Chapter 3
GARRETT
The owner’s box was nice. The cushy seats, the amazing food, the spectacular view—talk about watching a game in style.
Though we were pretty high up, it was still easy to pick out the various players as they came out for warmups. I could see their numbers, of course, but some of them moved in distinctive ways that made them stand out.
Temo Tehuitzil was like five foot eight, shorter than most of the guys on the team, and he always stayed low when he skated. He was dangerously agile and shockingly fast, and even during warmups he whizzed between players like they were moving in slow motion.
His linemate, Alex Crawford, was around six four, and he had a distinctive sway when he moved, especially when he turned. I could’ve picked him out from the nosebleed section.
And of course, Chris stood out to me. He wasn’t exceptionally tall or short—hovering right around six foot, slightly taller than me.
His build was pretty average for a hockey player, too—a little narrower than his teammates, a little broader than his off-ice peers.
The way he moved, he kind of blended into the crowd, which was what had always made him so dangerous on the ice.
Other players seemed to forget he was there.
They’d lose track of him while they blocked his bigger, faster, and more aggressive teammates…
giving him all the time in the world to position himself for a scoring chance before they even realized he was a threat.
So he wasn’t flashy or eye-catching the way Temo and Crawford were, but naturally, I zeroed in on him. I smiled as I watched him go through his warmup routine. He was so at ease out there. So confident as he moved among his teammates as if he’d never once thought he’d be out of place.
“What if I get to that level and blow it?” he’d asked when he was fifteen and was already being scouted by several teams. “Everyone thinks I’m going to kill it out there, but what if I hit the ice with a big-league team, and it turns out I suck?”
His mom, coaches, and I had reassured him as best we could. In the handful of years between then and now, he’d clearly come into his own and found that confidence. I’d watched him on TV during that period, wishing I could tell him how proud I was of everything he’d accomplished.
Now I was here. In this arena. Watching him warm up with the team where he’d found his comfortable niche. I’d finally been able to tell him over the phone and FaceTime that I was proud of him, and tonight I could tell him to his face after his game.
I knew we still had a long way to go before our fractured relationship was fully mended, but we’d made it this far. Hopefully I didn’t fuck things up all over again.
Warmups ended and the players returned to the locker room.
On the Jumbotron, a reporter—not the one who’d been pestering Liam earlier—spoke.
He gave a quick rundown of how the team had done in their most recent games, and how head coach Rob Dahl thought they could break their two-game losing streak.
He highlighted some key players from both teams tonight, and rattled off the stats for the respective goalies.
“With one exception, Pittsburgh’s injury list remains status quo,” he said.
“Netminder Chase Barnum returns tonight after missing three games due to a lower body injury. Carson Morris is week to week with a lower body injury, and Liam St. Clair continues to recover from an upper body injury. Both players have been practicing alone in no-contact jerseys, and the captain is expected to return to team practices next week.”
I turned to Liam. “Sounds like you’re getting close to coming back.”
He rocked his head from side to side and gingerly rolled his left shoulder. “Getting there. They were telling me it would be six weeks, but now it’s looking more like four.”
“That’s great! You’ve probably been getting stir crazy.”
He laughed, unaware of what that did to my pulse. “You have no idea.”
“I have a son who plays hockey, remember? Trust me—I know how twitchy you guys get when you’re stuck on the bench.”
He chuckled again, an odd expression flickering across his face before he broke eye contact and gazed down at the ice. Discomfort? Had I said something wrong? I genuinely couldn’t begin to read him.
“I can’t imagine Kanes in my situation,” he said almost disinterestedly. “He doesn’t even like being on the bench between shifts.”
“You should’ve seen him when he broke his collarbone in U16.”
Liam turned to me again, eyebrows up. “Seriously? He must’ve driven you all nuts.”
“God, you’re not wrong. We ended up letting him skate again before his doctors really wanted him to, just so he’d stop climbing the walls.”
Liam’s soft laugh was way more attractive than it should’ve been. “I can relate. I broke my jaw in major juniors, and I was pretty much back on the ice as soon as I could comfortably wear a fishbowl.”
I chafed my arms and shuddered. “Ugh. That’s one injury I can’t imagine.”
“Eh. At least I didn’t lose any teeth that time.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That time?”
