Chapter 31
LIAM
Now we were in Houston. We’d flown in yesterday, and we’d play tomorrow night. Morale was high. The dads were having a blast.
And I was losing my damned mind.
Being this close to Garrett—on the same planes, in the same hotels—without being able to touch him was torture.
I didn’t even care if we couldn’t have sex.
Yeah, I was horny as hell for him, but that wasn’t what had me climbing the walls.
I missed his soft touches. His arms around me.
The way he’d smile at me like I was the only thing in his world before pressing his lips to mine.
Just… sitting with his arm around me while we watched hockey.
By the time we were back from dinner that evening, I couldn’t handle it anymore.
I’m going down to the parking garage in 5 minutes. Elevator to sub-3.
My heart pounded as I stepped into the elevator. I had no idea if or how he’d respond. For all I knew, I was going down to the parking garage to stand around alone like a dumbass. Or he’d come in and ask to know what the fuck I was thinking.
Or… shit. What if I’d inadvertently given him “we need to talk” vibes? Damn it. I hadn’t meant to make him anxious or—
My phone pinged.
As the elevator sank into the lower levels, I checked the screen.
Garrett
Be there in 10.
My heart thundered now. I hoped he’d read between the lines I’d intended and didn’t think this was going to be an argument or a confrontation.
Or… what if he was coming down here to confront me? It was irrational and I knew it. He hadn’t telegraphed anything over the past few days besides friendliness peppered with longing. I had no reason to believe this was going to go sideways.
I was just worried it would because I was a ball of nerves and a mental wreck and—
The elevator stopped. I got out and stepped into the parking garage. The temperature outside was in the sixties, but this far underground, a chill seeped in through the concrete, and my breath came out in a thin cloud of vapor. I rolled my shoulders beneath my hoodie and paced as I waited.
Garrett was on his way down. But how was this going to go? Were we on the same page?
What if he was coming down to say, “Hey, now that I’ve got you alone—we can’t do this anymore”? Or was that just my anxiety about all this coming through with irrational reasons to freak out?
Or maybe it wasn’t so irrational. The longer I was with Garrett, the more worried I was about losing him. About blowing this. About going to back to the lonely existence I’d had before him, only this time with the knowledge of how good I could feel with him.
I swore into the silence of the garage.
Then the elevator dinged and my heart went into my throat.
Please be him, please be him, please be—
Oh, fuck yes.
And the instant our eyes locked—ooh, no, this man had not come down here to dump me.
He strode toward me, the hunger in his eyes chasing away the cold, and as soon as he could reach me, he slid a hand up into my hair, and then his mouth was against mine and my back was against the cold concrete, and my whole world was right again.
Oh my God, I wanted him. Sex wasn’t an option right now, but just holding him and kissing him was enough.
Orgasms could wait. His touch and his warmth—I couldn’t wait for those, and I didn’t have to.
Holding him like this was like downing a bottle of cold electrolytes after a grueling shift.
Hell, after a whole game. This must’ve been what it felt like to come out of the desert and sip ice water.
Garrett pressed his forehead to mine and panted against my lips. “I’ve been wanting to do that since the last time I left your house.”
“What?” I grinned. “Pin me to a concrete wall and kiss me?”
His laugh made me even dizzier. So did his next long, languid kiss.
“I just needed a minute alone with you,” I breathed. “We can’t stay away long, but—”
“A minute is better than nothing,” he murmured, and then he had my mouth again.
No, a minute wasn’t nearly enough, but it was damn sure better than nothing.
“I love being on this trip,” he whispered shakily when we came up for air, “but I also can’t wait until we have a night to ourselves.”
“Same. I can’t wait until we have some time alone.”
“Mmph. Seriously.” He pulled me in tighter and let a long kiss linger. “I don’t even care if we’re in bed. I just…” He ran his fingers through my hair. “Miss being able to touch you.”
I couldn’t help moaning softly. Hearing my own thoughts rolling off his lips was exhilarating in a way I couldn’t quite define. As if we were closer to the same page than I’d imagined.
