Shelby interrupted with an exhausted sigh. “If you two don’t stop now, one of you will have grown up drinking straight from the cow until it was sucked dry.”

The mental picture she described would be giving him nightmares for the next sixty years.

Christensen made a gagging sound. “Gross, Shelbs.”

Annoyance sharp as a poker jabbed Ian in the right eyeball. “Shelbs?”

The fuck? They were becoming buddies with pet names for each other? After spending ten minutes together at this stupid table with its white tablecloth and little candle sitting in the middle?

“That’s her nickname.” Christensen shrugged. “Everyone needs a nickname. I’m The Smile and you’re—”

“David Petrov’s journeyman son,” Ian finished, the bitterness in those four words etched into the marrow of his bones.

That’s all he was to most people—the not-quite-as-good substitute. And now the second-place son. He didn’t have to wonder what they thought. Everyone was always more than glad to share it in every sports column, blog, and Instagram comment.

Christensen picked up his glass. “Our dad is an asshole.”

He didn’t think, didn’t consider. The words were just too true for that. “On that we can agree.” He clinked his glass against Christensen’s.

They both chugged the rest of their milk at the same time—another tradition—while Shelby watched them from across the table as if she was trying to decipher hieroglyphs. “Is this the beginning of a truce?”

Ian glared at his his former best friend. “Not even close.”

“Too bad.” She took a sip of her water with lemon. “You two are the only people in the world who know what it’s like to be David Petrov’s son. Man, I’d give anything to have a brother or sister.”

Yeah, maybe if their father hadn’t hidden Christensen’s existence for all of Ian’s life and then if his former best friend hadn’t continued to keep their dad’s secret when he’d known the truth the entire time, things would be different. But they weren’t. His dad and Christensen had both shown their true colors.

“This situation is a little different than the usual,” he said.

“True.” Shelby picked up her menu. “But you two are pretty far from the usual, too.”

Before he could come up with a retort about how wrong Shelby was, the waiter showed up to take their orders and he was left to wonder if she just might be right.

…

For two solid days, Shelby had done everything she could to make sure she wasn’t alone with Ian. It sounded easy when she’d made the plan in her head. Of course, that was before she realized that he’d be sitting in the visitor’s suite watching the Ice Knights games with her.