Page 1 of Power Play (Titans Hockey #2)

Ben

Waiting rooms aren't built for hockey players—too big, too loud, too restless—but here we are, crammed together like a bench in overtime.

The nurses are equal parts annoyed and thrilled with our presence.

I can't blame them, though. Hockey players are children - boys that essentially never grow up.

There are about twenty of us crammed in this tiny waiting room in Labor and Delivery, usually reserved for anxious and excited soon to be grandparents, not twenty overgrown children.

It's been funny to watch their faces as they check us out, try to catch our eyes to flirt, and then roll their own at our antics.

I'm the well-behaved one, though, so I simply watch from the hard plastic chair.

Okay, that's not entirely true. When Jonesy shows me a TikTok of a girl with large tits jumping rope, I shove shoulders with him and tell him to shut up.

Suddenly, the doors burst open, and we all press to our feet, chairs scraping on the linoleum floor.

A hush falls over the overgrown hockey players as we wait to hear the news.

Carter's first to rush in, a tiny pink and blue bundle in his arms. "It's a boy!

!" Luca follows close behind him, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and jostling him gently, both grinning like lunatics.

Or very happy dads .

The boys swarm them, offering cigars and manly thumps on the back in congratulations.

I let the commotion die down a bit. "And mama?" I ask sheepishly. I'd had a crush on Emily last year, but when she turned me down, we'd developed an easy friendship. It was obvious to me she only had eyes for Carter, Luca, and Gabe.

Luca pipes up. "Mama was a champ—laughing, joking with the nurses the whole way through. Gabe, Cedar, and Annie are back there with her now."

That pleases me. When Emily first started working for Carter, she was almost completely alone in life.

A brother and a passive aggressive father.

Now she had Carter, Luca, Gabe, Cedar, Annie's mom, Annie, and the newest member of their eclectic family.

She deserves it. I've never met a sweeter person.

Except maybe one.

"Does he have a name?" One of the other guys asks.

"Samuel James Jones." Carter says proudly, chest puffing in pride. He shares a look with Luca and the pride they share between the two of them is palpable.

I rub my chest absentmindedly. The perfect picture of a happy family. Loving, supportive partners, kids, the white picket fence and all.

My fist pauses as I realize what I'm doing. I'm rubbing at the pain I feel deep in my chest.

It's envy. Raw, biting envy.

I'm envious of my friends. And following close on envy's heels is shame .

I love the NHL. I'm living my dream - getting paid to work and play hard at the sport I love. I love my friends and I'm so damn happy for them and their happily ever after.

But at night, after practice, when I go back to my apartment, it's lonely. In the dark, you'd think I'd have gotten used to it by now. But the older I get, the lonelier it gets.

I know it's tough balancing professional hockey and a family, but fuck, I want to try.