Chapter 18 #2
Chris nodded. “Got it.” He laughed quietly. “Honestly, I think I had calmed down from the fight by the time I came out of the box.”
“I figured. You’ve got a pretty cool head. Keep it that way. Just don’t think they’ve completely cooled off over it.”
He gave another sharp nod, and we continued into the locker room. Much like when the refs had dished out the penalties to me and the alternate, I hadn’t been telling Chris anything he didn’t already know. Fighting was what it was, and as long as he kept his head in the next period, he’d be fine.
As we rejoined our team, my head was buzzing with thoughts. I barely even heard Coach’s speech.
The thing was, that conversation in the hallway and everything surrounding Chris’s fight had been a reminder of my role as captain.
And that role didn’t end when the buzzer sounded.
I was supposed to set an example to my teammates, especially the younger guys.
They’d put a C on my sweater, and I took that seriously.
Here in the locker room, I peeled off my jersey and dropped onto the bench with a bottle of electrolytes. As I drank, I stole a glance at Chris. Oblivious to me or my ridiculous brain, he was laughing about something with Drizz and a staff member.
While we’d talked outside, he’d been Kanes and I’d been Saints. Player and captain. Teammates.
My involvement—such as it had briefly been—with his dad hadn’t even crossed my mind. It hadn’t mattered.
The other side of that coin was that when I’d been with Garrett, I hadn’t thought about hockey, the Phantoms, or Chris. I’d been this hockey player for as long as I could remember, and whenever it counted, that was exactly who I was.
But my God, it had felt amazing to step out of that persona and, if only for one evening, just be… me. No worrying about cameras or hot mics. No worrying about setting an example. No thinking about hockey at all. I could just lose myself in the moment and the man whose touch made my heart race.
And I’d given that up. I’d told him we couldn’t do this.
On some level, I was still sure we couldn’t.
Are you really willing to jeopardize everything for sex?
No, I wasn’t. And more and more, I didn’t think I was really jeopardizing anything…
or that it was just for sex. If all I wanted from Garrett was sex, then I could’ve talked myself out of this.
It would’ve sucked and I’d have still been frustrated, but I did possess a reasonable amount of self-control.
The problem was that my distraction didn’t fade after I’d finished jerking off to thoughts of him. An orgasm could relax me, sure, but it did absolutely fuck all for the empty space beside me in bed. And on the couch. And at my kitchen island. And in the fourth bay of my garage.
I loved sex as much as the next guy, but it was the closeness that I craved. The companionship. The conversations with someone who somehow looked at me like a friend and a lover instead of Liam St. Clair of the Pittsburgh Phantoms.
Talking to Garrett was easy. Being with him was easy. Bantering with him was easy. I liked the chill vibe we’d had from the start even before anything physical had entered the equation.
Yes, I absolutely wanted to strip him down and rail him over the nearest flat surface. I wanted to run my tongue over every inch of that body. I wanted to blow him until he came so hard he almost blacked out. I was absolutely horny for him and wouldn’t try to deny it.
But I also wanted to make him laugh. To sit on the couch and watch hockey and shoot the shit about whatever.
I wanted someone to text and FaceTime when I was on the road and climbing the walls of my hotel room.
One blissfully relaxed evening with him—not to mention all the texting and talking since then—had made me realize just how alone I’d been, and I ached for more of what I felt with him.
Was it really so bad, getting involved with a teammate’s father?
Even if it was, after almost twenty years as the face of the Pittsburgh Phantoms, could I be forgiven for doing this one thing for myself?
We tilted the ice hard in the third period. Barns barely had to do anything because all the action was in Kansas City’s defensive zone.
We hammered their netminder with puck after puck, and he made some pretty impressive saves.
Not quite enough, though—Temo scored four minutes into the third, bringing us to 5-3. Less than a minute later, Chris got us our sixth. After that, Kansas City tried to break away and make a run for our zone, but they didn’t get far.
