Wealth filled the air like an intoxicant as I entered Joel’s neighborhood. Massive mansions sat far back from the road, their yards put together like works of art.

I found myself distractingly enthralled by a topiary menagerie marching alongside an illuminated reflecting pool, and then by an intricate fountain which looked like it would have been more at home in ancient Greece. The mansions themselves were veritable castles, towering against the inky black sky.

After winding through this oasis of wealth for a while, I found Joel’s address. I was almost disappointed; though his mansion was large and glittering, the property was nothing more than a bare slab of earth. As I stepped out of the car and inhaled, though, it all made sense. It smelled brand new, like sawdust and fresh paint and mud.

I carefully kept to the path as I walked to the door. I had chosen to wear suede heels to the swanky neighborhood, and ruining the hundred-dollar shoes would put a serious damper on my night. The doorbell played ten seconds of a rock song in chimes, a strange choice which made me wonder if Joel had any foresight whatsoever. Did he imagine that he would still enjoy that in ten or twenty years?

“Livia! Right on time,” he greeted, grinning as he flung the door open wide.

“You weren’t too hard to find,” I said with a flirtatious smile. “You’re king of the hill, out here.”

“It’s great, isn’t it?” he said rapturously as he took my coat. “They just finished it last month. I’m still trying to Palmer it up, but…you know.” He shrugged carelessly and flashed me his boyish grin. “Would you like a drink? I’ve got this massive wet bar in here—come on, it’s super cool.”

I was instantly comfortable with him, which surprised me. He was like a big overgrown puppy when he wasn’t clashing with Dante, rolling in his own success without a care in the world.

“Oh, wow,” I breathed. “That’s the biggest wet bar I’ve ever seen in an actual house. You could open a club in this room.”

It actually looked as if he had. The large room just off the foyer boasted a full-sized bar along one end, sparkly black tiles on the floor, a massive built-in sound system, and what appeared to be multi-colored track lights on the high ceiling.

A single couch sat in one corner with a long coffee table in front of it, as white as the floor was black. The sparkling paint on the walls gave it a galactic feel, which I was sure would be emphasized with different lighting. For now, only the few standard white bulbs burned above me.

“I thought about it,” he said as he walked behind the bar. “But they wanted all kinds of licenses and things, and I do not have time for that. I mean, maybe I could find the time. But that’s boring, isn’t it? It’s like being back in school.”

He was mixing drinks as he spoke, one after the other after the other. He had six lined up on the counter when he was finished, each a different color.

“There,” he said, gesturing proudly. “Take your pick!”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to ask me what I wanted?” I asked with a laugh.

“No,” he said firmly. “Girls never know what they want, except they do, but they won’t tell you that. Trust me, this method has saved me about a million headaches.”

“Wow, a whole million,” I teased. “That’s quite a record for someone your age.”

He winked at me, but I could see the slow blush creeping up his neck. He might be a party-hard womanizer, but there was still something almost innocent about him. He was young, I reminded myself. Younger than I was, though I wasn’t about to tell him that. I tapped into my inner college chick, balancing her against my grown-up journalistic skills.

“Ah…I haven’t had one of these in years,” I said as my gaze fell on a muddy green drink.

“Be my guest,” he said with a flourish.

“No, I literally can’t remember what happened after I swallowed it,” I giggled. “Let’s see what else you have.”

I finally chose a pale pink and orange drink which smelled more like juice than liquor, and Joel grabbed something dark and sparkling.

“Let’s move to the other room,” he said, glancing at the single couch disdainfully.

“The living room, I guess,” he continued as he walked a step ahead of me. “I honestly don’t know what to call them all. There’s the wet bar room, the pool table room, the room with the bookcases, the room with the couches, and three rooms that don’t have anything in them yet. Plus the bathrooms and kitchen and stuff, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something.”

He flashed a happy grin over his shoulder and led me down two carpeted steps into a large circular room which attached to two other rooms through high, open arches.

The ceiling was a glass dome, curved up to take in the night sky. The far half of the room was also mostly glass, tall windows and doors between twisted pillars. Long, curved couches sat in the center, illuminated by a chandelier which seemed to hang in thin hair. After a moment, I found the transparent lines which held it in place, but the illusion was magical.

“This is my favorite room,” he sighed happily. “It’s the first one I put any kind of real effort into. Took me weeks to find these couches, and this coffee table? Pure Caspian mother-of-pearl.”

“Is Caspian mother-of-pearl particularly good?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but it was like twice as expensive as the normal stuff,” he laughed.

“Then we’ll say it’s the best and forget about it.” I grinned, clinking my glass to his.

The couch was a little too firm, and the calfskin cover was just a little too squeaky, but the eager light shining from Joel’s eyes as he gauged my reaction made me soften to it.

“Oh, this is glorious,” I exclaimed, petting the couch. “Absolutely stunning.”

“Just like you,” he said, raising an eyebrow in an exaggerated fashion.

If he hadn’t obviously been playing, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to burst into laughter. When I did, he joined me, and our voices echoed through the observatory in ghostly harmony. I had never felt an emptier house. I took a long drink to adjust to the haunting sensation.

