Page 42 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys (Forbidden Fantasies #18)

I rise slower, and this time the pressure behind my eyes returns in full.

The low pulse in my back jumps sharp, like a wire pulled tight.

My breath doesn’t come fast, but it comes wrong, like I’m breathing underwater, like I’m using muscles I forgot I had.

I press a hand to the med cabinet for balance and reach for the tray—one last tray.

The one stocked for final prep: caffeine chews, anti-cramp mix, energy bars, gels in packets with bright fake flavors.

All the things that make the last ten minutes before puck drop feel like a ritual instead of a panic.

The plastic of the tray hums against my palms. I grip it tight, holding it like it could anchor me, like I could will the pain to wait.

I take one step, then two, toward the setup bench.

I focus on my feet, on the floor, on the line between motion and collapse.

I tell myself I just need to set it down.

Just place the tray. Sip water. Breathe.

But my foot catches on the edge of the mat, just slightly, just enough. My balance slips sideways. The tray jolts, and I can’t recover it fast enough.

The clatter is deafening. Energy bars, crinkling foil, packets and tubes scatter across the floor, sliding beneath benches, tumbling across boots and bags. The noise slices through the hum of the room like a blade. And then everything stills.

I know the second it happens. My knees go soft, my spine folds in, and I feel my weight shift in a way that cannot be undone.

I try to grab the edge of the bench, the side of the cabinet, the air itself.

There’s nothing to hold me. My hands skim surfaces that feel miles away.

My body follows gravity with agonizing slowness, like something has broken loose inside me and is finally giving way.

I go down, not like someone fainting, but like someone sinking. Knees first. Then hips. Shoulder. Elbow.

The chaos hits hard and fast, like a starter’s pistol.

My name is being shouted, again and again, and it’s not one voice, it’s many—Beau’s deep and clipped with panic, Finn’s cracking like he’s furious and afraid at once, someone else just yelling “Sage” like that will undo gravity.

I can’t make out their faces. My body feels unhitched, half floating, half molten.

My stomach turns in tight circles. My limbs are numb and on fire all at once.

I feel a pair of hands cradling my head.

Someone got to me fast, caught it before it hit the floor, and I should thank them, but my mouth won’t shape the words.

There’s a surge of sound again as someone sprints out the trailer door.

I hear the clatter of skates on aluminum steps and the bark of the boom operator calling for medical.

The Storm Front crew is still outside. The camera light flickers against the wall. One of them is recording.

Paramedics arrive with terrifying speed, the trailer door slamming against the wall as two men in navy jackets push inside, carrying gear and urgency in equal measure.

One drops to his knees beside me, speaking calm and fast, asking questions I can’t process.

My eyes won’t stay open. My mouth won’t give them answers that make sense.

“Do you know where you are?” someone asks.

I think about saying “trailer” or “bench” or “hell,” but my tongue is thick and clumsy.

“Pain?” another voice says. “Where?”

I try to lift my arm to point to my lower back, but nothing moves the way I want it to.

Someone presses two fingers to the inside of my wrist. Someone else peels my hoodie up to check for swelling, bruising, anything that might explain why I’ve just dropped like a stone in the middle of pregame chaos.

Then I say it. I don’t mean to. It comes out before I can stop it, floating up through the fog.

“Are the babies okay?”

Silence drops like a guillotine.

The paramedics freeze. The crew goes dead quiet. One of them turns to look at the other. I see the realization ripple across their faces like a shockwave.

“She’s pregnant,” one of them says, loud and sharp, as if saying it out loud will make everyone move faster.

And then they do.

Everything blurs. I feel the straps tighten across my body.

Someone shouts for the cameras to get out of the trailer.

Finn’s voice is right next to my ear now, low and broken, and I think he’s trying not to lose it in front of the team.

Beau’s hand wraps around mine, squeezing once, hard and fast. I try to focus on that pressure. I try to stay there, inside that grip.

They lift me onto the stretcher.

