When her alarm rang a second time, Tristan woke up too. He rolled over and nuzzled into Eva’s back, kissing up her shoulder, but she jerked her face away before he reached her face.
His face went blank for a moment before he smiled against her skin. “All right, kitten,” he murmured. “I deserve that.”
Her eyes remained on mine. “It’s game day,” she said finally.
I nuzzled into her hair, breathing in her citrus and vanilla scent. “We need to talk,” I rasped, my voice still rough with sleep.
“No, we don’t,” she said firmly.
“We do,” Tristan said, sandwiching her between us, running his hand up her shoulder, then kissing her freckled skin.
“We have to talk about how to stop my father,” I said finally. “All three of us.”
Eva went completely still. On her other side, Tristan propped himself up on an elbow, his eyebrow raised, waiting for me to speak.
“Oh?” Eva said.
I traced idle patterns on her hip, over the sheet, needing the contact to ground me. “I think he’s in trouble financially,” I said finally. “And I think?—”
“I think so too,” Eva said, interrupting me. “Your credit card has been super helpful, by the way.”
I huffed a laugh against her neck. “Good.”
“You didn’t stop the charges,” she murmured.
“No,” I answered, unwilling to examine why, just as I hadn’t been willing to examine it before.
“What’s your plan, baby?” Tristan asked, his hand finding mine on Eva’s hip.
“Take him down,” I said, as if I were discussing the weather. “Any way we can.”
“We need proof,” Eva sighed. “I’ve been interviewing players on all the teams. He never puts anything in writing, never makes an outright demand. It’s all implied threats, rather than explicit.”
“I’m too fucked up to be a threat,” I said bitterly. “Too busy drinking and fighting?—”
“And wallowing in self-pity,” Eva interrupted sharply, “which is exactly where he wants you to be.”
My eyes flew to hers.
“We can fix this together,” Tristan said softly against her shoulder.
Eva’s laugh was sardonic. “Right. Together. After you two destroyed me, blackmailed me, turned me into yourpersonal fuck toy, and abandoned me, after calling me a whore for doing what it took to save my father’s life.”
She shoved at me until I sat up so she could crawl out of the bed. I stared at her perfect curves as she pulled an oversized t-shirt over her head. She whirled to glare at us. “We’re not a team.”
“Eva—” Tristan started.
She held up her hand. “I haven’t forgiven either of you, and maybe I never will.”
“I know,” I rasped.
“Good.”
The house creaked, and Eva froze. “Shit! My dad!”
The panic in her voice snapped me back to reality. Right. We were in her childhood bedroom, and her father was somewhere in this house.
Tristan and I exchanged a look over her head, the same look we’d shared a hundred times on the ice when we needed to work together without words.