Made for Mayhem (Mayhem Hockey Club #2)

Chapter 1

Three Years Ago

Pain is temporary, glory is forever, or so the saying went. At thirty-four, I called bullshit.

I pulled on my black hoodie, rotating my shoulder a few times to loosen it back up after tonight’s hockey game. The joint protested, the pain sharp, stubborn, and far too familiar. Nothing seemed to touch it these days. Not the ice baths, not the therapy the team insisted on, not even a summer off.

Around me, the locker room thinned out in waves, guys packing slower than usual. This was the last time this group of guys would be together, and we all knew it.

“Ready for the off-season?” Matt O’Connell asked, grabbing his wallet and keys off the shelf above his stall. “Big plans?”

“Not sure yet,” I said. Fuck, I had no idea what came next. “You?”

“I promised the wifey a beach vacation. We’re leaving tomorrow—Turks and Caicos. Rented a bungalow for two weeks. Hoping I can forget how shitty this season was.”

I nodded, rolling my shoulder again even though I knew it wouldn’t help.

Some people might call the Chicago Storm’s season a growth year. Developmental. Transitional, even. A polite way of saying we’d spent months figuring out what didn’t work.

Really, we sucked.

“You headed to the bar?” Matt asked, slinging his duffel over his shoulder. “One last night with the boys?”

I dropped my gaze to my phone, pretending to scroll when I couldn’t look away from the group text that had come in sometime during the second period.

Mom

Good luck tonight, Ty! Sorry we couldn’t make it.

Emmy

WHAT? Why didn’t you tell me before now?! I would have flown in.

Mom

Something came up last minute with the store, and Dad couldn’t step away.

Emmy

Really? Even when you knew it might be his last game in the NHL?

We talked about this—you were going because Jace has a tournament this weekend, and I can’t go.

Mom

Sorry, honey. We’ll come to the next one.

Emmy

That’s the point, Mom. There is no NEXT ONE. He’s retiring. He’s done.

“You good?” Matt asked.

I lifted my head and nodded, the motion automatic. “Yeah, buddy.”

I slid my phone into my back pocket, ignoring the string of new messages from Emmy outside the group chat—probably already tearing into our parents or making plans to fix something that wasn’t hers to fix.

My parents’ absence shouldn’t have surprised me. It shouldn’t have hurt. Birthdays, milestones, games I’d circled on the calendar months in advance—there was always a reason, always something more important somewhere else.

I loved them, but I’d also learned the hard way not to expect much from them. Expectation was where disappointment lived.

Maybe that’s why my sister and I hung on so tight to each other, why I always went out of my way to show her how much I loved her with my actions, my presence, even if I sucked at saying it.

But this one… Shit.

This one hurt.

Every time the locker room door opened, I could see all the family members milling about, waiting for their husbands, boyfriends, brothers, sons… whatever these boys were to them. The people who loved them were just outside, waiting with open arms.

But I was alone.

I was always fucking alone.

With a sigh, I clapped Matt on the shoulder, then gave it a squeeze. “I’m great. Have a good off-season. Enjoy the beach.”

He grinned and flicked my overgrown beard. “At least you can get rid of this now. You’re starting to look a little lumberjack-y.”

I huffed a quiet laugh and dragged a hand through the dark scruff covering my jaw. I’d grown my beard out hoping we’d claw our way into a wild-card spot, maybe buy ourselves a little more time. Give my parents more opportunities to not show up for me.

Luck hadn’t been on my side.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m kind of attached to it now.”

I took one last look at the empty stall, the Ty “Huddy” Hudson – 55 label above it there for the last time, then shouldered my bag and walked away.

Matt and I walked out together, him chattering on about his off-season plans and me offering polite platitudes until the heavy door swung shut behind us.

The parking garage was bright and cavernous, concrete reflecting the glare of overhead lights. Sound carried here—footsteps, laughter, the distant chirp of a car alarm—everything bouncing back a second too late as my teammates moved on with their lives.

Matt stopped at his SUV and popped the hatch. “Last chance,” he said, nodding toward the exit. “It’s gonna be packed with everybody having family in town.”

“I’m good,” I told him, not needing the reminder that it was just me here tonight. No wife and kids. No parents. No friends. Not even Emmy. “Have a great trip.”

He grinned, shut the door, and rolled out, headlights sweeping across the wall before disappearing down the ramp.

I crossed to my truck, opened the tailgate, and dropped my bag in. The thud it made sounded final, like punctuation. I stood there longer than necessary, hands braced on the edge of the tailgate, staring at nothing in particular.

