Page 28 of Brace and Chase

SANTA

When I wakeup after a solid eight hours of sleep and the events of last night all come rushing back, I have to give it to Jules; he planned the team’s Christmas party perfectly.

Today is a rare free day, and I mean completely free.

No practices, no training sessions, and I don’t even need to go in to get checked out. I’m in perfect shape which isn’t usual three months into the regular season.

It’s a great thing, though. I need to be ready for the playoffs—to help my team get another win.

That thought brings it all back. Chris’s words, Gab’s words. It’s all jumbled inside my head and I can’t quite wrap my head around it.

In the last few years since Jules and Sterling’s relationship was announced to the world, there’s been a shift in the team too.

A good shift, I think, but it means that I’m not asinvolved in their lives as I was previously. So, finding out that something so... I don’t even know what to call it, monumental? Yeah, I guess that works.

Finding out something so monumental happened in their lives just this past summer and I didn’t hear about it until yesterday is kind of a gut punch.

I don’t like feeling left out, and I feel like a prick for even feeling it, but it is what it is. Jules, Bear, and Benny are all in relationships with other men which means they all hang out without me from time to time. I get that, I don’t resent that, but I do feel like I would’ve been a great friend to Benny after he found out about Chris’s past. But he didn’t come to me for help.

And listen to me, whining like a little baby about my friends.

They’re allowed to have their own space—one where they don’t have to mince their words at all or have to think about their actions. I get that those are things they’ve been doing all their lives, and I hate the thought that I have in any way made them feel like they need to do that with me, but maybe it’s not about me.

No, I know it’s not about me.

And I didn’t tell any of them what I was doing during the off-season, did I?

I didn’t share either, and haven’t since then. Even though it’s final and done, I still haven’t told them.

I haven’t told them why I’m never going to stop hating Heart—and to be fair, I probably never will. That woundhasn’t stopped bleeding since it opened, and the only moments I’ve forgotten it was when I didn’t see him or hear his name for weeks on end.

Sigh . . . those were the days.

But like Chris said, I need to focus on the present, on what’s in front of me, and if I want to be able to do shit for the team come April and the playoffs, then we actually have tobein the playoffs.

In order to get there, we need to win a whole hell of a lot of games in the next three and a half months.

I know I’m the one to blame for everyone being distracted on the ice. Again, like Chris said, they all care about me, they all consider me family like I consider them my family, and if I thought one of my guys was having such an awful time and dreading every day on the ice, I’m sure I’d be as distracted as they are.

There’s also a lack of cohesion on the ice.

My hate for Heart means that even though Jules and Mater were nice enough to Heart when he got here, they haven’t really bonded the way it’s needed to work as a unit in a game.

“Fuck,” I tell the empty room. I rub my palms up and down my face.

I need to fucking fix this. Somehow. And I have to find a way to fix it that won’t involve me talking to Heart.

I didn’t see him at yesterday’s party, and again, an annoying stab of guilt hits me right in the chest at the thought of him being left out to that degree.

I ruthlessly push it away and get up from bed. I need to get this day started. There’s too much to do now that I’ve made up my mind.

“You asshole,”Bear growls as he opens the door to his and Drew’s apartment.

“What?” I demand, hand to my chest, and acting as offended as a Victorian maiden. “Were you about to get your dick sucked?” I lean in and whisper with a teasing smile, dropping the act.

“Idiot,” Bear mumbles and shakes his head. “I wassleeping,” he hisses and steps back to let me in.

“Where is Drew?” I walk in and close the door behind me.

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