Chapter 24
Knight Chat
Hunter: Raising a petition to rename the group chat.
Greyson: On what grounds?
Hunter: On the grounds that it very much resembles pillow talk. Which you all know H.Q. Beauford doesn’t do.
Jackson: You got a middle initial?
Hunter: No.
Kane: It’s Quincy.
Jackson: No shit. And you want to rename the chat?
Cole: I petition to rename the group chat to Hockey Talk Only.
Ronan: Hang on Leman, for all you know, Quincy was about to suggest the same.
Cole: Doubtful. This is about a girl.
Hunter: Fuck. You. All. Especially you, Andrews.
Kane: You’re the one who made yourself sound like you’ve been knighted.
Ronan: Ha. I get it. Knight-ed.
hunter left the group chat.
kane added hunter to the group.
Kane: My apologies, Sir H.Q. But if I may, does this have anything to do with the chick in your room last night who wouldn’t stop talking?
Hunter: Dude, she wouldn’t stop. I almost fell asleep.
Greyson: Are we talking during, after, before?
Hunter: Before and after.
Greyson: Pillow talk’s awesome. You can say whatever you want while she’s still ridin’ the high of multiple orgasms. It’s like therapy.
Coach Nolan: Anyone see a blue beaded bracelet around? It’s got little baseballs and a red heart charm.
Greyson: Shit. Who added Coach?
Kane: I did, like two months ago.
Coach Nolan: Pretend I’m not here. The closer the team is, the better we play. Carry on. I’m putting it back on mute.
Hunter: @greyson. You have your thing, I’ve got mine.
Cole: Your thing should be to focus on hockey.
Hunter: That was the plan…but why should Andrews have all the fun this year?
I’m going to murder him.
My roommates, Tisch freaking McKenna, and I—obviously—are the only ones that know who Shadow is. The second the rest of my team starts seeing me around campus with Isla—they’ll put two and two together.
A few nights ago, the night Isla came over for a shower and broke rule number one, I managed to squeeze one more rule out of her before the end of the night.
I didn’t care what it was, I needed for her to feel in control. To know that this is her game, her ritual just as much as it is mine.
This way, we each had three rules.
She seemed nervous as shit just to bring up the exclusivity rule. I finally told her that’s my life rule, so she never has to worry about it. My mother’s affair destroyed my dad. So there was no need to convince me of that.
If I’m in her pants, I’m in no one else’s. Period.
This is where my problem lies, because her last rule was: Shadow stays a secret.
Part of that ‘we’re exclusively going to text and fuck until this pre-game ritual ends’ is that we don’t hide around campus.
Meaning, if I see her, I’m not fucking walking on the opposite side of the hall and pretend I don’t know who she is.
If she’s hungry after a game, I’m taking her to dinner at Gino’s.
So yeah, people will see us together. And Hunter’s slip is going to make the team wonder if Isla’s more than a friend. After Coach’s note about keeping this team close, the last thing I should be doing is lying to the guys I expect to trust me on and off the ice.
Which means…I need to trust them with Shadow’s identity.
There’s nothing but crickets in the group chat for the next few minutes.
Coach Nolan: If anyone does see it, please let me know. Ava made it for me in camp this summer and she’ll be crushed if I lost it.
Jackson: Does it have three little white squares that read D.A.D?
Coach Nolan: Yes, that’s it!
Jackson: Haven’t seen it. Not since you wore it last. We’ll keep a lookout.
I kill the engine and lean back in my seat.
The lookout at Eagle Ridge is quiet, except for the wind rolling through the pines. The last strip of sun hangs over the mountains—we caught most of it on the forty-minute drive over.
I found out the other day Isla hasn’t explored outside of campus since she landed here two months ago. Which is a crime because Northwind is beautiful. Montana is beautiful. Parts of it anyway. And I made it a point to bring her out here.
After the exchange with my team this morning, I texted her to see if she wanted to go out of town for dinner after tonight’s game.
Gino’s certainly wasn’t the right place for what I’m about to ask her.
Neither is my house—where my roommates are, or her dorm, or any place near campus for that matter.
I watch her eyes wander over the valley below, the mountains stretching for miles.
She catches me staring and turns slowly. “Don’t tell me you brought me here to do whatever it is you think I asked you for tonight.”