“Do you mind if I record you?” I asked, pulling my voice recorder out of my purse.

“Just don’t post it online, baby,” Joel said, flexing his biceps. “I don’t know if I could handle the stampede of women rushing to get them some.”

I laughed at him again, rolling my eyes. “I mean for the interview, you nut.”

“I know,” he said with a grin. “It’s fine; go ahead.”

I shook my head at him in amused admonishment and pushed the button on the recorder.

“All right, Mr. Palmer…”

“Joel!”

“Sorry! Joel. Tell me about your time on the team, specifically your relationship with Dante Drake.”

“Ugh, that guy,” Joel said, flopping dramatically against the back of the couch. “Man, he didn’t like me from day one. I don’t know what I did to get on his bad side, but it must have been epic.”

My chuckle held sympathy. Poor guy looked like he’d been yelled at by a super hero and Santa Claus all on the same day.

“I mean, I expected the hazing.”

“Hazing?” I asked, startled.

“Well, yeah, you know. We’re guys and whatever; a team is sort of like a club—they have to, you know, test your mettle.”

He spoke evenly, but something in his eyes looked hurt and confused.

“What was it that you didn’t expect, then?” I asked.

He shot me a sad look which made me want to go out and adopt every abandoned puppy in the world, including him. He sighed and took a drink.

“I didn’t expect that they would take it that far,” he said morosely. “I mean, hanging my jock strap off the flag pole…yeah, ha-ha, whatever. You laugh that off. Hot peppers in my food, mouth guard in the toilet…I mean, I guess that’s bonding? I don’t know. I kept laughing it off. But then…”

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head as a muscle jumped in his jaw.

“Someone overheard me on the phone with my mom. She’s back in California, so I don’t really see her much during the season. And I’m the baby, so of course she’s going to worry. Anyway, someone heard me telling her that I was perfectly safe, that I wasn’t going to get hurt on the ice—you know, all that stuff. This asshole—Jesus, it’s been a year; I still can’t think about it without getting pissed off.

“Anyway, someone grabs my phone while I’m in the shower, finds her number, and calls her from the office. Like, she has that number saved as the office because she’s totally convinced that I’m going to get brutally injured or something.”

He took another drink, glaring savagely at the wall.

“So I get out of the shower and go about my day. Mom calls while I’m getting dressed, but I let it go to voicemail because I literally just talked to her an hour ago, right? Figured I’d call her back once I wasn’t around the guys. But then she called again and again and when I answered it, she was hysterical. Took me ten minutes to calm her down enough for her to tell me what happened.

“One of those jackasses—and nobody will tell me who—called her and told her I’d been injured and was being airlifted to the hospital. They thought it was freaking funny.”

He trembled, his strong hand tightening around his fragile glass. I gently took the drink from him and set it on the table, stroking his arm soothingly. He took a few deep breaths and calmed slightly, but his eyes were ringed with red.

“Coach didn’t care. Drake didn’t care. They said it was innocent fun—can’t I take a joke? Maybe I’m not thick-skinned enough for the team.”

He shot me a look of intense disbelief.

“Dude, that’s my freaking mother. I don’t give a crap what you do to me, but she almost had a heart attack over it. I had to send my sister over to check on her. It was a big freaking deal, damn it.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, surprised that Dante hadn’t mentioned this little detail. “Yeah, that’s a huge deal.”

“So, after I was sure she was okay, it was on. The next time one of them fucked with me, I laid into him. Hard. Broke his nose, fractured his wrist, bruised the hell out of his ribs. I don’t even remember…oh, the jersey incident. Yeah. Barbecue sauce on a jersey is funny because we’re all twelve, right?”

He shook his head and sighed heavily.

“I had no idea,” I said gently. “That sounds terrible.”

“Yeah! It was! So I quit coming to practice, because screw that.”

He shook his head in disgust and reached for his drink again. I almost didn’t want to ask what I had in mind, but I felt it would paint a clearer picture for me.

“Dante tells me that you wreck your body with all the partying. Is that true?”

Joel actually laughed, which both confused and relieved me.

“You know, I did, for a minute, when the hazing got really bad. First time I puked on the ice, though, I knew I had to stop.”

He laughed, his eyes lighting up with the memory.

“Puked right on Drake, too. He took a personal interest in my torment after that. Before, he had just sort of been letting it happen, but after…man, he had a vendetta.”

“What did he do?”

“Okay, he’s team lead, right? What he would do is arrange it so that we’d all be doing something standard, and then the rest of the team would abandon me right when things started to heat up, always when I had the puck. I got the ever-loving hell kicked out of me—big guys crashing into me on all sides, shoving me into walls and stuff.”

“Wow.” I was growing more disappointed with Drake every minute. “What happened after that?”

“I confronted him,” Joel said, jutting his chin out. “I cornered him outside and called him on his shit. You know, that cocky son of a bitch didn’t even deny it. He just laughed at me. So, I took a swing at him. Coach came out after we’d been fighting for a minute, and we were both officially reprimanded. He told us to figure out a more constructive way to deal with our issues.”

“And that’s where the wager comes in?” I asked.

“Yep,” Joel said, his eyes steely with determination. “And I’m going to win.”