17. Chapter 17 #2
Charlie rolled his eyes. “Unless Avery’s become Superman in the last fifteen minutes, no. I’m sure it’s . . . well.”
He didn’t say but then he didn’t have to. They both knew.
“I’ll get him,” Ethan said.
And sure enough when he opened the door, Max was standing there with tired dark eyes, holding a tray of coffee cups from Charlie’s favorite coffee place down the street.
Naturally, Max had gone out of his way to get coffee, even though he knew they had coffee at their apartment.
“Hi, Eth,” Max said. “I heard. Congratulations.”
He said it almost like a question.
God, he was really going to kick his and Charlie’s ass.
“It’s going to be good,” Ethan said. “Great, even.”
Max immediately looked chastened and guilty like worrying was something he should be ashamed of.
“You two are the worst,” Ethan said flatly.
“Coffee?” Max offered. Holding out the cup carrier like an offering. Ethan took it, put it on the little side table where Charlie insisted they put their keys and wallets, and then pulled Max into a tight hug.
“Oh,” Max mumbled into his shoulder. “Oh. Well. Yes.”
When Ethan pulled back, he said, bluntly, “Please don’t be as stupid as my brother.”
Max choked out a laugh. “Barney’s not stupid.”
“You’re both stupid,” Ethan retorted. Gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Go take him the coffee, but don’t let him drink too much or else he’ll get—”
Max raised one of his dark eyebrows. “Testy? Don’t worry, his is decaf, but that’s our secret.”
Ethan watched him pick the coffees up and walk down the hall and couldn’t help the thought of why is he so fucking perfect for Charlie?
Before joining them in the kitchen, where he knew Max would already be rifling through their fridge, finding something to make them all for breakfast, while Charlie looked on with amused fondness, Ethan detoured into the bedroom.
Pulled on a sweatshirt against the chill of the morning and grabbed his phone.
He’d already assumed that Max hadn’t woken Hank up and Ethan wasn’t going to either.
He’d find out about the trade sooner or later. One of them should be well-rested.
Sure enough, Max had his head in the fridge, Charlie perched on a barstool, watching him with this sickeningly sweet look in his eyes.
“Ugh, it’s too early for this,” Ethan muttered and made the executive decision if he had to deal with Max and Charlie, then Hank was too.
But before he could pull his phone out and text him, there was a second knock on the door.
Max’s head popped up. “Oh, there’s Tuck. I didn’t think he’d be so far behind me.”
“But you got coffee, from the good place around the corner,” Charlie said, and sure enough, he’d switched his prior cup for Max’s secretly decaf. Nobody should even be surprised.
“Hank said he was going to shower,” Max explained, but Ethan was already heading towards the front door.
When he opened it, Hank gave him a tired but earnest smile. “Hey,” he said and without hesitating for a moment, he reached out, tugging Ethan into his arms.
It could have been a minute or five. Ethan wasn’t really sure. But at some point, Hank mumbled into his neck, “How’re you doing?”
Ethan took stock. If he was just thinking how exciting it was that all three of them were on the same team, finally, then he was really fucking good.
Thrilled, honestly. And thrilled, too, for Avery, who’d been fucked around with by the Mavs—who weren’t even in a position to make the playoffs.
Unlike the Bandits, who’d just seriously upgraded their defense.
But concern about Charlie and even Max lingered in the back of his head. And even though this was a huge opportunity for Avery, how was he going to feel about the Mavs’ trading him? And as thrilled as he might be to be reunited with him and Charlie, he was leaving a whole life he’d built in LA.
“It’s a lot,” he finally admitted. “It’s . . . it’s mostly good. I’m really excited, sure, because it’s exciting. But it’s not all good.”
“Charlie’s freaking out?” Hank asked in a low voice.
“Yes, and Max, too, I think. I don’t know why they’re so worried.”
Hank just raised an eyebrow. “You don’t? Avery was being groomed to be the next Mavs’ captain. From everything I hear, he practically was the Mavs’ captain. Logan’s barely around.”
The current Mavs’ captain, David Logan, was in the twilight of his career and had been out for at least a season with a bad degenerative knee injury. Nobody knew if he’d ever play again. In his absence, it was true that Avery had taken on the lion’s share of the leadership.
“You don’t think—Silas wouldn’t replace Max.” Ethan shook his head. “Avery wouldn’t even want that.”
“I don’t know,” Hank said, and on one hand, Ethan loved that he wouldn’t bullshit him, wouldn’t paper over his worry with an easy lie, but at the same time, he wanted to be reassured. Avery wouldn’t ever want to supplant Max. Charlie would kill him, and he knew it.
Then again, it might not be up to Avery.
“Ugh,” Ethan complained. “See? I wanna be happy about. I am happy about it. But then, there’s all this other shit, getting in the way.”