“Me too.” I caressed his cheek. “The sex is amazing, but this is the part I miss the most.”
His soft expression made my knees weak.
It also reminded me of my dad’s words.
“That man isn’t subtle either, is he?”
No. No, he wasn’t. I could see exactly what he meant in that moment.
Running my thumb along Garrett’s cheekbone, I swept my tongue across my lips. “My dad caught on. To us.”
His eyebrows flew up. “He did?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Apparently I’ve never been subtle when I’m into someone, and now is no exception.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“Which means—look, it doesn’t have to be now. But we should…” I swallowed. “We should think about coming clean to Chris. Like sooner than later.”
Garrett shifted his weight, avoiding my gaze.
“We don’t have to tell anyone else,” I pressed gently. “The team—definitely not the fucking reporters. But we should be honest with him.”
He was quiet for an uncomfortably long moment.
Then, to my great relief, he gave a slow nod.
“You’re right. We should.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed.
“Chris has a ton on his plate right now, though. The baby is due soon, and I know he’s stressing about that.
” Brow pinched, Garrett met my gaze. “I want to tell him. I do. But I’ve already lost him once because I fucked up.
I’m terrified to do that again. And piling too much on him at the wrong time… ”
“I get that.” I laced our fingers together. “Why don’t we wait until the off season?”
“You want to wait that long?”
“I want to go tell him right now and come out to the whole world.” Squeezing his hand, I whispered, “But the off season is the next best time. He’ll have had a chance to get into a groove with the baby.
He and I won’t be feeling the pressure professionally.
” I paused, then smiled as I brought his hand up to kiss his palm.
“And we’ll have more time to get a feel for what we’re doing. ”
He nodded as I spoke. “It’s only, what, three or four months?”
I smirked. “Depends on how far we get into the playoffs.”
He laughed. “I think we’ll manage.” He glanced around, loosening his embrace. “We should probably, uh…”
“Yeah. We should.” I touched his face and stole one more kiss. “Thank you, though. For indulging me.”
Oh God, that soft expression again. “You make it sound like this was one-sided.” He cupped my neck in both hands and kissed me, long and gentle, until I was breathless once more. When he let me go, he was grinning. “As soon as we’re back in Pittsburgh…” He winked.
I just shivered.
We shared one last look, and then Garrett left the garage. I lingered, letting him put some space between us.
As I paced, this time trying to calm down, I realized there were cameras down here. Those were about as unsurprising as my hard-on, but I’d been so caught up in needing a moment with him, I hadn’t thought much about them.
Luckily, as near as I could tell, we’d been in what appeared to be a blind spot. There was a camera fixed on the elevators, but we’d been far enough off to the side that it wouldn’t have seen much. The only other cameras in the vicinity were pointed in different directions.
It still made my blood turn cold because I couldn’t believe I’d been so careless, but I managed to calm myself down. And hey, it took care of that hard-on in a hurry, so there was that.
When I was sure enough time had passed that it wouldn’t be conspicuous for me to step off the elevator after Garrett, I went back up to the lobby.
In the elevator, I texted my dad.
Are you in the room or the bar?
Bar.
Be there in a minute.
As soon as the elevator opened, a nearby voice made my neck prickle. Ugh. Was it too much to ask for Jack Arlen to get, I don’t know, kicked into next week by a moose?
Probably, yeah.
And it was also apparently too much to ask for him to leave me the hell alone, because I’d just joined my dad in the bar when the asshole appeared beside us.
“Hey, Saints. Ben.” He took one of the open chairs at our table without asking. “I’m working on a story about the dads’ trip. Do you gentlemen mind if I pick your brains a bit?”
I minded, and I was pretty sure my dad minded, but no one needed a headline story about me shouting down a reporter in a hotel bar.
So I gave him a smile that I hoped came across as cold and fake. “Sure. What’s on your mind?”
If he noticed my icy smile, he didn’t let on. “Well, one thing I’m curious about…” He turned to my dad. “What do you think of your son’s perma-bachelor lifestyle?” He smiled broadly. “Surely Mom and Dad have to be pushing for a wedding at some point, right?”
