Chapter 14 #2
Not just a baby—his baby. Her belly rounding with his child. The idea came out of nowhere, violent and terrifying in its clarity.
His.
The word thrummed through him like the bass of a drumbeat. His chest tightened, his gut flipped, and for one horrifying, exhilarating second, Tate wasn’t sure if he was going to be sick right there on the bench or if he’d just stumbled headfirst into the purest truth of his life.
He wanted it. Wanted her. Not in some vague, casual way.
He wanted dates. Kisses. A hand to hold.
A future. He wanted more in his life and was never able to clearly define it.
But in that moment, he saw what ‘more’ was.
It was her in the stands, wearing his jersey, cheering for him.
She was waiting after the game, smiling at him the way she was smiling now.
It slammed into him with the weight of a cannonball, thick in his throat, choking him. He swallowed against the burn, his pulse hammering.
Nettie wasn’t just his sister’s childhood best friend anymore.
She wasn’t just the girl he’d grown up half-aware of in the background.
The pest he’d pushed away so many times because she was off limits, too young for him, too annoying, too different.
He’d shot her down once already, and she never made a move again toward him.
She was nothing.
She was… Nettie.
And she… was wearing his jersey.
His number stretched across her chest, the bold digits right over her heart. It shouldn’t have meant anything. But in that moment, it slammed home with an awareness that was staggering.
The laughter around him, the families celebrating, the glow of unity—it all carved into Tate like a blade.
He’d always kept himself separate, safer on the outside.
Hockey. His house. His cat – a cat he really didn’t even want to begin with, but now couldn’t imagine life without Mulligan. Or so he’d convinced himself.
But now? Looking at them, at her? They were happier than he was, and he saw it. Fuller. Brighter. And it stung like truth always did. There was no way he could allow himself to indulge in stupid emotional distractions – because he couldn’t be like Thierry.
Molly’s laugh rang out, breaking through his thoughts.
She clung to Thierry as if the rest of the world didn’t exist, the two of them lost in each other.
His captain touched her stomach again, tender and reverent, his grin splitting his face wide.
The man was soft, mushy, didn’t have the cojones to do what it took to be the captain… and…
Tate’s eyes snapped back to Nettie, as if he couldn’t stop himself.
She turned. Slowly. Like she felt his stare tugging at her.
Her gaze caught his.
The noise. The chaos. The deafening roar of fans chanting his name and the scrape of blades on ice—none of it existed in that moment.
It was just her.
Tate’s chest constricted so tightly it felt like someone had sucker-punched him. The world, the arena, the game—it all tunneled down to a single point: Nettie.
Her gaze had locked with his, and he couldn’t look away if his life depended on it. Her hands curled white-knuckled around the railing, her lips parted in something that wasn’t quite a smile, wasn’t quite a frown. Fear flickered there—raw and exposed. Fear, and worry, and hesitation.
But there was something else, too.
Recognition.
Like she saw the confused storm raging inside him, and it mirrored her own that she kept buried away from the world, but he saw it. The weight of that awareness stole the air from his lungs.
She drew the air from the room like a vacuum.
Hockey had never done that. Not championships, not rivalries, not even the bone-crunching hit that had once sidelined him for three months.
Nothing had ever rooted him so completely.
Nothing had ever made him feel like maybe he wasn’t as untouchable as he pretended to be, and he saw how vulnerable she was in those moments.
He wanted to move toward her, to raise his hand, to give her some kind of sign that he wasn’t as unshakable as everyone thought. That he saw her. That he still—
No.
The spell shattered with a voice so loud and obnoxious it could’ve rattled the rafters.
“C’mon, Fat Clairol, I missed you, bro! Let’s skate…”
The sound ricocheted through the arena like a gunshot.
Tate jerked his head toward the source of the noise, tearing himself from Nettie’s gaze. His soul screamed in protest at the sudden loss.
Lifting a brow, he found exactly what he expected—the blond menace himself, skating across the ice with a cocky swagger that only Barrett Coeur could pull off.
The man’s ridiculous topknot bounced with every push of his skates, like some kind of golden antenna designed to annoy Tate personally.
His helmet was in his hand, his smile wide and confident like he’d come up with the best crack at Thierry ever.
Ha.
“I call him ‘Fluffy’…” Tate muttered, his tone dry enough to scrape sandpaper.
Barrett grinned, shot him a thumbs-up, then disappeared down the ice, leaving chaos in his wake. Before Tate could gather his focus again or chance another look at Nettie, another body swerved into his path, cutting him off with irritating precision.
Jett Acton.
“Sup, buddy…”
“Oh mercy…” Tate groaned, dragging his glove down his face in annoyance.
“I missed you too, Cassidy…”
“Screw you, Acton.”
The man’s grin widened, teeth flashing as he matched Tate’s stride, refusing to let him pass. “Thanks, but no thanks. I mean, you know—if I ever went gay, you’d be my type in a heartbeat. It’s the hair and the attitude, but nahhh… I’m completely hooked on my wife.”
Laughter exploded from the boards again, and Tate’s ears burned beneath his helmet. Did his team hear that? Tate shoved past Acton, or tried to, but the man skated backward just out of reach, his expression mischievous and infuriating all at once.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Tate snarled. His jaw ached from how tightly he clenched it.
“Probably,” Acton admitted with a shrug, his smirk deepening. “But I’m enjoying this so much more. You need a nickname. I think I’m gonna call you ‘Two-bits’ or ‘Penny’ on the ice…”
The words hit like a slap.
A reminder.
