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We start laughing again, and the most incredible, light, airy feeling fills me up like helium. I feel like I could float right out of here, and I don't know if it's just the sex endorphins pinging around inside me like fireworks or how much I love this man, but it's the best thing in the world. We laugh until I feel like I’ve done a thousand crunches and happy tears dry on my cheeks. I slip to the bathroom to clean myself up and let Chase do the same. When he returns, he crawls into bed with me, pulling me tight to his chest to cuddle.
"I like this."
"Screwing my brains out?" I joke.
"Well, I like that too," he chuckles, pulling me closer. "But the cuddling. It's nice."
"It is," I agree, as my eyes start to get heavy and my breathing evens out. "But all your sexiness makes me sleepy. I just need to look at the insides of my eyelids for a few minutes, and then we should do this all over again."
26
Karma is My girlfriend
Chase
Iskate across the ice with the rest of my team for the first time in weeks in front of a sold-out crowd. Since I took my leave of absence, I've still been skating, working out and practicing, but it's not the same. The adrenaline rush I get wearing a Northmen jersey in front of our insanely loyal fans, all with signs and painted faces, screaming and chanting, "Let's Go, Northmen," is a feeling that can't be replicated anywhere else. The only thing better is the feeling I get with Lily.
She's everything. And, for the first time in my life, I finally feel like my ducks are in a row. Before, my ducks were wandering all over the fucking place, out into oncoming traffic, and I was scrambling around trying to make them line up. It was exhausting and tearing me apart from the inside out. Dr. Brighton has helped me realize that asking for help isn't a weakness. It's a strength. I still have bad days, and sometimes doubt creeps in when I lay awake in the morning watching Lily breathe. I wonder how or why she can possibly love someone like me. Someone who's done incredibly stupid and fucked up shit. But then, she opens her eyes, and they're the brightest blue I've ever seen. She smiles at me like I'm the only thing in her orbit and the only thing she'll ever need to make her happy, and the doubt subsides.
Throughout these last weeks, she's been everything to me, showing patience, kindness and love whenever I needed her. She never questioned or pressured me about timelines or when I thought I'd be ready to try again. She waited with a big smile, always being a friend, a confidant supporting me no matter what. I think that's when I truly realized what love is. Lily is my best friend. She knows me better than anyone other than her brother, and sheseesme. The good, the bad, and the really fucking ugly parts too.
"Do you still remember how to skate, Wilder?" Ollie calls as he whizzes by me on his skates. I laugh.
"Yeah, dude, we've been holding down the fort for you. You better go out and score a hatty for us tonight." Ozzy adds, following his brother. The entire team and organization have been extremely supportive of me. Everyone from the Starlings to Coach McCall, even the trainers and equipment managers have been behind me one hundred percent, no questions asked. And they're just as eager to have me back.
"I don't know about a hat trick, but I feel pretty good. No rust on these skates," I reply, squatting down into a frog stretch. I know this stretch is one of Lily's favourites. She calls it "the Magic Mike hump the ice stretch." I chuckle just thinking about it.
"Oh, come on, at least a Gordie Howe hat trick. Give your adoring fans something to cheer about." Ollie winks. A Gordie Howe hat trick is when a player scores a goal, gets an assist, and has a fight in the same game.
"I'll tell you what. I'll score the goals, and you and Ozzy can drop the gloves. I need to keep this face pretty for my girl." The brothers roll their eyes at me in an expression that's so similar I feel like I'm doing a double take in The Matrix. Ollie and Ozzy are identical except for Ollie's one blue eye.
"Are you guys stretching or just putting on a show for the ladies?" Luke asks and then joins us. I just smile knowingly at him. "I knew it. This is Holly's favourite too. She especially likes it when I do it with her underneath me at home."
"Dude, you're just asking for sister jokes now." Ozzy laughs, and Luke scowls back but then shrugs.
"I'm over it. And I like this guy," he says, nudging me with his shoulder. "If I have to put up with some asshole fawning over my sister for the rest of my life, it might as well be this asshole. At least I like him."
The buzzer sounds to end warmup, and all the guys skate back toward our bench and the locker room. We have about fifteen minutes before the puck drops on the first game of the second half of the season. This is when games start to really count, and the playoff push starts. We're sitting first in our conference, but points are so tight between the top and the wildcard spots; less than ten points are separating us.
Since the salary cap era started, teams need to make sure their entire roster fits the league-mandated budget, so the margin between winners and losers has shrunk to almost nothing. Gone are the days when organizations could pay millions of dollars to whoever would take it and load up on superstars. Now, every team has roughly eight-five million dollars to spend on twenty-two or twenty-three active roster spots. The only workaround is if someone gets injured long-term or another team eats a player's salary in a trade.
It's a hell of a job being the number cruncher for an NHL team and one I definitely don't envy. But, as a player who wants to win a Cup, when I signed my last contract with the Northmen, I chose to take a hometown discount over seven years so the team had more money to spend concocting a winning formula. So far, it hasn't brought home Lord Stanley, but I have a good feeling about this year. We came as close as you could get last year; overtime of game seven. Now that the boys have a taste for it, we're hungry to finish the job.
Over the next sixty minutes, we destroy the Detroit Roadrunners eight-to-one. It's an absolute spanking, and ironically, I score a hat trick. It couldn't have been better for my first game back unless Hunter LaRoux bagged the shutout. But he's happy with the win.
"Excellent game, boys," Coach McCall says from the centre of the room. "We need to keep this energy rolling through the next four months until playoffs. We know the goal, so let's not take our foot off the gas pedal." The guys cheer and let out a few whoops before Luke stands up, still in his skates.
"Tonight was a hell of a game." Luke smiles at us. "Over the break, I decided we needed to do something special for the guys who really show up this time of year. The warriors who leave it all out there on the ice. So, I'd like to start a new tradition by picking The Beast of Game. This player might score a big goal, get an assist, swing momentum by dropping the gloves and defending a teammate, or just be a beast on the ice. And tonight, that wild beast is none other than Chase Wilder."
The room erupts with laughter and cheers as Luke pulls out a massive, gold and silver, doubled-headed Viking axe from behind him. The Northmen logo shines on the axe, and our name is engraved down the hilt. It's really fucking cool, and as Luke hands it off to me, I realize it's also fucking heavy. Thankfully, I see that the edges of the blades are dull; otherwise, one of us might inadvertently decapitate a teammate.
"Slay," Ozzy roars from beside me, and the rest of the team joins him. I've seen other teams do something similar with letterman jackets and huge bedazzled wrestling belts, but Luke's outdone himself. This is just fucking cool.
The guys take a few extra minutes to settle down and shower before Holly and Avery pop into the room to ask a few guys to head over to the press podium for interviews, including me. I get the usual questions about the game and how it felt returning to the ice. Naturally, there are some questions about my interview with Scarlett St. James-Kaur. I answer everything in stride and with patience. And by the end of it, I just want to grab my shit and go see Lily, where I know she'll be waiting for me in the friends and family room down the hall.
"You were amazing," she squeals, jumping into my arms when I enter the room. A bunch of the other players' wives, girlfriends, and family members are there too. "Three goals in your first game back. My man is the stud of the team."
"So I take it you two are back together." April Owens grins, and I slide my arm around Lily's waist possessively. "It's about time. Don't tell Holly and Avery this, but that entire Bachelorette thing was stupid as fuck."