My dad gave him the same look he’d often given me as a kid. The flat, narrow-eyed look that asked if that really was my final answer and, if it was, was I ready for the inevitable grounding. It apparently didn’t work on Jack, though, because his smarmy bullshit face stayed firmly in place.
Dad kept his voice and expression even. “His mother and I would love to see him get married. We’d be thrilled. But only if and when he meets the right person.” He patted my arm and put on a smile that rivaled Coach Dahl’s media smile. “Beyond that, it’s no one’s business but his own.”
Jack’s lip twitched almost imperceptibly. “Okay, that makes sense, but—”
“I don’t think your article really needs to get into that,” I said as diplomatically as I could, though with a note of warning. “You’re writing about the dads’ trip, right?” I inclined my head. “Not personal family issues?”
“Well, they’re bound to come up when—”
“When people ask even though it’s not really their place,” I said evenly. “Is there anything you wanted to ask about the trip? Maybe the things we’ve done with our dads in our downtime? Or the games?”
The pouty expression on Jack’s face would’ve been comical if I hadn’t been so close to breaking my beer bottle and shanking him with it.
Luckily, I’d taken enough wind out of his sails that he wisely slunk away, probably in search of another Phantom to annoy.
As soon as he was out of earshot, I muttered into my beer, “God, I hate that guy.”
“You and me both,” Dad muttered. “What a dick.”
I grunted. I’d hated Jack for a long, long time.
He was a problem that our club refused to solve.
None of this was new for him. He liked to tug at threads even when they were completely benign.
He was forever sniffing around anything that might be connected to something worthy of a clickbait article.
It was like when he came looking for a reason for Temo’s dry spell—an undisclosed injury or something.
Most of the time, it was a complete nothingburger, but once in a while he did strike gold.
Last year, he’d casually-but-pointedly hounded our former backup goalie, Benz, about his declining performance.
It had been irritating, and we’d all done our best to interrupt their interviews so Jack would lose interest and leave him alone.
Goalies had ups and downs just like any of us.
Yes, Benz had been in a frustrating slump, and no, he hadn’t been playing like himself, but that happened.
Harping on him wasn’t going to fix the problem.
Jack didn’t lose interest, though, and he kept digging like a goddamned truffle pig. Finally, three games before the playoffs, Benz had snapped that he was distracted as hell by his father’s terminal diagnosis and his marriage hitting the skids.
Benz had requested a trade the next day. He now played in Vancouver.
And Jack was still here because nepotism was alive and well in the Pittsburgh Phantoms organization.
When he came sniffing around about my relationship status right after I’d had a private—and admittedly risky—little interlude with Garrett… it made me nervous.
Except he hadn’t said anything about us. He hadn’t seen anything. No one had. I was just paranoid. Funny how that happened when I was actually hiding something.
I needed to keep a better poker face around him.
Remind myself over and over that he only thought he knew something, but he likely had a giant bucket full of nothing.
He was throwing things at the wall to see what stuck, and as long as I didn’t give him any signs that something was sticking, he’d move along.
He’d move along to a teammate. Harass them until they snapped and showed something personal like Benz did. Or until they flipped out at him like our now-retired defenseman Grandy did three years earlier, earning himself months of humiliation as that video made the rounds on the internet.
As long as Jack was interested in me and my perpetual bachelorhood, then maybe that could be a lightning rod for his attention and protect my teammates from him.
But that could also give him more opportunity to catch a real scent and dig up real evidence about my private life.
Goddammit. What the hell was I supposed to do?
“You good, Liam?” Dad asked.
“Yeah.” I sipped my beer, not that it helped. “Just… that guy always makes my skin crawl. I’m used to reporters.” I tilted the bottle in the direction Jack had gone. “Don’t think I’ll ever be used to that.”
Dad grunted. “Nobody should be used that bullshit.”
No kidding. And today, Jack had not only nosed around in my personal business with my dad, he’d also killed my buzz from that sweet moment with Garrett.
Yeah. He really needed to get kicked into next week by a moose.