“Tomorrow?” I blurt out in astonishment. “No, I can’t tomorrow. I have a crazy full day. No room at all in my schedule.”

“Then when do you have time?” He’s so calm and sure of himself, while I feel like I’m getting ready to fracture into a million pieces.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this,” I stammer, succumbing to fear and rationality.

“Getting coffee?” Ryker asks with a chuckle. “It’s just coffee, Gray. People have it together all the time.”

“But—”

“Besides, I consider it to be like an incentive bonus. You said if I got a shutout you’d take me out for coffee. It’s time to pay up.”

He can’t see me and I’m glad, because a satisfied smile creeps onto my face. I’m happy he’s pushing me, because if it were up to me, I’d listen to my common sense and hightail it far away from Ryker Evans. But then again…it’s just coffee, right? No implication of anything further. Nothing more than an employer and employee coming together to chat over coffee.

Easy.

“How about Wednesday morning, you come to yoga and we’ll get coffee after,” I offer. And the invitation back to yoga is completely permissible because I’m interested in his health and training and has nothing to do with me being able to ogle him up close.

I’m so going to hell for these thoughts.

“All right,” he says, and I hear relief in his voice. It tells me he was just as leery about my reaction to this as I was to him pushing it. “See you on Wednesday, Big Bang.”

And then he hangs up.

Chapter 7

Ryker

We walk back into the hotel a little before one A.M. and I have a good buzz going on. Zack and I, along with Alex Crossman and Garrett Samuelson, the two best players on the team, had all gone out for a late dinner and drinks following the game.

We ate little and drank a lot, celebrating our win over the Breakers with a shutout.

I was personally celebrating my date with Gray Brannon.

And it is a date, no matter how much shit I spouted to her about “it’s just coffee.” If it was “just coffee,” she wouldn’t have been so freaked about it.

As we walk through the lobby, we hear a raucous roar from the hotel bar and I can see several of our teammates in there laughing.

“Come on,” I say as I start heading that way. “Let’s have one more beer for the road.”

“You mean for the short elevator ride up to our rooms?” Alex corrects me.

“Whatever,” I mutter. “It’s a night to celebrate.”

We manage to work our way up to the bar amid backslaps and high fives from teammates. I order beers for me, Zack, Alex, and Garrett, and because I’m feeling overly celebratory due to my upcoming date, I buy the entire team another round. Beers are poured and handed out, drunk men raise the pint glasses in cheers and victory, sloshing the frothy goodness all over the place. My teammates come up one by one and thank me for the beer and for the shutout. I get noogies, ass slaps, and our equipment manager, Raul Mendleson, who is a crusty old fart, even mimed humping my leg in gratitude—I kid you not.

It’s a good time with my drunk mates, but as always seems to happen, some people can’t handle inebriation as well as others.

And I’m talking about myself primarily.

It starts when Claude Amedee comes up to me, looping an arm around my shoulders and squeezing me affectionately. As one of our younger defensemen, he’s a big dude and we almost see eye to eye in the literal sense, although I think I have him by about an inch.

“Man…you were killing it tonight,” Claude says while he stares at me happily. His eyes are glazed and his words are slurred but that doesn’t stop me from clinking my glass to his, which encourages him to drink more. “We need to celebrate while we can because this team is going to fall to shit.”

Even though he’s so drunk he’s slurring and maybe shouldn’t be taken seriously, I can tell that because of his lowered inhibitions, he’s spouting some deep-seated resentment.

“What do you mean?” I ask him, my hackles rising.

I know what he fucking means, but I want to hear him say it.

“Never mind,” he says with a happy, drunk grin and squeezes my shoulder again. “I just wanted to thank you for the beer. You are the man, Brick.”

I nod my head at him and he spins away from me, lurches to the bar two feet away, and starts talking to Sam Larson and Mikkel Erat, two of the other younger defenseman. I shake my head and turn back to Zack, Alex, and Garrett, joining in on their conversation, which oddly is about kayaking for some reason.

A lot of the players start filtering out of the bar, and as it approaches two A.M., the bartender finally takes last call. Zack and Garrett head up to bed, but Alex stays with me and we have one more beer while casually leaning up against the bar. The only other players left are Claude, Sam, and Mikkel, and all of a sudden, it just seems a little too quiet without the underlying roar of twenty big hockey players all talking at once.

“—and I’d love to wipe that haughty look off her face,” Claude sneers as he takes a sloppy gulp of beer.

My skin tightens and I slide my eyes to Alex. He just shakes his head with a disgusted look on his face and leans his elbows on the bar. His look to me is clear…let it slide because he’s a drunk asshole.

I roll my head from side to side, trying to loosen the sudden tension in my shoulders.