Page 107 of On the Power Play

"Grab a second plate if you need to! Show starts in five," Monahan called out from the stairs.

Jack reached for a beer sitting in a tub of ice at the end of the counter. "Is anyone going to fess up and name the movie we're watching?" he asked Nathan and Chris Lindholm, who were both leaning against the double fridge.

Chris grinned. "They didn't fill you in?" Jack shook his head. "We're making our way through the best worst movies of all time."

Jack shook his head. "Of course you are. If this is Return to Blue Lagoon, I’m out."

"Tonight's Wagon's East." Nathan pushed off the fridge and reached for another plate. The crowd in the kitchen started to thin as the guys followed Monahan down the stairs at the other end of the room.

"I haven't seen it." Jack knew what it was. A western that was undeniably terrible, but Canadians were forced to love it because it was John Candy's last appearance on film.

"Don't expect a quiet viewing experience." Chris laughed.

Jack took his food and drink and followed the others down to the basement. There was a pool table, air hockey, foosball, and an indoor lap pool behind a wall of glass windows. At the end of the massive room, they walked through a doorway into a home theater with tiered seating.

Not bad. He couldn’t help himself imagining a world where he had a house like that, and the thought made his stomach churn. He was starting to want too much. To hope for too much.

Jack chose a leather recliner next to Nils. He pulled out his phone and sent off a quick email with a meeting request to Coach Novak and Kreviasuk. Keep your skates laced and your mouth zipped. That had been his strategy. It turned out, he was only good at one of those things.

"Just a warning, I'm not Canadian, so my commentary might be brutal." Nils crunched on a handful of chips next to him.

Brutal was just what he was in the mood for.

_____

Jack

Hey. Just checked in

Delia

Is the hotel nice?

It's a Marriott. I had chocolate strawberries waiting for me on the dresser

Well aren't you fancy. Did you pour champagne and eat them in the tub?

All alone

I bet Monahan would've joined you

No, I have a no sex contract with him, too

Delia stared at the last text message she’d received from Jack the night before, her heart pumping faster than it should at eight o'clock in the morning. He’d sent it after the team’s flight up to Edmonton, and she had yet to respond.

Sex. That was the only word in his sentence her brain had cared about for the past ten hours. Sex, sex, sex.

She’d pretended she was asleep so she couldn’t respond with something she’d regret. The morning brought back her filter, but hadn’t done anything to dull her fixation.

So sorry, I was exhausted last night. Mary and I are almost on our way. Don't break legs today!

There. Informational. Practical. Not obviously linked to the fact that all night she'd been thinking of sex or no sex with Jack in a soaking tub with champagne and strawberries. She groaned and tossed her phone on the bed, then threw another pair of pants into her suitcase. It would've been helpful to know exactly how long they were going to be in Edmonton, but she and Mary hadn't gotten that far. Did she want to stay for both of the games or just one? Could she afford to stay most of the week?

She'd gotten the rest of her recording done with Ethan, but who knew what would come up during mastering. She wanted this song to release on schedule. With all the press and her streaming numbers shooting through the roof, a new release plus a collab would hopefully cast her net even wider. Especially since Ethan was fishing in a completely different pond.

She needed to start posting more consistently. Posting with Jack had more than doubled her following, but she didn't want people to watch purely because of her relationship. She wanted them there because they loved her music. But . . . that would require her doing what she'd done in the first place. Share pieces of songs in progress. Her own music. Her own lyrics. All of which, IndieLake wasn't a fan of.

Becoming “IndieLake Delia” online after she’d built an authentic account was proving difficult. It felt forced to plug the songs from her new album since she hadn't written any of them. Getting in front of her phone with her guitar had never given her anxiety before she signed, but now, she'd do dishes or scrub toilets to avoid it. It was strange that she didn't feel the same level of dread for a live show. None of it made sense. How could being in person feel less intimate than posting a stupid video?

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