Around me, the guys are already halfway gone mentally, drifting toward whatever lives they’re slipping back into outside the rink.
"Two weeks," Slade Matthews groans, stretching his arms over his head. "No drills. No curfews. No Haynes staring into my soul."
"You’ll miss him by day three," Scottie Easton, my teammate and now brother-in-law, says teasingly.
"I will not," Slade fires back. "I’ll be too busy using the break to knock up my wife. I have no other plans for two straight weeks than to keep her naked and in bed."
"Cap," Aleksi says, pulling a face. "Gross. That’s our boss."
Laughter ripples through the room for the few of us packing up our practice gear near our stalls.
This is Slade’s last season before retirement. He’s ready to be a stay-at-home dad while his wife, Penelope Matthews, continues to run the team as our GM. He wants another Stanley Cup before he goes, earning his second Cup win.
"So where are you headed, Popeye?" Wolf asks, dropping onto the bench across from me, a towel wrapped around his waist after coming back from the showers. "Same place as always? Off to commune with the mountains and scare tourists?"
"He’s the reason they put up those Yeti warning signs," JP says. "Big, silent, Russian glare that looks like he might eat you if you ask for directions."
"It’s Yeti season," Wolf says. "Every time you head off to Switzerland, there are three Yeti sightings and a missing German backpacker."
I don’t deny the fact that not everyone finds me pleasant to be around. I have a short attention span for incompetence, and I disappear from the real world during bye-week for a reason.
"Terrified skiers mean fewer people on the runs," I say, pulling a clean shirt from my gym bag.
"Skiing alone again?" Olsen adds. "Or are you finally bringing a friend?"
I tug my compression shirt over my head and shove my sweatshirt into my duffel. "Alone. I like that the snow doesn’t talk back."
"Is that what you’d say about the snow bunnies at the hotel bar, too?" JP tosses back.
I smirk as I zip my bag. "Trust me… they don’t slide onto the stool next to mine because they want to talk. That’s more your department."
JP’s engaged to Cammy now, which means he’s got plenty of free time to critique my dating habits instead of contributing to them.
Olsen’s smile turns feral. "That magazine spread probably didn’t help."
He’s talking about the full spread I agreed to do for VELVT Magazine. A clothing-optional magazine for women with self-help articles, beauty product reviews, and editorial photos of half-naked to fully naked men between the pages. It’s not the first photoshoot I’ve done for a magazine, but it’s the only one currently getting me in trouble with the Olympic Committee over trademark infringement.
My jaw tightens for half a second—barely noticeable, but Trey clocks it immediately. Call it his ex-special forces habit of noticing every shift in body language.
"Relax," Trey says, holding up his hands. "We’re impressed."
"Yeah," Wolf adds. "Didn’t peg you as the centerfold type."
"And, damn…" Slade says. "You stripped it all off? Didn’t want to leave something to the imagination? Let the ladies suffer?"
"Mistakes happen," I say flatly.
"Like covering your dick with your Olympic medals in a nudie magazine without an ounce of shame?" Scottie deadpans. "You could have at least warned your sister about the shoot. One of the WAGs in her group chat sent a snapshot of it to everyone, and Katerina threatened to gouge her eyes out afterwards. She had nightmares for a week."
Aleksi laughs and slaps my arm like he’s the supportive friend in this nightmare. "Hey… ignore them. It was artistic. Very tasteful."
I don’t give them the satisfaction of reacting.
Not because I’m embarrassed, and not because I regret it, but because if I let myself think about it for more than a second, I’ll remember exactly how it happened. And exactly why.
"If any of you needed three medals just to keep things decent," I say, "you’d be posing nude every chance you got."
The conversation keeps rolling around me, but my head is already somewhere else.
