“And what was the cost for Eva?”
He smiled, and I remembered the handsome, mischievous cousin I’d grown up with. “I’m getting lonely in my old age and wanted my best friend back. She wasn’t supposed to cost you a fucking thing.”
And yet, she might have cost me everything. What had I been thinking? Jed and Eva had conspired together to put the perfect temptation in my path, and I took the bait, like a fucking idiot. Now, just as I had the power to destroy her, she had the power to destroy me.
She’d already destroyed the team by making them fall in love with her, by showing up and being kind and sweet and earnest and so fucking adorable, they couldn’t help themselves. And when we hurt her?
They defended her, that fuckingbitch.
Eva had no idea what she’d stumbled upon when she agreed to take on her father’s debt to Jed Carter. I hated her for it—hated her for her naivete, hated her for being the type of woman my team would defend.
And still, she’d betrayed all of us.
The vodka burned as it slid down my throat then warmed in my stomach.
“You’re fucking her,” Dmitri surmised as I joined him in staring out the window, the lights of Yorkfield twinkling against the stark night sky. It stung that he could still read me so clearly when he was a stranger to me.
“She’s—” I cut myself off. Sixteen years had fallen awayas if they’d never happened, and yet, I didn’t know Dmitri anymore. “I was,” I admitted softly.
“She betrayed you,” he continued.
“Like her father did.”
Dmitri didn’t answer. He furrowed his brow. “The last time you were hell-bent on revenge, I lost you for sixteen years.”
“You won’t lose me this time,” I vowed. “Find out who else Jackson owes money.”
Dmitri’s face lit up with pleasure. “And once I do?”
I took a deep breath and sold my soul to my cousin. “Then, we’ll negotiate.”
2
TRISTAN
Not a single personlooked up from the television when Cole and I walked into the hockey house. Not our teammates, not the girls, not even Katie.
I wanted to tell them what Eva had done, that the reason we’d lost was because she’d betrayed us.
But doing so would mean I’d have to admit my own complicity, that I’d known she was selling our information, and instead of doing something to stop her or to help her out of a terrible situation, I’d doubled down on Cole’s blackmail, forcing?—
Forcing wasn’t the word, though, was it? No, it was much uglier.
Eva had betrayed us. She’d betrayed me. She’d betrayed Cole. Of that, I was certain, and I nursed the anger in my heart to blot out the cruelty of leaving her alone to face Jedediah Carter.
Cole walked up the stairs without a word and slammed his door in my face, leaving me standing in the hallway, my duffle slung over my shoulder, more lost than ever.
Cedric
Hey, buddy, you okay?
My cheeks heated with shame. My brother had called in a lot of favors to get scouts to go to that game, and all I’d done was show them my team hated me.
Instead, I called my mom, on voice instead of video.
“Hey there,” she said. “I’m going to set the phone down so we can talk while I wash dishes.”
I smiled at the thought of her in the tiny house we grew up in, looking out the kitchen window to watch me and Cedric playing in the backyard, skating on the pond behind our house during the frigid Colorado winters.