I chuckle. “No, no. I promised you dinner. We can talk about…what was it again?” I whip out my phone because I love watching her blush. Even if I do know all her messages by heart, in order, and steam level.
I read it out loud.
Shadow: Show me how to do it.
I narrow my eyes at her, fighting a smile. “Explain that one to me.”
She shrugs. “You won, didn’t you? Don’t question the process.”
“I won because you were there. And I don’t think you’re ready for what I was ‘showing you how to do’ in my head while I was out on the ice.” I set my phone aside. “My question is how will I know what we’re doing later?”
She pushes her hair behind her shoulders. “That...thing you did with my toy the other night. When you put it in your mouth.” She licks her lips. “I liked watching you do it.”
Pride twists in my stomach and I want to urge her to keep talking. “Did you?”
She nods. “Do you think you might like watching me do it?”
Is that a real fucking question? Am I on some hidden camera?
All I kept picturing on the ice tonight was Isla on her knees, taking my dick to the back of her throat in the shower while her pussy ached for me to be inside her.
My dirty mouth telling her to earn every inch of it with how well she sucks me.
Asking her if she likes the way I taste when I come down her—
“Fuck.” I run a hand down my face, snapping out of my fantasy before I’m unable to walk into a restaurant without embarrassing us both.
“Is that a no?”
I side-eye her like she’s crazy. “It’s a fuck yeah, I think I might. But…I don’t know about tonight.”
“Okay,” she responds quickly, turning pink. “I mean, it doesn’t have to be tonight, right?”
I shake my head. “It’s not that. There’s something I need to talk to you about and it’s going to break one of your rules.”
She turns to me, the small grin falling from her lips, and I hate that I’m the one responsible. How much it crushes me to ask her to break the one rule I made her come up with so that she could hold some power over this arrangement.
Now it’s like I’m taking it away.
I pull out my phone like maybe it’ll explain this better than I can, and open the team group chat.
I spend way too much time telling her about the dumb pillow talk debate before getting to my point. I finally get to Hunter’s slip. And the reminder from Coach.
She stares at the text chain for a beat. “You have to tell them.”
“I won’t do it unless you’re all right with it.”
She lifts her eyes to mine. “What kind of captain would you be if your team can’t trust you?”
“Are you sure? I can hold onto it until the end.”
She drops her gaze to my phone. “Do you trust them?”
“Individually? No. As a team? Absolutely. They know better than to break the trust of the locker room.”
She nods, inhaling deeply.
Other than finding her in my bedroom on Monday night, it’s the bravest thing I’ve seen her do all week.
We haven’t been there since.
“Do you want to come with me?” I ask before I can overthink.
Watching her do things that scare her is becoming my favorite version of her. I think it’s why I became obsessed with Shadow in the first place.
“To…the locker room?”
“Yes.” I grin. “Not the private one. The real Knights locker room.”
She considers it for a moment. Her eyes going wide. “Are girls allowed?”
“Some girls. Like Renee, our marketing manager. Her assistant. Hunter’s ex once, after he broke up with her—that wasn’t pretty. Oh, and probably the most classic was last fall when Coach’s daughter came in, finding at least six of us with our dicks hanging out.” I laugh.
“Oh my God, the one with the bracelet?”
“What? No, that’s Ava. I’m talking about Maddie Nolan, Coach’s older daughter. She goes to Northwind. That girl is trouble with a capital T, but we love her. She pretended to be shocked, but we know her better than that.”
Isla covers her mouth. “Oh no, was Coach pissed?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe. And we got the worst of it, somehow.”
“Well, you had no business walking around naked in a locker room.”
“We’re still scarred. Coach rode us for weeks after that.”
She laughs hard and I soak it in. Of all the ways I thought this discussion would go, watching her laugh like this was not one of them.
“So what do you say? There’s a practice tomorrow, or we can wait until before the game Thursday, if you want.”
She gnaws on her bottom lip. “Can we wait till Thursday? I need to think about it.”
I hate the thought of her spending the next four days trapped in her own head. Isn’t the whole point of this for her to stop overthinking?
But this isn’t my fear to beat. It’s hers. I nod and offer a small smile. “Think about it. But I promise you, I wouldn’t make you do something I didn’t one hundred percent trust. But with you there? We can’t go wrong.”
