Page 1 of Find Me Again (KRK Security #3)

Neil Hopkins parked in front of his parents' house and sat there, taking in the same old street, the same pick-up in the Millers' driveway, and the same weird statue in the middle of Bensons' lawn.

To his surprise, he found himself appreciating the familiarity. Those were the immovable forces he had no interest in meeting with anything other than a fond smile, these days.

These days . What did that even mean, now? This year? This Christmas season? Or maybe the end of—

No .

He was not going there. The game didn't end before the last whistle—he'd had it hammered into his head over and over, from his high school practice to the Stanley Cup final earlier this year.

Besides, he had the entire break to figure things out.

But first, he needed to get out of the car.

Neil winced as he stepped out, his knee protesting a weird angle for a second. A few weeks of rest, Doc Sanchez had told him, and he should be fine if he didn't overdo it. She hadn't added "again", but it was heavily implied nonetheless. She did not suffer fools, and the whole team had learned to be a little afraid of her, so Neil had nodded and taken his pills, and two days later, after the confrontation with Josh, he'd turned it into the perfect excuse for getting the hell out of Savannah.

"If I go down, I'm dragging you with me."

As his heartbeat jumped at the memory, his hand slipped, and he shut the car door too hard.

Shit . That was going to get noticed, so he only had a few short seconds to pull himself together.

He was here to visit his family for the holidays, to recuperate and relax.

Maybe if he repeated that enough times, it would actually stick.

Then the door to the house flew open, and his mother rushed towards him as if she was welcoming him from the war—which, to be fair, was her usual way of greeting him.

Another immovable force, right there.

"Hi, Mom." He dropped his bag to put his arms around her and inhaled the familiar, too sweet scent of coconut as he pressed a kiss on the top of her head.

"Hi, baby." Her voice was muffled by the way she was pressing her face to his chest, but he could still hear her smile in it.

Predictably, because they'd gone through this routine too many times to count at this point, he groaned.

"Not a baby."

"Called dibs on calling you a baby when—"

"Not another birth story, I beg of you."

She pulled back a bit to look up at him.

"Fifteen-hour-long labor means I get to call you whatever I want. Forever."

"There should be a time limit for playing that card, you know," he told her as he stepped away and picked up his bag.

"That ace is staying with me until my dying breath." She turned towards the house. "Come on, I need to start on dinner. I know how you get after traveling."

Neil wasn't feeling particularly hungry, but he didn't correct her, since that would bring on questions he didn't want to answer. After all, he normally had a big appetite and, for whatever reason, no matter how much he'd eaten before, he was always starving when he got here.

Usually, it worked out fine, because there was no better cook than his mom and she loved feeding people. This time, he'd have to overplay his enthusiasm a bit so she wouldn't get worried.

About this, at least , he thought as he followed her through the entry door. When I tell them the truth, she'll have other reasons to be worried .

Unless they weren't going to worry but instead get angry or—

"Todd!" his mom shouted towards the stairs to the basement, interrupting his train of thoughts. "Neil's here!"

A minute later he was being hugged by his father, who pulled back only to clap his hand on Neil's shoulder.

"Good to see you, Son."

Neil smiled, relaxing under the weight of that grip. This was probably the truest moment of joy he'd had since… everything.

"Good to see you, too, Dad."

Then Neil heard a noise in the hallway, soft thumping sounds of the family dog, Ken, slowly making his way from the backroom he resided in these days. He was seventeen this year, mostly deaf and struggling to walk longer distances.

"Hey, you." Neil knelt down to greet Ken with a kiss and a proper scratch behind his ears, getting a lick on his neck for his trouble.

"How's your knee?" His mom looked him up and down as if she was checking for any more injuries.

"It's fine," he assured her as he got up slowly. "A few weeks of rest and I'll be ready to go back out onto the ice."

She hesitated. "Don't overdo it, though, okay? You can take all the time you need."

"That's his job, Di." His father gestured them all towards the kitchen. "He's on a break while he's injured, but he has responsibilities there."

"I know what a job is, Todd," she said, exasperated. "I'm just saying, until he's completely healed, he should take his time."

"Yes, thank you," Neil cut in before his parents could really get into it. He loved them dearly, but they tended to bicker for the sake of bickering, and he didn't want them to get into it over his health when he was right there. They'd probably done it enough when he wasn't. "I'm fine, I'm almost done healing, and I'm here for the next three weeks, so tell me your game plan."

This was the fastest way to distract them. His entire extended family loved the holiday season, and the vast number of aunts, uncles, and cousins living in the same town meant a carefully planned calendar of hosting, visiting, and lots and lots of cooking and baking. And both his parents reveled in it, even if his father pretended to be grumpy about it from time to time.

Neil took a seat at the kitchen table, with Ken lying down next to his feet.

He was in for a long story, for sure.

* * *

It wasn't until later, when he was in the shower, that the reality of his situation hit him again.

He might lose everything. All the years of hard work, of being careful, of everything he'd given up to be where he was today—all of that had come down to this moment. His biggest fear was about to be realized, and everything else might ultimately not matter at all.