They did, however, draw a penalty. A bullshit one, of course; as much as I wasn’t playing my best tonight, that was not interference.
“He had the puck!” I shouted at the ref on my way to the box. “How is that interference?”
“It was interference,” the douchecanoe in the striped jersey said flatly.
Flailing a gloved hand at the guy who’d drawn the penalty, I repeated even louder, “He had the puck!”
“You want an unsportsmanlike to go with it?” the ref growled back. He was really eager to dish those out tonight, wasn’t he? Fucking dick.
I just rolled my eyes and continued into the box. Yes, it was bullshit, but I didn’t need to make the situation worse by adding another offense. Ugh. Fine.
I dropped onto the bench in the box and grabbed a water bottle.
On the Jumbotron, the alleged interference was replayed in slow motion.
I’d hip-checked the guy in the neutral zone, and—dude, come on, he’d just barely lost control of the puck a fraction of a nanosecond before we made contact. Interference, my ass.
The crowd apparently agreed—their booing vibrated the fillings in my teeth and the Plexiglas encasing me.
Our penalty kill set up, and I watched restlessly from the box as they fought off the fourth best power play in the League.
Eighteen seconds after the puck dropped, it squeaked under Barns’s pad, and the goal light came on.
Fuck. Not ideal.
Grinding my teeth and fuming, I stepped out of the box and headed for the bench. Great. We’d had a somewhat comfortable lead, and thanks to a garbage penalty, that lead had shrunk to one goal.
That kind of thing could seriously shift things into the other team’s favor. We could get discouraged at the same time they were energized, and the next thing we knew, we’d be on the wrong end of a 5-6 score.
Apparently that wasn’t happening tonight, though.
Seconds after I’d won the faceoff at center ice, Chris charged into the offensive zone. He danced around a forward and split the D as if they weren’t even there. Temo and I were closing in, both of us ready to accept a pass if he got tangled up.
Turned out he didn’t need us—one beautiful backhand later, and we once again had a two-goal lead.
Chris shouted with glee and pumped his fist.
“Nice one!” I smacked his helmet. “Way to go!”
He met my gaze and smiled, looking a little starstruck like he still sometimes did whenever I said anything to him.
“You’re killing it, kid.” I clapped his shoulder and steered him toward the bench for fist bumps. “Keep it up!”
His smile lit up the whole arena.
You look just like your dad when you smile like that.
Oh, fuck. I nearly stumbled. That was not a train of thought I needed to be on tonight.
Or ever. Garrett was not someone I needed to be thinking about while I was on the ice.
Especially not if it was going to take a high stick to the face to get my concentration back on the rails when I did think about him.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to concentrate much longer tonight. The second line went out while mine took a breather, and Coach sent the third out to finish off the final minute.
Then it was over. We’d successfully broken our losing streak and battered Kansas City for two delicious points.
The mood in the locker room was electric.
Everyone was flying high after what felt like a long overdue win, and Coach gave us an awesome speech encouraging us to keep it going.
Chris got some stick taps for his two goals and for beating the shit out of the punk who’d slashed Barns.
Barns promised he’d buy him dinner on the next road trip, and he’d be good for it, too.
We did our media availability, showered, changed, ate, and were still on cloud nine when the families came in.
Kids ran to dads and “uncles.” My teammates, now dressed down in sweats and hoodies, cradled their babies and hugged their bigger kids.
It was always cute to see, especially with some of the guys who’d practically been kids themselves when they’d become teammates.
Craws hadn’t even met Hannah when he’d signed with Pittsburgh.
Now they had two kids. Seriously adorable family.
Barns had been with his wife since they were fifteen, and he’d signed with Pittsburgh ten years ago, just after they’d had their first baby.
Now they had a ten-year-old, an eight-year-old, and four-year-old twins.
And there was Chris, who’d met Jasmine his rookie season in the minors. Now they were having a baby.
