaotic, well-timed rebound with two ridiculously attractive Alphas who would go back to their penthouse and have ridiculously hot sex with each other that I wouldn’t get to witness.
Fucking tragic.
There’s just one problem.
I wanted them. My Omega needed them. She was acting like a stage-five clinger with zero chill, deeply offended that she hadn’t gotten a proper look—or taste—of what they were hiding beneath those shorts that clung to their delicious hips and even yummier thighs.
Uh, anyway, the point was, they weren’t walking away.
And neither, apparently, was my self-control.
“Stop here,” I said suddenly, sitting up.
Ryder’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “We’ll drop you at the driveway. Coach is probably asleep.”
“No.” I shifted in my seat, figuring if I was already halfway to humiliation, I might as well dive in headfirst. “I want to return the favor.”
The heat that climbed up my neck could have melted the earth. I sounded like I was trying to tip a waiter with oral sex. I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t even tipsy. I was just apparently incapable of acting like a rational adult when lust and pheromones teamed up against me.
Hunter’s mouth quirked up at one corner, his eyes dancing with quiet amusement. Ryder didn’t say anything, but when I reached for their cocks, possibly still riding an endorphin high, his hand closed gently around mine before I got very far.
“I appreciate the offer,” he said, his voice a tight rope stretched between restraint and desire. “But we told you. Tonight was about you, Sweetheart.”
And then he kissed me, and it was nothing like the kisses we shared before. It was slow and almost sweet. Filled with words and promises he didn’t dare say out loud. Heat spread slowly through me, steadier than the frantic spark from earlier.
When he pulled back, my brain took a second to reboot.
Hunter tipped my chin toward him next. His kiss melted against my mouth, unhurried and gentle, as if we had all the time in the world. He brushed his tongue lightly against mine before easing away.
I sat there for a moment, caught between their gazes, my heart teetering on a precipice where one side promised ecstasy and the other promised ruins.
I needed to be careful.
Not because I didn’t want them.
Because I absolutely did.