Felicity

Usually when I go to a Thrusters game, I sit with my parents in their private box—it’s been an indulgence since I was little—and Maren almost always comes with. Alina’s gone half the year, traveling and performing, and Kami sometimes hangs with her family in their private box.

We all love the Thrusters.

Today, however, Ares snags me by the shirt as soon as we get out of his car on the players’ parking level and points to the private elevator used by the coaches, players, and team staff.

There’s no need to read heavily into the look in those intense blue eyes.

He’s very clearly threatening to ditch the crutches and toss me over his shoulder to get me where he wants me if I don’t go along.

So I nod and follow him to the elevator.

The guard doesn’t blink.

“Enjoy the game, Mr. Berger,” he says.

Like it’s normal for Ares to show up with a girl, a monkey, and a cat puppet.

I’ve never been in the team’s private suite before. If they opened up the suite to all the family, it would be packed. We usually pay for tickets just like everyone else. The team’s box is used for guys on the IR who want to be here without causing a fuss, or for upper management, or whoever else the Thrusters decide is allowed.

It’s kind of a big deal to be in here, and I doubt I ever get to come back.

Especially since I showed up with a monkey.

The suite isn’t at center ice—that’s reserved for fans willing to cough up the big bucks—but the bar’s stocked and manned, there’s food laid out, the beige carpet with the Thrusters logo in the center is clean, the TVs above the windows overlooking the rink are all huge, showing clips from this last week’s games and shots of fans settling into their seats and the Thruster Girls doing their pre-game show on the ice.

The room smells like beer and popcorn and fries.

Like blood and sweat and ice.

Like hockey.

I fucking love it.

There are four guys in suits huddled in the maroon and black lounge chairs around a coffee table, also decorated with the Thrusters logo, on one side of the suite. They’re in deep discussion over profit margins, laundry bills, and dental cleanings.

Yes, seriously.

Dental cleanings.

I wonder if one of them is the dentist on staff.

I hope so, but they’re at a hockey game. In the team suite. They could at least be excited to be here.

Suddenly there’s shrieking from the row of luxury stadium seats at the windows overlooking the ice.

“Ares! Ohmydog, you poor thing. Come. Sit. Loki! You brought Loki. I brought cookies. Don’t tell. I don’t think I’m supposed to bring food into the arena, but Manning offered to kick anyone’s ass if they said anything to me. So far everyone’s been nice, and why are you standing up? Sit. Sit down right now before I call Joey.”

That’s Gracie.

She’s this adorable, plucky woman from Alabama who has completely captivated Manning Frey, heart and soul.

She’s also kind of like family for Ares, because her sister’s dating his twin brother. I met her a couple weeks back when Nick dragged me along for a guys’ game night at Manning’s place.

Gracie half-hugs Ares while she pulls him to a seat at a table next to the bar. The suite isn’t that big, so we’re almost on top of the suits. I’m guessing she’s in the team suite because of security reasons, since she’s dating Manning, who’s a legit prince to a small country.

Ares gives me a look over her head that suggests he’s just humoring her. I have shit to do. Distract her.

Not a chance.

“Here, put your foot up,” Gracie orders.

I leap into action as Gracie grabs a bar stool that looks like its legs are made of iron. She’s a couple months pregnant—one more reason, I’m sure, Manning has stashed her up here in the team suite, now that it’s public knowledge that she’s having his baby—and doesn’t need to be lifting anything any more than Ares does. “Here. Let me.”

“Felicity!”

Gracie’s chocolate eyes light up one minute and the next they go wide. She runs a hand over her curly dark hair, stool forgotten. “Ohmydog, what happened to your eye?”

“If you think that’s bad, you should see the door she walked into,” I reply as Lucy. “It’s not going to pull any more shit in the dark, you can count on that.”

She looks at Ares.

He sighs and nods. Yep, that’s what happened.

“Okay then,” she says. She winces again. “Also, I’m so sorry about the cookies. I didn’t know they’d end up in your yard. And—” she winces harder “—I’m really sorry about your brother’s penis too. That has to be hell on his social life.”

Ares suddenly has a coughing fit.

A laughing coughing fit. His eyes are crinkled, his mouth spread wide, broad, thick chest heaving. He takes a seat at the bar and props his foot up, shaking his head.

Loki screeches.

“Whaaaaa…?” I start.

Gracie’s olive skin goes cherry. “You don’t… know?”

I’m pretty sure she’s talking about the dick cookies on Gammy’s teensy front lawn, but— “You had something to do with Soggy Dick Cookie Mountain?”

She holds her hands up. “I swear to you, if we’d known what was going to happen to the cookies, I would’ve refused the order. But I’m done with the Dickookie business now. For real. Your brother broke me. I can’t stand staring at ugly dicks anymore, and after having my entire hometown help me bake like five gajillion of them, we’re all done with ugly dicks. But the good news is, every single kid in Goat’s Tit knows about the importance of condoms now. And personal grooming too. If you need someone to talk to Nick about that—”

The four men have stopped their conversation and are staring at us.

Gracie notices them noticing us, and she scurries to grab a cotton tote from the ground at the edge of the bar. “Cookies?” she offers, pulling out a zipper bag full of what appears to be snickerdoodles.

“You bake dirty cookies?” I whisper, angling closer to her while I watch the guys across the suite watching us whisper.