Watching my teammates go from young men starstruck by their own peers to veteran players with their own families would seriously never get old.
I smiled to myself as I watched them all interacting. It was always a sweet sight, but there was a melancholy undercurrent to it, too.
When was the last time someone had been in this locker room for me?
Yeah, that was a depressing train of thought. Time to go home and get some sleep. Maybe the drive would clear my head like it sometimes did.
I said goodbye to a few of the guys, made sure I had my wallet, phone, and keys, and slipped out of the locker room.
And damn near collided with Garrett.
“Oh.” I halted, my dress shoe scuffing on the concrete floor. “I—sorry.”
“No, no, I was in your way.” He stepped aside, murmuring an apology, but his gaze never left mine. And there was nothing apologetic about the way he was looking at me. Nervous and caught off-guard, sure, but his eyes were full of the same fire burning in my chest right then.
The impulse to close the distance between us almost made me waver on my feet.
Why am I going home to an empty bed instead of somewhere with you?
My brain tried to rattle off all the reasons I’d told myself, then him, then myself again, but they were muted behind my pounding pulse.
“That, uh…” He swallowed. “That was a great game.” He smiled, his nerves on full display. “Congrats on the win.”
“Thanks.” I slid my hands into my coat pockets just to stop myself from reaching for him. “Chris played a big part in that. You should be proud.”
“I am. Definitely.” The mention of his son didn’t cool anything in his expression. Not the nerves. Not the heat that I didn’t think I was imagining.
The noise and voices from the locker room just barely carried over my pounding heart, reminding me we were in a more or less public place. Definitely not somewhere we needed to be caught eye-fucking.
Because that was what we were doing. He was looking at me the way he had that night in my kitchen, and I’d have been lying if I said I wasn’t doing the same damn thing.
Not here. Not now. Not with him.
I cleared my throat and broke eye contact. “I, uh…”
“How’s your face?” he asked.
My—oh. Right.
I fought the impulse to touch the bruise. “Sore, but it’s fine. No broken cheekbone this time.”
Garrett laughed, oblivious to what that did to my pulse or my body temperature. “Glad to hear it.”
And then… we were standing there in silence. That weird silence when two people had no idea what to say. Or, in my case, when there was something I desperately wanted to say, but this wasn’t the time, the place, or the person.
Clearing my throat, I gestured in the direction I’d been heading. “I’ll see you at the next game.”
“Right. Yeah.” He smiled, almost masking the… disappointment? Relief? Frustration? “See you at the next game.”
Before I could talk myself into staying, I got the hell out of there.
Physically, anyway.
My idiot mind stayed exactly where my feet had been planted. There in that hallway, staring into those eyes. Even after I was in my car and out of the garage and nearly on the freeway, I still couldn’t pull myself out of that moment with him.
Or out of how badly I wanted to whip this car around and go right back.
The way he’d looked at me tonight—both in the hallway and through the Zamboni gate—I couldn’t get it out of my head. I couldn’t ignore the fire in his eyes or the way one glance had sent electricity crackling down my spine.
Could I ignore the way seeing him had torpedoed my game right up until I’d been high-sticked in the face? Probably, yeah. And who was I kidding—that was only going to get worse. Garrett was going to keep coming to games. I was going to keep losing my mind every time I saw him.
If the pull between us was this strong, why keep ignoring it?
Yes, giving in would be selfish. Yes, this was something I wanted for me and no one else. Well, no one except Garrett. But for once in my goddamned life, I wanted something for me. Not for my hockey team. Not for the League. Not for the fans. For me.
I gave everything I had to this sport and this team. I paid for it daily with all this pain that never quite went away.
Did I also have to give up the first spark of real connection I’d had in years? All in the name of being a professional and setting a good example?
Fuck it.
I nosed onto the side of I-279 and put on my hazards. Hands unsteady, I wrote out a text.
Without a second thought, I sent it.
Then I pulled back onto the freeway and continued toward home, my heart pounding all the way.