Page 45 of Risky Play

I swallowed.

And then it hit me. Holy shit. Benny was the one guy on the team I could talk to about my situation since he had been in the same one when he and Rox got together. If anyone could guide me on how to handle Noah, it was Benny. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before.

“Can we talk?” I asked him.

He tilted his head at me, curiosity materializing across his face. “Sure, bud. Now?”

“After? Can you give me a ride home? I didn’t sleep at Noah’s last night.”

That got me another raised eyebrow look. “Girl problems?”

I laced up my skates. “Partly. Can we talk privately?”

His eyebrow rose even higher. “Okay, kid. Let’s do lunch at my place, and we can talk.”

I nodded, and we walked out of the locker room and onto the ice together. Most of the guys were already on the ice warming up. I skated across it, trying to shake away my conflicted thoughts. I hadn’t checked the lines this morning, so I wasn’t sure I was getting ice time tonight to begin with.

I did a couple of laps before Coach blew the whistle, and we did a few drills to get ourselves loose for the game tonight. Morning skate wasn’t as taxing as practice, and that was why Coach made them optional, but I needed to show up to prove how important they were to my game.

After morning skate was over, a few of the guys met with the media. Then I sat through a couple of meetings going over video review of our opponent. We were playing Columbus, but we were the stronger team, even though our past few seasons we’d been struggling.

I had been avoiding Noah all morning, but when lunch came around, he came up to me. “Hey, man, you doing lunch with us?”

I shook my head. “I’m going elsewhere today.”

Noah narrowed his eyes at me. That was out of the ordinary for me. I always did lunch with the boys in the player’s lounge, and hockey players rarely changed their routine. We were superstitious like that.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Just need to switch it up. ”

“Right.”

“I’ll see you at home,” I told him and then high-tailed it out of there.

I had no idea where Benny was, but I figured I’d wait at his car for him. This situation with Maddie was a mess. Normally, Noah would have been the guy I asked for advice, but I couldn’t ask him for advice about himself.

When I walked out to the player’s parking lot, Benny was standing outside of his SUV, twirling his keys in his hand and waiting for me.

I gave him a wave and got into the passenger seat. Once we were settled, he drove off to his place in Old City.

“What’s on your mind, kid?” he asked.

“I fucked up,” I admitted.

“Okay…”

“How badly did TJ take it when he found out about you and Rox?”

Benny groaned. “It was colossally bad! But that hadn’t been my intention. Rox and I had a plan. We were gonna sit him down with a few drinks and tell him we were together. That I loved her and nothing, not even him, would stand in my way.”

That sounded like a good plan, and it could work with Noah. If I came to him upfront about my intentions with Maddie, he’d respect that.

“But what happened?” I asked.

Benny frowned. “He came home and heard us fucking.”

My eyebrows rose all the way to the ceiling. That was worse than I had imagined.