Page 90 of Man Advantage

I just rolled my eyes. I hated that he had any business at all on our family group chat. I hated… Well, I hated him, but that wasn’t news. Keeping that boredom on full display, I leaned down to lace up my skates. “I mean, you do you, I guess? I wouldn’t have seen it.”

“Dude, you’re on the family group chat,” he snarked.

I laughed and shot him a grin. “Well, yeah, but you didn’t know? I muted you ages ago.”

The stunned expression made me chuckle. He had that look of a grade school bully who’d just had his cleverest insult turned back on him—completely confused, offended, and embarrassed.

Perfect.

“Wait, we can mute teammates?” Bells asked. “Well, shit. I wish someone had told me that.”

“Of course we can.” Hoes glanced up from taping his sock. “I’ve muted Tremblay and Arnolds for?—”

“Oh, fuck you, Hoes,” Tremblay said from across the room. “I blocked you two seasons ago because you wouldn’t stop sending me pictures of your?—”

“Wait, what?” Spaulding chimed in. “What the fuck, Hoes? I’ve been asking for pictures of your dog for ages, and you’re spamming Tremblay with them? You dick.”

As the banter went on and got increasingly ridiculous, I just laughed. Good thing there weren’t any cameras or hot mics in the room right now. Though I kind of wished a camera could catch Chats looking like someone had flipped his birthday cake on the floor.

Sorry, dude. I’m not taking your bait, and nobody else is playing your games either.

I really shouldn’t have been feeding the animosity between us, but it was just so satisfying when I could turn some of his obnoxious bullshit back on him. He’d made it clear that he desperately wanted me to be jealous and pissed about him and Bryan. My apathy was his kryptonite.

What could I say? His crap didn’t bother me nearly as much now that I was spending every available minute driving Cam wild. If we weren’t having sex, we were bantering as effortlessly as we had when we were kids, or curled up in front of a movie, or talking about whatever until we couldn’t keep our eyes open.

Chats just wasn’t going to get to me now that I was this happily distracted by the hot, funny, amazing man waiting for me at home. He could try, and I knew he would, but it wasn’t happening. Not anymore.

I picked up my stick and gloves and headed to the ice to join my teammates for our morning skate. We’d practice this morning and then play tonight. And later on, I’d be in bed with the hottest man I’d ever touched.

Time to focus on that instead of the jackass my ex-husband was with for some reason.

This game waswild, and the hometown crowd was loving it.

Minneapolis pulled their starting goalie in the first period after he let in five goals on seven shots. The backup was a brick wall, but we still had a 5-1 lead. All we had to do was hold on to it.

On the bench, Hoes clapped my shoulder. “You think you’ve got another one in you?”

I glanced up at the timer and shrugged. “Still thirty-five minutes left to play. I think I can get another in.” I grinned at him. “You gonna set me up?”

“Are you kidding? When was the last time you were actually on hatty watch?”

I laughed, admittedly a little giddy. I hadn’t had a hat trick in three seasons, and I’d only been on hatty watch twice in the last two. Tonight, I’d been so damn close to anaturalhat trick; two goals in the first ten minutes of the game, and I’d almost picked up a third in the dying minute of the first period. That ping of the puck hitting the crossbar would haunt my dreams.

So no natural hatty tonight, but still plenty of time for a hat trick.

“What do you say, rookie?” Hoes leaned past me and looked at Bells. “Think we can get Trev his hat trick?”

“Fuck yeah.” The rookie fist-bumped both of us. “Let’s do this!”

Of course my linemates would still absolutely take a shot if they saw one, but especially when we had a comfortable lead, it wasn’t unusual to try to set someone up to complete a hat trick.

I was getting another puck in tonight, damn it. I was practically salivating at the thought of hats raining down on theice. It had been too damn long, and I was too damn close with a ton of hockey left to play.

The comfortable lead didn’t stay that way for long, though. Minneapolis got a breakaway that tilted the ice hard in their direction, and suddenly all the action was in our defensive zone. Our third line and the D-pair completely fell apart at the worst possible time, and in seconds, the score was 5-2. A minute and a half later, 5-3.

“Get out there,” Coach barked to the top line, his irritation coming through loud and clear. I got it—sometimes a strong lead like that was dangerous because while the other team got motivated, we got lazy and took our foot off the gas. Now we were only up by two instead of four, and a two-goal lead could vanishfast.

The top line finally got things moving in our favor. The zone entry took a few tries because Minneapolis’s defense were on their toes. Then we were offside, and our guys tried again, but it was still a struggle.

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