“How much do you know from looking me up?” I ask Isla when we’re in my room later that night.
I know how this looks.
Dinner out of town. Telling her locker room stories. I even took her to the lookout. I don’t take girls there. It’s too long of a drive just to make out and even longer to get back to my bedroom. Which is where we are now.
But this was all circumstantial.
And right now, there’s another circumstantial thing I need to do. Get to know my new friend.
She peeks at me from behind her book. “About two hours of online reading. Why?”
“What do you know?”
She sets her philosophy book down, searching her memory.
“Let’s put it this way, what don’t you know about me that you wish you did?”
“How many sex partners have you had?”
“Wow, going for the gold. Respect.”
She hides behind her book again. “Is this game over?”
I lower it. “No. What are you afraid of? The actual number?”
She sighs. “I’m afraid you’re going to ask me the same questions.”
I draw back with a smirk. “I like your honesty, Sunshine.”
She nods curtly. “Back to reading?” Then buries her head back in her book.
Well, this isn’t going to work. I narrow my eyes at her, hoping out of bed with a new tactic. “Hey, you know what, it’s still early enough, maybe you could catch Chili and Olive before they call it a night. Get to know them a little better.”
She shuts her book. “What’s your favorite color?”
A grin breaks out of me. “Blue. What’s yours? And if you say gray, we’re going to have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“The kind where you get a flower delivery from me every day until you pick a new favorite.”
She blinks. “Yellow.”
“Liar.”
Smiling, she shifts on my bed. “I thought you were going to help me practice for my presentation on Monday.”
“It sounded great. Just don’t overthink it.”
Her eyes brighten dramatically. “Brilliant. I’ll just say what comes out of my mouth.”
I suck my teeth. “Better read that passage to me a few more times.”
She tosses a pillow at me, then stares at her book with a deep breath. “I guess…there wasn’t enough on there about your mom?”
I exhale. Circumstantial.
“Not like it’s a secret,” I say, like it’s no big deal. “She was never your typical housewife. Got a little bit of a drinking problem now though.”
Her eyes dip to the side. “It said that your dad had the drinking problem though? After he retired.”
I shake my head. That’s a record I do plan on setting straight.
With her anyway. I sit on the edge of the bed.
“Certainly wasn’t his plan. He found out my mom had been having an affair with his agent.
She was always toxic toward him, but that sent him over the edge.
She’s also…” I cut off my sentence, since some of my teammates don’t even know this.
“She’s treating me the same way she treated him after he retired. ”
She frowns. “How’s that?”
“Making me feel worthless. Reminding me that I’m nothing without his name on my jersey.”
Her mouth drops, horror flashing across her face. “That comes from her?”
“Pretty sure it started with her. I never heard anyone else say it before she did. Or maybe that’s just when I noticed it, if that makes sense?”
She nods. “I get it. For you, she’s the only opinion that counts.”
“Not anymore. My teammates. My coach. Hunter, Grey, their families, heck even Maddie. They’re my real family. They’re the ones cheering me on, even on my worst days.”
“And the fans,” she adds.
“Yeah. The fans.”
Isla pushes her hair behind her ears. “You’re lucky to have all those people in your life. All I have is my dad.”
I blink. Wasn’t expecting that. Especially when she didn’t mention him after telling us about her mom.
“He’s still around?”
She nods, hesitant. “Sort of. Um, five and a half years ago his company was investigated for fraud. They found him guilty and he got five years. He’s been in prison since and…he’s all I have.” She says it all in one breath that I need to take a minute to process.
I frown. “Isla, I’m sorry. Did he…”
“No,” she adds quickly. “He was framed by his bosses. And I’m not just saying that because he told me. My dad would never take money from anyone. He’s always made an honest living.”
“I believe you,” I tell her, fighting the urge to touch her. To comfort her as her head drops in defeat.
My jaw tightens and I immediately think of Dad’s private investigator. The one who found out about my mother and exposed her. The man can dig up anything with as little as possible. I haven’t spoken to him in years, but he’ll remember me.
I collect the facts in my head but the timing is off. “Wait, it’s been five years though. Why isn’t he out yet?”
Her shoulders lift in a shrug. “I’ve been wondering the same thing. And I’ve got a sick feeling he’s not telling me something.”