He wished he could blame it all on Josh, and at times, he did. He had. But when he took in the full scope of every decision—good or bad—that had gotten him to this point, he knew Josh was simply the catalyst. Everything else… That was on Neil.

And it was so stupid, too. A decade and a half of hiding, only one real relationship that he'd destroyed forever ago, and in the end, it was a hook-up arrangement with a teammate that could potentially cost him his career and all he'd worked for.

Leaning forward, Neil rested his hands on the wall as the water cascaded on his back.

He had hooked up with a few fellow hockey players over the years, because it had been the safest option—both sides had things to lose, so it was agreed upon that nobody would find out. He hadn't done it often, but it had happened, each time being a one-off, never to be talked about again.

And then, last year, he and Josh had hooked up after a brutal game away in Seattle, the pent-up energy needing an outlet. They'd roomed together for the first time ever, since both their usual roommates stayed behind in Savannah, and, well, one thing had led to another, and then another, and then Neil had woken up tired and sore in the best of ways.

Which should have been the end of the story, but Josh had followed him out of the locker room after the training two weeks later and suggested a repeat. After that, he'd offered an arrangement of sorts, a friends-with-benefits type of situation, even if Neil would hardly call them friends. Still, the sex had been great, and the convenience alone was enticing, so he'd said yes. From that point forward, one of them would suggest they hung out pretty much every other week.

Then August had come, and Josh had gotten himself a DUI and a few broken bones, which benched him for a long while—most likely until the end of his contract in a few months.

Angry and hurting, and smart enough to know he would soon be unemployed, Josh decided to take it out on Neil for some reason. He'd alternated between telling him to get out when Neil visited and demanding Neil came over there more. They'd never been a couple, but suddenly Josh was trying to make something different out of their arrangement—and not in a normal, "let's talk about it" way, but one that only pressured Neil without taking into account his feelings or wants.

Finally, Neil had told him point-blank that he wasn't interested in anything more, or even in continuing what they'd previously had. A few weeks later, he'd gotten injured himself, so he'd focused on getting better, and Josh had backed off, too, which Neil thought was the end of it.

Up until three days ago, when Josh had called him out of the blue and asked him to come over to talk.

Neil should have said no, probably. Or maybe not—it was difficult to say what might have set Josh off more.

As it were, Neil had gone to see him, and found him drunk, angry, and bitter. Josh had a problem with everything from the team's management to the unfairness of Neil's injury healing faster than his. He'd talked on and on about how he'd lost everything, but without taking any responsibility for it at all.

When Neil had had enough and gotten up to leave, Josh stopped him with, "I need you to help fix this."

Neil waved his hand at Josh and his cane, restraining himself from pointing at all the bottles, but only just.

"I have no way of fixing this."

"You have to talk to the Coach and the GM," Josh went on as if he hadn't heard him. "Tell them to offer me something. I'm willing to negotiate."

Neil snorted. Unbelievable .

"First of all, I don't have to do anything. But even if I wanted to, I have no input on their decisions and you know it. We don't get to decide such things, and we never did."

"They're taking you back!"

"I'm off the ice until I'm good enough to play, and that's not before the end of the year, at least. And even then, it's their decision as well."

Josh narrowed his eyes. "Such a perfect team player, huh? Toeing the line, never doing anything wrong. I wonder what they'd say if the whole world found out you fuck guys."

Neil's stomach clenched so hard he couldn't breathe.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Everything, apparently." Josh leaned forward. He had to look up because Neil was standing now, but he didn't seem to care. "But I'm not the only fuck-up on the team, and I won't give up without a fight. I have nothing left to lose, so I'm warning you. You better talk to whoever you need to talk to, and make it work. Or else, I'm telling everybody who'd listen about what a stand-up hockey star you are not."

"Are you threatening me?" Neil asked in disbelief.

This could not be happening. He'd worked so hard not to ever let this happen.

Josh sat back and gave him a mocking smile, the asshole.

"I'm warning you. Or," he said with a shrug, "giving you a piece of advice."

"You're going to out us both?" Neil stared at the man before him as the anger rolled through him. Then, the words slipped out before he could stop them. "Because you fucked up your own career, now you need to fuck up somebody else's?"

"I'm just upping the stakes for you." Josh shrugged. "If I have a team to come back to, great, I'll be a team player and not say anything. But if I go down, I'm dragging you with me. I'm dragging all of you with me."

Clenching his hands into fists, Neil wanted to hit Josh so badly he could almost see it happening. He wished he could wipe that smug expression off the face of a man who had never learned to lose gracefully.

But Neil also felt nauseous and on a cusp of falling apart, so he needed to get out of there more than anything else.

He'd gotten out of that house, and then soon after, he'd gotten out of Savannah.

And here he was now, freaking out in the shower in his childhood home, with Josh's final words still ringing in the back of his head.

"I'm gonna give you until the end of the year. After that, if you don't help me, you better have a goodbye press release at the ready."