The Risk (Briar U #2)(16)

That doesn’t stop Brooks, of course. My roommate can find a chick anywhere. Take him to a convent and he’d seduce a nun. Take him to a funeral and he’d be banging the grieving widow in the bathroom. Or hell, on the casket. Dude’s a slut.

Right now, he’s at a corner table making out with our waitress. Only two servers are working tonight, and Brooks has his tongue in one of their mouths.

The other one, an older dude with a beard and glasses, keeps clearing his throat pointedly. She keeps ignoring him. When he calls, “Rachel, your table’s waiting,” she breathlessly unlatches her lips from my teammate’s and waves her coworker off. “Can you handle it? Tips are yours.”

I’m assuming she doesn’t want the job anymore and this is her way of quitting, because there’s no way she’s escaping without punishment. The other waiter and the bartender keep exchanging sullen looks, and I’m pretty sure one of them already phoned the manager.

While Brooks is in the corner feeling up the waitress, the rest of us are enjoying the Bruins game and listening to Coby Chilton complain about the two-beer limit I’ve enforced. He can bitch about it all night, for all I care. We’re playing Princeton tomorrow afternoon and nobody is allowed to show up to a game hungover. Hell, I forbade Potts and Bray from going out tonight altogether. I don’t trust the beer pong duo.

“If you could bang any hockey player, dead or alive, who’d it be?” Coby asks Dmitry. Since a second ago he’d been talking about beer, the change of subject is jarring.

“What?” Dmitry sounds extremely confused. “You mean like a female hockey player?”

“And when you say ‘dead,’ do you mean I’m fucking her corpse or am I doing her when she was alive?” Heath pipes up.

“Nah, I’m talking NHL. And none of that necrophilia shit.” Coby’s expression conveys horror.

“Wait, you’re asking us which dude we’d fuck?” a senior D-man demands.

I swallow a laugh.

“Yeah. I’d pick Bobby Hull. I like blondes. How ’bout you guys?”

“Hold up. Chilton,” squawks Adam Middleton, our most promising freshman. “Are you gay?” The eighteen-year-old glances around the table. “Has he always been gay and I’m just finding out? Did y’all know?”

“You wish I was gay,” Coby shoots back.

The freshman’s eyebrows crash together. “Why would I wish that?”

“Because I’m a great lay. You’re missing out.”

“What is happening right now?” Adam asks me.

I press my trembling lips together. “No clue, man.”

“I heard a bunch of chicks debating this shit in Harvard Square the other day,” Coby explains, polishing off his second (and last) bottle of Sam Adams. He rolls his eyes dramatically. “They were choosing the lamest dudes. Tyler Seguin! Sidney Crosby!”

“I’d do Crosby,” Dmitry pipes up. “I wouldn’t even need to picture some girl to get hard. I’d just think about his stats line.”

As laughter breaks out at the table, I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket, and pull it out.

HAZEL: Whatcha up to tonight? I’m home and bored.





I shoot a quick text back, telling her I’m out with the boys.

HAZEL: Use condoms!





I laugh out loud, drawing the attention of Coby. “What are you giggling about over there?” He scowls. “You better not be chatting up a girl. You banned hookups, remember?”

“I banned distractions,” I correct.

And so far it’s been working. McCarthy was in top form at morning skate, proving that his flirtation with Brenna Jensen was the cause of his recent bout of sucking. He didn’t come out with us tonight because he wanted to stay home and watch all the available game tape from Princeton’s season to prepare for tomorrow. See what happens when you eliminate pesky distractions?

“Also, I’m not chatting up a girl,” I add. “I’m texting Hazel.”

“Oh nice, tell her I say hi,” Coby orders.

Hazel was my “date” for a team event last year, so most of my teammates know her. Coby, in particular, took an immediate liking to her. Granted, Coby takes a liking to anyone with tits. And to blondes, apparently, regardless of gender.

“Are you ever gonna give me her number?” he gripes.

“Nope. You’re not allowed to mess around with my friends.” I don’t want Chilton anywhere near Hazel. He’s a major player, and he’d break her heart. She’s too inexperienced to handle someone like him.

To be honest, I don’t think she’s ever had an actual boyfriend. I assume she hooks up, because she’s an attractive, twenty-one-year-old woman, but I’ve never seen her with a man. In the past I wondered if maybe she was a lesbian, but I haven’t seen her with any women, either, and I’ve definitely caught her checking out dudes before. I think she just doesn’t have much game. And Coby has too much of it.

A loud wolf whistle cuts through the rock music blasting in the bar. It comes from the direction of the pool table. The two men standing there have abandoned their game to gape at the entryway.

I follow their stares and…da-yum.

Brenna Jensen is marching across the room. And she looks good enough to eat.