Briggs (Carolina Reapers 7)

There was a collective grunt of agreement.

“Well, your helmet might fit a little differently without the ears, but I’m still sorry for missing that game.” After a mouthful of piss-warm beer, I exchanged my hours-old bottle for a new one.

“Shit happens,” Maxim said, his expression turning serious as he braced his forearms on the table and leaned in slightly. “You’re a damn-good player, Briggs. But we lost that game six to two. Could you have prevented a goal? Maybe. Hell, maybe even two. But what happened that night wasn’t on you.”

“It was on every single one of us,” Axel chimed in as he leaned back in his chair. “He’s right. There were about three hundred things that could have gone differently that night. You were just one of them. Doesn’t mean we didn’t miss you, so don’t look at me like that. But every guy at this table has a woman in their life that they’d take the same risk for. Sure, for Maxim and Caz it’s their sisters—”

“Hey now!” Caz called out, but he was laughing.

“Brogan doesn’t,” Maxim tipped back his beer for another drink.

“Truth.” The hulking enforcer let a small smile slip.

“Oh, come on,” Sawyer questioned with a scoff. “Not even your mother?”

“Nope,” Brogan answered, and took another beer.

We all paused, giving him a moment to fill us in on exactly what that meant, but of course he didn’t.

“Demon here wasn’t born,” Cannon muttered. “He was hatched.”

Brogan let out something too twisted to call a smile.

“So…” Sawyer rubbed the back of his neck and there was an awkward moment where the guys all seemed to look at me, then each other with raised brows.

Maxim shifted in his seat. “Where is Jansen when we actually have a use for him?”

“Off doing wedding shit with my sister,” Caz answered, then sighed. “Fine, I’ll do it. Damn.”

There was a combined sigh of relief and a few of them sagged a little.

What the hell?

“Speaking of women we’d risk everything for,” Caz started,

“Smooth,” Maxim quipped.

“Feel free to step in whenever you like,” Caz fired back, then looked at me. “We’ve all noticed you’re not exactly…you. At least you haven’t been since we got back to New York.”

The beer turned to ash in my mouth, and I slowly lowered the bottle to the table. Were they seriously suggesting the complete wreckage of my love life was up for discussion?

“Oh, he’s him,” Sawyer quipped. “Just the old pre-Bristol, more morose version.”

“Not helping,” Axel whispered the length of the table to where Sawyer sat.

Sawyer shrugged one shoulder.

“Right. Since my future brother-in-law isn’t here to…” Caz titled his head, obviously searching for the right words.

“Remove the stick from your ass,” Maxim offered, then swiveled in his seat to check out a woman who walked by.

“Yeah. What he said…just not how he said it.” Caspian shot his best friend a glare. “It’s the offseason, you know. There’s nothing stopping you from hopping on a flight to New York tonight.”

Another grunt of approval sounded around the table.

“Things with Bristol aren’t that easy.” Fuck, even saying her name hurt. I mentally picked up the shredded pieces of my heart and tried to shove them back into my chest. When that explanation didn’t seem to appease the guys, I sighed. “Look, we had a huge fight, and I left. That’s all there is to say about it.”

They all just kept fucking staring.

“What do you want to hear? That I got pissed that I never should have been up there in the first place? That I knew better and only did it because I knew that’s what she needed? It was an impossible, impractical relationship that we forced, thinking we could beat the whole long-distance odds, and guess what? We couldn’t! I hadn’t seen her in a month, so I gambled and we all lost. There? Are you happy?”

Someone scored. No one at our table even looked up at the monitor.

“We can all tell that you’re not,” Sawyer said softly. “My guess would be that she isn’t, either. We’ve all seen the way you two stare at each other.”

“We only make each other happy when we’re in the same area code, and that isn’t very often.” I grabbed my bottle and continued peeling the label.

“Are you in love with her?” Axel asked, leaning forward slightly.

“You think I would have been in the Catskills the night before that game if I didn’t?” I fired back.

Of course, I loved Bristol. I loved her wit and humor, her intelligence and grace. I loved the way she bit her lip when she was thinking about something, and how her eyes lit up the second she saw me. Hell, my entire soul lit up like a Christmas tree whenever she walked into the room. I lived for the moments we were together and savored every single second I had with her…well, except that last day when I’d been disgusted with my own choices and blamed them on her.