Tate’s blood went molten. Of course, Acton would drag that out—the last time they’d faced off, when a stupid, humiliating fluke had left him the butt of every locker room joke for weeks.
“You throw change on the ice, and I’m gonna call you an ambulance,” Tate growled, low and dangerous, his voice vibrating in his chest. A shrill voice rang out from the stands, slicing through the tension.
“Go knock the snot outta that loud-mouthed braggart! Sorry, Irene!”
Barrett Coeur’s wild, unhinged laugh pealed across the ice, high and delighted, as he yanked his helmet on like it was all some kind of performance just for him. Acton gave Tate one last wink, wiggled his fingers like a magician about to vanish, and shot off down the ice without another word.
It was game time.
Tate glared after him, teeth grinding together. His hands curled into fists around his stick, his knuckles aching against the gloves.
“I’m gonna kill that man if he puts me in the penalty box again tonight,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
But even as the fury boiled, the image of Nettie lingered—her wide eyes, her trembling mouth, the unspoken thing between them that had nothing to do with hockey… and everything to do with a history and feelings he could never quite escape.
As much as Acton and all those Wolverines grated on his last nerve, Tate knew the real battle tonight wasn’t against them.
It was against himself.
This wasn’t just a game—it was a war.
Every muscle in Tate’s body screamed, his lungs burned, and the sting of sweat in his eyes blurred his vision, but he refused to back down.
The clock above the rink glowed like a cruel reminder, ticking away what little time he had left to turn this around.
His pulse pounded louder than the roar of the crowd, and in that moment, hockey wasn’t just a sport—it was survival.
Acton had the puck.
Tate locked on to him like a predator on prey.
He knew he turned his head swiftly, like a velociraptor in Jurassic Park who’d just sniffed his next meal.
His skates dug into the ice, sending up a spray of frozen shavings as he powered forward.
He was done playing, and it was time to get nasty.
This was the last push, the final charge, and nothing—absolutely nothing—was going to stop him from sinking that next puck.
He hit Acton with the force of a runaway freight train.
The bodycheck landed so hard it rattled Tate’s bones, but it was worth it.
Acton went flying, arms pinwheeling, legs kicking skyward, before toppling right over the boards.
Gasps and laughter erupted from the Coyotes’ bench as their opponent landed square in their laps.
“Penny-Lame, I’ve told you already… I like women!” Acton shouted, scrambling as his teammates shoved him back upright, grinning at his humiliation.
Tate didn’t miss a beat. His stick caught the puck, his stride lengthened, and a sharp retort flew out between ragged breaths. “Me too,” he fired back, before exploding down the ice, the puck a living thing dancing at the end of his blade.
The crowd’s roar rose in his ears, drowning out the thundering of his skates and the rapid-fire thump of his heartbeat. This was it—this was his moment. If he could just get one clean shot, one perfect angle—
A shadow loomed.
A blur of motion.
The impact came like a wrecking ball, and that was saying a lot.
Kenneth Salas slammed into him - almost like he was taking revenge for the hit against Acton a moment ago.
Tate’s entire frame jolted as if the hit had ripped the ice out from under him.
His breath whooshed out in one ugly grunt, and for a split second, he was airborne.
That didn’t happen to him. It never happened to him.
Tate was built to absorb hits, to knock others down, not the other way around. But Salas had managed the impossible.
By the time his skates hit the ice again, Coeur had already swooped in. The man stripped the puck and was tearing off in the opposite direction.
Tate staggered, fighting for balance, his chest heaving. He could only watch as the seconds evaporated, that darn buzzer shrieking a cruel full-stop.
They lost.
The noise of the arena swallowed him whole—the cheers, the groans, the celebratory roar from the other team. His own stick felt heavier than iron in his hand, like a silent reminder of everything he could have done differently during the game.
He lifted his gaze to the stands. His sister’s face came into focus first—her lips parted in shock, her eyes flashing disappointment. She wasn’t even looking at him anymore; her attention had shifted to their goalie, Justin Aldonard, who knelt on the ice, helmet tilted down in utter defeat.
And then there was Nettie.
Her eyes locked with his, just for an instant. Concern flickered there, soft and real, the kind of thing that could have steadied him if he let it. But before he could hold on to it, she looked away.
That stung worse than the hit from Salas.
The recognition that she’d seen him fall short—that she’d witnessed him fail—dug deep. But it wasn’t just that. It was the way she turned away, as if she couldn’t bear to offer even the smallest smile or cheer, not when he hadn’t earned it.
He wasn’t ready for a relationship, and ‘wanting’ someone didn’t mean that it was the right thing for either of you.
Desire was a physical function, and when you were done – it was over.
A physical itch. An ache that burned and then faded once it had been satisfied.
Nothing more. The body relaxed, healed, endorphins released, whatever.
Maybe she was right about the friendship-thing that grated on his nerves.
But Nettie?
She made him want things he wasn’t sure he had any right to want. Maybe she was right. Maybe friendship was safer, cleaner. Something that didn’t leave you gutted when the buzzer sounded and the game was lost.
But if they were friends, could she ever see him differently? Could she see him as the man who wasn’t afraid to fight for more than the puck, more than a fleeting win? Could she see him as a friend, and something more?
“Let’s go,” Thierry’s voice cut through the chaos, firm and commanding.
Tate exhaled, forcing himself to move, forcing his body to obey even as every step felt like walking through cement. The team would regroup, dissect the wreckage in the locker room, listen to lectures and excuses, and then head home. And after that?
He’d lie awake.
And think about her.
And think about losing—both off and on the ice.