“Not anymore. Seriously. It was just a side thing. For spare cash. Started with faces, devolved to dicks, which I charged more for. For the record. But I’m done with it. And not because princesses don’t bake dick cookies. I’m just so tired of dicks.”

“Aren’t we all,” I muse.

Though I’m not tired of Ares’s dick.

I just know I shouldn’t touch it.

Or think about it.

Because my brother is a dick. Who does things like order gajillions of dick cookies to be delivered to my—oh, lordy.

I start laughing.

Gracie Diamonte ran a dirty cookie business. She made all those cookies that got delivered to Doug’s doorstep. And she thinks that was Nick’s dick she printed on all those cookies.

And I’m not about to correct her.

Brothers are assholes. He deserves this.

She lifts her brows, but she doesn’t ask.

I turn back to the bar to make sure Ares is comfortable—no wonder he was laughing, he probably knew too, and— “Son of a bitch.”

He’s gone.

Of course he’s gone.

He’s Ares. That’s what he does.

He disappears. And he has completely and totally disappeared from the suite.

“Where’d he go, Loki?” I ask the monkey.

Loki shrugs. He’s found another bag of Gracie’s cookies and he’s munching on them while he peers out the suite window at the pre-game entertainment on the ice below.

He’s set.

Gracie gestures over a tall, quiet guy in a plain suit. I missed him sitting at the end of the row of stadium seats the first time, but I recognize him from the one night I played board games at Manning’s apartment. One of the royal guards. They have a quick conversation, and he departs the suite.

He’s gone about thirty seconds before he returns with Ares.

Along with a slender woman in an ivory business suit.

She has pearls in her ears, a wedding band on her hand, her brown hair twisted back in a knot at her nape, perfect makeup, and her hazel eyes seem to take in everything about the suite with one quick glance.

Her gaze wavers between Gracie and me.

“Talk,” Ares says to me.

“Sit,” I reply.

He rolls his eyes. At least he’s using his crutches.

“Don’t take attitude with her, mister,” I vent as Lucy. “She’ll put peas in your eggs. Don’t think she won’t. And I won’t be able to stop her.”

Gracie giggles. “I freaking love you and your voices,” she whispers to me.

The woman in the business suit eyes Ares.

“Sit,” he tells her.

We all have something of a stare-down. Ares needs to sit, but he’s clearly not going to sit until the woman sits.

“Hi,” I say to her. “I’m Felicity Murphy. This is Gracie. We’re bunnies.”

Ares growls.

Gracie chokes on a snickerdoodle.

The suits eye us thoughtfully.

“Nick Murphy’s sister?” the woman asks.

“We all have our burdens,” I answer cheerfully as Lucy.

Yeah.

I’m that freak. I introduce myself by talking without moving my lips.

“I mean, yes,” I say quickly. As me. While moving my lips.

“Jenna Tucker. Video production manager for the marketing department.”

“Seriously?” I ask.

She nods.

Ares nods. He’s watching me. Like I’m supposed to understand something.

I pull my phone out of my back pocket. “This isn’t professional quality or anything, but have you ever seen Ares—”

My phone disappears.

Ares has it now.

He clamps it between his teeth, swings his crutches, lifts himself over the back of the seats—show off, he could’ve just used the break between every fourth seat—and settles into the middle one.

With my phone under his butt.

“What the hell?” I say to him.

He drops his crutches and scowls at me.

“Dude,” I say, because I can’t help myself. “That video of you and Alina is solid gold.”

He flips me off.

Loki jumps on his shoulder and squeezes his head and pats his hair while they both watch the Thruster Girls shake it on the ice below.

“We’re not interested in videos of Mr. Berger mooning your neighbors,” Jenna says dryly to me. “New York already has that with his brother.”

“You don’t know Ares at all, do you?” I vent as Tim.

Jenna looks at Ares, then back at me. “Does anyone?”

God.

How lonely must that be?

He’s on a new team, hundreds of miles from home, hundreds of miles from his twin, injured, and nobody even knows he sings.

They have to know.

There are videos all over YouTube of him and Zeus crashing their sister’s band’s performances in bars in New York.

What’s different about him singing with Alina? Why wouldn’t he want people to see that? The two of them this afternoon were magic. She cello’d up with the Backstreet Boys, Ares nailed every word, every note, and I got chills.

Plus, she’s Alina freaking Speros. The rock cellist. Couldn’t come to the game tonight because she’s playing a private charity fundraiser at the fanciest hotel in Copper Valley with the Swedish pop diva Xandria.

A video of Ares singing with Alina playing?

That’s huge. Huge for Ares, and huge for the Thrusters.

Maybe not as huge as if he was doing a duet with Xandria while Alina rocked out, but pretty damn big all the same.

The world would go nuts if they saw what Ares and Alina did this afternoon.

He’s so much more than just a hockey player.

He turns his head to look at me, and he’s telling me to drop it in no uncertain terms. Without saying a word.

Just using that haunted glare.

This definitely requires further investigation.

Later.

When he least expects it.

I smile at Jenna. “So great to meet you. If you need dirt on Nick for anything, let me know. I owe him.”

She smiles back. “I’ll remember that.”

I doubt she’ll call me—she’s supposed to make the Thrusters look good, not bad—but I made the offer.

I’ve done my part.

And now I can get back to figuring out Ares.