The last thing I see before they carry me out is the tray of bars on the floor, scattered like bones, and the blood pounding behind my eyes like it’s trying to tell me a truth I’m too far gone to hold.

My eyes open to ceiling tiles. Rows of off-white panels with those weird gray freckles that always remind me of mold or cold oatmeal.

The fluorescent lights are off, but daylight pushes against the blinds, fractured and soft.

The room is quiet in that hospital kind of way, where silence hums under everything, where even the machines make sure not to interrupt unless something’s wrong.

My mouth is dry and tastes like gauze. My back aches, sharp and dull at once, and my wrists are itchy from the adhesive they used to tape the IV in.

For a few seconds, I forget why I’m here.

I float in that gray fog, letting my body register the hurt before the reason.

Then it hits me like a wave. The trailer.

The fall. The tray crashing. The cold snap of the floor.

And then that question—unfiltered, unplanned—rising out of my mouth like a prayer thrown into traffic.

Are the babies okay?

I turn my head, slowly, the room spinning for a moment before it settles.

My stomach lurches, not from nausea this time but from fear.

I find the call button with clumsy fingers, press it once.

A nurse appears a minute later, mid-thirties, clean scrubs, eyes already soft with the kind of look I’ve seen before.

The one that says she knows everything and doesn’t know what to say.

“You’re awake,” she says, voice gentle, like I’m something breakable. “How are you feeling?”

I nod, then shake my head, then manage to croak something that sounds like, “The babies?”

She smiles, not too wide, not too fast. “Strong heartbeats. No signs of distress. You’re going to be okay. They’re going to be okay. The little bit of bleeding was due to cervical distress.”

I nod again, and this time I let myself close my eyes because I need the room to stop spinning and I need the flood of tension in my chest to drain even a little before I can breathe again. I feel tears prick at the edges, but I don’t let them fall. I can’t afford softness. Not with what’s coming.

When I open my eyes again, the nurse is gone and the room is empty except for a tray of water, juice, and a sealed sandwich I won’t be able to eat.

My phone is on the bedside table. Someone must’ve brought it in.

Maybe Beau. Maybe Grey. Maybe Finn. Doesn’t matter.

What matters is that it’s lit up like a Christmas tree, and even before I touch it, I know.

I pick it up. Forty-two missed calls. Double that in texts. Half the team. Media numbers I don’t recognize. Two voicemails from Cassidy. One message that simply says: Please don’t look.

But I do.

Because I have to.

Because they made me the story.

Because of course they did.

#StormStaffer is trending.

New York Storm: Pregnant Staffer Collapses During Game Prep.

The headlines scream across the screen like they’ve been waiting for a scandal to stick. The thumbnails are freeze-frames of me in the trailer, my body limp, my face pale, someone catching my head before it hits the floor. Some of the captions are kind. Most aren’t.

Whispers. Speculation. Who’s the father? How far along is she? Was she cleared to work with the team? Did management know?

I scroll past the headlines, the amateur sleuths, the amateur ob-gyns diagnosing me through TikTok filters, the edited screenshots, the replays.

There’s a clip of Finn throwing a camera out of the trailer, followed by an image of Grey in the background with murder in his eyes.

Beau’s hand is over the lens in one shot, face red with something that could be rage or heartbreak or both.

Then I see the statement.

From the GM. Formal. Scripted. Sanitized.

In light of recent events, and with full concern for the safety of both the individual and the organization, Sage Moretti has been placed on administrative leave pending internal review. We ask for respect and privacy as we navigate this situation.

Administrative leave. Like I’m a liability. Like I did something wrong by staying upright long enough to fall.

Below that, buried in the PR, the words that confirm the rest.

All internal personnel connected to the incident have been issued confidentiality mandates. No interviews. No commentary. No statements.

Finn. Grey. Beau. Silenced.

I drop the phone to the bed and stare at the wall, every inch of me hot with something that isn’t pain. What hurts most of all is that I wanted to tell them.

I wanted to tell them.