“Which you can do as soon as we get you home tonight.” Zeke stands, tugging on a pair of black boxer briefs. “But first, we’re taking you out, sound good?”
“Perfect.”
“Great,” Zeke says, grabbing a gray T-shirt off the chair and tossing it at my face. “Now haul your ass up and get ready, or Coach won’t let you live long enough to see another birthday.”
We pull up to the rink together, jackets zipped tight against the cold, and it doesn’t take long before a handful of fans start gathering out front. Some are faces we know by name. Others are new, hanging around, hoping to catch a glimpse and maybe snag a photo or a signature to post online.
We sign a few posters, scrawl our names across some jerseys, and pose for the usual pictures—grins half forced while our hands are already half frozen—and then finally we head inside.
Chuck and Jonas stand guard near the entrance, the way they always do when the players roll in.They don’t smile, but then they don’t need to. Their presence says it all:You’re safe here. Now move your ass and get your shit done.
They nod once, and we nod back.
There’s no small talk or bullshit. Just the kind of respect that’s built from years of standing in the same cold hallways, watching the same bruised-up guys chase the same impossible dreams.
“Yo, birthday boy!” Garrett’s voice bellows across the room. “Retirement’s right around the corner for you, huh?”
“By the time you’re even considered for captain, Garrett, you’ll be a corpse rotting under the bleachers.”
“Fuck you, Ashford.”
Screw you, Ashford.
Those words have been playing on a loop in my head ever since the night Addison found out what Zeke, Jasper, and I really mean to each other. It wasn’t something I was necessarily ready for—hell, part of me was terrified—but deep down, I knew it needed to happen, not for me, but for them.
They’d been tied to Addison for years, bound by something that ran deeper than friendship but had never been touched or explored.
We’d had a relationship once, her and me. It was real and raw, and we had the kind of connection that buries itself under your skin and refuses to let go. We weren’t gentle with each other. We were a fucking explosion. Every touch was a wildfire we couldn’t outrun, and every fight was like two storms colliding.
I handed Addie every side of me—the good, the bad, the messy, even the parts I didn’t always understand. But it all went to shit the day she looked me dead in the eye and said we were done, like I hadn’t handed her my whole damn heart and trusted her not to crush it.
It wasn’t that she stopped wanting me. Being with Zeke and Jasper all these years has taught me that a love like that doesn't just burn out. But eventually, someone else’s rules got between us, and when it mattered most, she made her choice, and it sure as hell wasn’t me.
Hockey was the dream I’d been chasing my entire life, but I would’ve thrown it all away for her. I would’ve chosen her above anything else because even now, if anyone tried to make me pickbetween the NHL and my guys, I’d let it all go without a second thought.
Our love isn’t a choice.
It’s a necessity.
Hockey might be the fire in my veins, but Jasper and Zeke are the air in my lungs, and I’d choose them in every lifetime.
I’ve been captain of the Vipers for three seasons now. Three years of bleeding on the ice and turning a group of individual players into a single, unstoppable machine.
Every time I pull on my jersey, I feel the weight of all the others hanging in that locker room pressing down on my shoulders. I carry their hopes, doubts, and dreams, and it’s my job to make them believe in each other and themselves. Some nights, being captain means being the toughest bastard on the ice. You skate through pain, hit harder than you should, and bleed for the boys who’d bleed for you. Other nights, it means knowing when somebody’s on the edge and pulling him aside. Not to tear him down, but to remind him exactly who the fuck he is and that he’s not alone out there. That no matter how bad it gets, he’s got a family fighting beside him.
The boys all give me shit. Constant chirping and endless jokes, the kind of brotherhood that could look like hate from the outside but is nothing but bone-deep love underneath.And when the game’s on the line and everything comes down to those final few minutes, I know that these guys would go to war for me, just like I’d go to war for them.
“Happy birthday, Captain,” Jacky, our goalie who matches my six-foot-two height, grips my shoulder and flashes me a grin. “Did you get anything nice?”
Birthday head from the two guys I’d walk through hellfire for? Yeah, I’d call that better than nice.
And they know exactly what I’m thinking the second our eyes meet across the locker room. It doesn’t matter how many years pass—that fire, that pull between us—it never fades. It only grows stronger and hotter.
CHAPTER
FIVE
JASPER
