Kris: It’s been all over ESPN this morning.
Eli: I’ve been a little busy starting up the foundation to pay attention to sports news.
Cam: Oh right. Going well?
Eli: You won’t believe this—Stella and her son showed up.
Kris: Stella? As in that college girl who broke up with you and ghosted you?
Eli: Yep.
Cam: No shit? She still a sexy redhead?
Why does every guy I know describe her like that? Even though she is in fact a very sexy redhead, all curves and womanly now. In our brief encounter, she was every bit pleasing to my eyes.
Kris: You going for it again?
Eli: I’ll keep you posted.
Cam: Yeah, he is. Go get her, man.
Kris: Hold up. She broke your heart once. You sure about this?
Am I? Doubt creeps in for all of half a second—then disappears just as fast. If there’s a chance to get it right this time, I’ll take it.
Eli: Wish me luck.
Cam: Done. Becca wishes you luck too. She’s giving me a proper pre-game warmup.
Kris: Just be careful, E.
I tuck my phone away, unlace my skates, shower, and change, ready to get the hell out of there—until the coach pulls me into his office for a pep talk and strategy session for Friday’s game. By the time I drive home in my black Ferrari, the city’s gone dark.
Three other cars collect dust in my garage—the white Lamborghini, a vintage red Porsche, the black Ram truck. There’s a sensible Audi SUV I actually use more often, like an adult. I try to take each one out for a drive one day a week simply to keep them running. Most were bought during my post-lottery, post-divorce spiral. The era I dubbed ‘Shiny new toys will fix me.’
News flash: they don’t.
I speed through Cherry Hills, Denver’s premier suburb boasting private roads, iron gates, twenty-four-hour security. My place sits at the end of a cul-de-sac like a modern mini-castle. Impressive as hell until you walk inside and realize it’s mostly empty.
I never hired a decorator. What’s the point? The only room we use is the basement gaming room, fully tricked out.
Sean, Mason, and Tyler beat me home. My teammates pay me token rent—or what I consider my beer fund—and help keep the silence in this big house from swallowing me whole.
They’re waiting in the gaming room when I arrive, serious enough that it feels like an intervention.
“Come on, guys. Do we really need to do this today?” I sigh and grab a beer and a plate of pretzels from the snack bar my chef keeps stocked.
“Hell yeah, we do, considering we play Portland tomorrow night. We don’t need a captain who is a liability out there on the ice with us,” Tyler starts in.
I let them each gripe and vent their concerns while I get comfortable in my La-Z-Boy chair. When they’re done, I take over.
“Relax. I got the full treatment from the coach before I left today. And… yes, there’s a woman. One of the kids who skated with me at the gear giveaway last weekend—I knew his mom in college, way before everything.”
That shuts them up for half a second. Because “everything” is the part I don’t talk about unless I’m too drunk: the lottery, the marriage, the divorce, the headlines, the women after the divorce who wanted a piece of me like I was a lucky scratch-off ticket with legs holding a stick and chasing a rubber disk around the ice.
“The sexy redhead,” Sean mutters and snaps his fingers. The other guys nod with the full picture now.
“Let me guess. You have history with this redhead, and now you want to repeat history,” Tyler wiggles his brows.