Engines turned over one by one. The garage emptied in stages until the noise thinned and the surrounding space grew too big, too open. My ears rang in the sudden quiet, each breath coming out a little more jagged than the last.

I rubbed a hand across my chest, feeling like something was squeezing all the air out of the space where my lungs were supposed to expand. My heart kicked harder as tomorrow loomed all at once, uninvited.

No morning skate.

No rehab schedule.

No reason to be anywhere at a certain time.

No one needed me.

Just an empty condo thirty floors up with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view of the water—beautiful, quiet, and oh so wrong.

My grip tightened on the tailgate, the metal digging into my palm enough to break me out of my spiral. Reaching into my bag, I grabbed my black Chicago Storm hat and tugged it down over my hair. My phone vibrated in my pocket as I shut the tailgate a little too hard, but I ignored it.

With each uneven breath, my hands started to buzz with leftover adrenaline that had nowhere to go. I flexed them, then pulled my hood up over my hat, the fabric narrowing my vision and muting the world enough to make it bearable.

The truck was right there.

Home was minutes away and the bar only a small detour.

But the idea of being alone, whether at home or in a crowd, made everything worse.

I stepped back, turned away from the truck, and started walking instead. Past the painted lines. Past the exit sign glowing red against the concrete.

No plan. No destination.

Just movement.

Cold spring air hit my face the second I stepped outside, sharp enough to make me inhale. The noise followed—crowds spilling onto the sidewalk, voices layered over each other, the city loud and alive.

A knot of people stood at the corner waiting for the light, most decked out in jerseys. I slowed, keeping my hat low over my brows, trying to stay unnoticed.

The walk sign flashed, and the crowd surged forward, filling the crosswalk in one noisy wave, there and gone like a receding tide.

I waited for the sidewalk to clear, but it didn’t. Not entirely.

My steps faltered, eyes catching on the woman in front of me—bright and unmoved, like the city had left her behind just for me.

Long wavy blonde hair hung loose around her shoulders, lifted by the wind in a chaotic halo.

She tugged at the edges of a thin long-sleeved pink shirt, underdressed for the bite in the April night air.

Ripped jeans hugged her hips in the perfect silhouette as she ran the toe of one patterned sneaker over the top of the other, staring at her phone.

That tightness in my chest eased the longer I looked at her. The noise dulled. The spiral I’d been stuck in all evening loosened its grip just enough to breathe.

“Huddy!”

The sound yanked me back to the sidewalk. A kid stood to my right, tugging hard on his dad’s sleeve, eyes lit up with excitement.

“That’s him,” the kid said, loud and certain. “That’s Huddy.”

The dad followed his gaze and smiled, a little apologetic. “Sorry—he’s a huge fan.”

Of course he was.

The familiar reflex slid into place, smooth as muscle memory. I bent at the knees, softening my voice and face. The version of me everyone expected.

“Hey, buddy,” I said. “What’s your name?”

The kid told me, and I listened like it mattered—because, to him, it did—and grinned at the right moments, acting like I wasn’t holding on to my emotions by a fucking thread.

“Any chance we could grab a picture?” the dad asked, already pulling out his phone.

I stood and slung an arm around the kid’s shoulders. The smile came automatically, practiced and convincing.

The phone clicked. Once. Twice.

“Thanks, man,” the dad said, genuine. “You have no idea how cool this is.”

“No problem,” I replied, giving the kid a quick fist bump before they moved off toward the curb as the light changed.

The second they were gone, the smile slid right back off my face, too hard to hold in place.

I turned back to the street and she was watching me. Our eyes met, and the corner of her mouth tipped up.

The light changed again. Someone bumped into me from behind, shoving me forward, my chest brushing her shoulder. Instinct kicked in—I put a hand out, shielding her from the press of bodies, resting it lightly on her back.

She sucked in a breath, blue eyes snapping up to mine, and I immediately pulled my hand back, lifting it where she could see.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No.” She shook her head. “You’re good.”

The crowd thinned until it was just us again on the corner, my feet refusing to move. When the silence stretched, I tipped my chin toward her phone, the map glaringly obvious on the screen.

“You’re not from here,” I said.

She huffed a laugh. “What gave it away? Me staring at my map like it personally betrayed me?”

“Dead giveaway.”

“I got off at the wrong stop,” she said. “Possibly the wrong line. Honestly, I have no idea where I am or how to get back to the apartment I moved into today.”