Hank pulled him in for another hug. “It’s gonna be okay,” he said. “I know everything feels up in the air right now—”
“Yeah,” Ethan agreed.
“But,” Hank continued, “we have each other. There’s that.”
No, it didn’t fix everything, but Ethan wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t help either.
Ethan tipped his head against Hank’s. Then pressed his lips to Hank’s cheek. “Come on,” he said, “there’s coffee and Max is making breakfast.”
Charlie gave Hank a tip of his head when they slid into the two barstools next to him.
“Tuck,” he said.
“Barney,” Hank said right back. “Big morning.”
Charlie barked out a laugh. “You’re telling me.”
“When’s he getting here?” Ethan asked. “By lunchtime? They didn’t have to fly him in from Europe.”
“Nobody’s sure,” Max said, which was kind of crazy because if anyone should know, it was going to be Max. “Silas said he’d let me know when he knew more. I just know Inverness sent the jet to pick him up, and he’d be here sometime today.”
“Where’s he staying?”
“He’s not going to a hotel. I told Silas and Inverness we’d figure it out between us. We have the room, just not a bed, but—”
It surprised Ethan, but Hank reached over and squeezed his knee before he spoke up. “He can stay with Max—or I guess with Barney if he wants? Ethan and I can share.”
“Oh, out of the selflessness of your heart, I’m sure,” Charlie muttered and Hank turned red.
“That’s a great idea,” Ethan said. He leaned against Hank’s shoulder. “I can finally get rid of Hank pillow.”
“Wait, what, do I want to know about this?” Charlie demanded.
“Oh, get your mind out of the gutter,” Ethan said. “It’s just a pillow. No big deal.”
“That would fix the problem of the beds,” Max said slowly. “Barney, do you think he’d feel more comfortable with you? Or would it be easier if he stayed with me?”
“Probably me, if Ethan doesn’t mind moving some of his stuff upstairs to your place,” Charlie said, shooting Ethan a look.
“Already done,” Ethan said cheerfully. “Max isn’t as paranoid about every speck of dust.”
Charlie rolled his eyes. “Okay, so that’s settled.”
Max paused between eggs he was cracking into a bowl. “Now onto the next important subject—Eth, you saw they traded Nathan?”
“Yeah,” Ethan said, making a face. “Sorry, Max. I know you liked him a lot. Played with him since you were drafted, yeah?”
Max nodded. “But Barney and I both think—”
Ethan’s only excuse for why he hadn’t seen this coming from the moment Charlie had told him that Nathan had been traded was because he’d been understandably distracted by the fact that it was also Avery.
“Shit, not you too,” Ethan said to Max.
Max gave a little apologetic shrug. “You should be on my line. You should’ve been on my line for awhile now. Barney told me not to interfere, so I haven’t, but . . . you score goals, Eth.”
“I can score goals where I’m at,” Ethan argued.
He didn’t have the greatest stats, sure, but he’d spent half the season on the fourth line, making it up to the third line only a month ago.
He’d not been getting as much playing time.
No power play time—Silas only had him transitioning to the second team in the last few weeks, and honestly, the second power play team didn’t get much action, because the first was so good.
“Hard to score goals when you’re getting pushed around,” Hank added quietly.
“I don’t want anyone to think I need protection,” Ethan retorted. “I’m the biggest one of us three. I don’t want to be coddled or given special treatment.”
Charlie made a face. “Can’t you just argue about this without bringing our heights into it?”
Ethan saw Max smother a chuckle as he turned back towards the bowl of cracked eggs.
“If you’re gonna be a dick about this, then I gotta be a dick about it, too,” Ethan insisted.
“We’ve let you be stubborn,” Charlie said. “Why would playing on Max’s line be so bad? You’d be a great winger. And getting more experience there, that makes you even more valuable as a player, because you can do both.”
That was true. Except nobody was lining up to make Charlie a winger. Max, either.
“Oh, you’ve let me, like you make all the decisions on this team,” Ethan retorted.
“Come on. Si has talked a few times about moving you. And now he’s got a perfect opportunity to do it. If I talk to him—”
Sometimes Ethan just really hated his brother, and now his other brother was going to show up here, probably beating a similar kind of drum, and for once, he just wanted them to leave him fucking alone. He dealt with their bullshit, day in and day out, and they wouldn’t just listen to him.
“I don’t need you to go running to Silas and tell him where to use me,” Ethan said between clenched teeth.
Hank put a hand on his suddenly tense thigh.
“Okay, wrong way to say it,” Charlie said with an exaggerated sigh like that was the problem, not Charlie constantly trying to bend the whole world into a shape he liked.
“There’s no good way to say it,” Ethan said.