He gestured at two teeth on the left side. “They were repairable, fortunately, but holy shit, that hurt.”
“Oh my God. I don’t even want to ask how it happened.” I chafed my arms again, squirming in my chair. “I’m a baby about going to the dentist as it is.”
He chuckled, sitting back in the cushy leather chair. “Yeah, it’s not my favorite thing in the world.”
I was saved from any elaboration because the team’s hype montage kicked on. Music blasted through the arena as highlight clips played showing various Phantoms. The two goalies making incredible saves. The forwards scoring spectacular goals. Skaters checking opponents into the boards.
My breath stuttered when Liam, moving in slow motion, whipped a dagger of a shot through a dense screen and into the back of the net.
His face was taut with concentration and exertion, and then full of elation when he realized he’d scored.
I didn’t dare glance at the man sitting next to me, or I was sure he’d see right through to this new and ridiculous crush.
A crush? Really? You’re forty-seven years old, Garrett. Come on.
Yeah. Maybe. But I’d also been single for a while, and though I hadn’t put much effort into the hookup scene lately, I was getting restless again. I had been since before I came to Pittsburgh.
Suddenly finding myself in the presence of Liam St. Clair just… wasn’t helping. At all.
Then the montage switched, and I suddenly had a rush of cold reality and fatherly pride.
There was my son. There was Liam. Chris had the puck, and he bodied a huge player out of the way like he was nothing, then snapped the puck to Liam.
Liam slipped between two guys like they weren’t even there, and just when a third was about to ram into him, he passed back to Chris. And Chris scored.
Watching the two of them celebrate their goal made my heart race and my stomach flutter. I was proud beyond words of Chris. He was the elite pro he’d always dreamed of being.
But I was also stupidly attracted to Liam. To Chris’s teammate.
His teammate who was, and had been for years, out and proud.
I closed my eyes and exhaled. Even if Liam was inexplicably attracted to an older man with a far lower net worth, he was off-limits. He had to be. Maybe Chris wouldn’t give a shit, but I’d been on thin enough ice with him for too long to take that risk.
The montage ended and the music changed. I gazed down as the Phantoms—including Chris—skated back out while the announcer kept hyping up the crowd. We stood for the national anthem, and I didn’t let myself so much as glance at Liam.
No matter how much I wanted to.
No matter how much I wished there was a snowball’s chance in hell that I could do more than fantasize about him.
Liam was miles and miles out of my league.
He was Chris’s teammate. His team captain.
He was off-limits, and that was final.
“Come on, come on…” Liam stared down at the ice, brow furrowed and jaw working as if he thought he could will the puck into the other team’s net. “Set it up, set it up…”
We were both on the edges of our seats, watching Pittsburgh’s power play unit cycle the puck. They had thirty seconds left, and the penalty killers were getting tired.
“Shoot it,” Liam growled. “Come on, shoot.”
The crowd had the same idea—shouts of “shoot! shoot!” echoed through the arena—but the players kept on cycling.
I wasn’t joining in with the chants or shouts, but someone needed to fucking shoot. Fifteen seconds left on the man advantage, two minutes left in the second period, and Pittsburgh was down 3-2. Someone needed to shoot already.
Driscoll held the puck briefly, poised like he was about to take a shot, but then he passed the puck to Temo, and Liam groaned. Like me, he probably saw that they were about to cycle it yet again, and—
Temo whipped it on net.
The ping of the puck banking off the crossbar registered all the way up here, and the whole building had a split second for an exasperated groan before—
“Holy shit!” Liam cried in the same instant Chris fired the rebound right through the five-hole. We were both on our feet, joining the thunderous cheers as my son pumped his fist in celebration. Liam and I high-fived as if we’d had something to do with the last-second power play goal.
“This is your first time seeing him play here, isn’t it?” Liam shouted over the noise.
I wanted to be embarrassed by that, but I was too excited and proud. “Yep!”
“And you got to see him score!” He grinned and clapped my shoulder. “Maybe you’re his good luck charm!”
My brain blanked for a split second, both from the remark about being my son’s good luck charm and from—
Touch me again.
Liam lifted his hand away, unaware of my stupid thoughts.
No, really. Touch me again.
As we took our seats, my heart was going absolutely wild. The game far below us. Chris’s power play goal.
The painfully hot man who’d just casually touched me.