Page 116 of Over the Line

When? I don’t know.

But not yet.

CHAPTER 29

LIAM

Being away from Garrett had been an exercise in frustration.

Being on the same plane, being in the same bus, hotel, and restaurants with him, but not being able to touch him? Or even share a grin or a smile with him because God forbid someone caught on to us? I was going to lose my damn mind.

Even practicing yesterday was harder than it should’ve been, and so was today’s morning skate. The team needed to work and focus, especially after that disappointing loss to St. Louis on home ice the night before this trip. We were all still bummed about that, but the dads’ trip was always good for a morale boost. I didn’t know if our dads brought good luck, or if we were all just determined to win in front of them, but the Phantoms rarely lost on this trip.

Hopefully that trend would continue.

It would help, I thought, if the team captain could concentrate for more than two seconds. I could skate and I could stick handle, but I wasn’t doing such a hot job of accomplishing both at the same time. Social media would have a field day if any of the reporters posted videos of me practicing today. Jesus Christ.

I needed to pull it together. And like, I’d already played numerous games knowing that Garrett was there to watch both of us. There was no reason I couldn’t do it now.

This seemed different somehow, though. As if having Garrett here with all the other dads made it impossible to ignore that he was my teammate’s father as well as my boyfriend. And having my own dad here, too, just made me feel guiltier for keeping Garrett a secret.

Fuck. The dads’ trip was usually great for all of us, but I had a feeling this year it was going to turn me into an anxious mess. Guess I’d find out when we played our first game.

It didn’t help that yesterday, the team’s media department had asked all the players and dads to get together for a group photo. The dads all put on their sons’ jerseys, which they’d be wearing to every game, and we posed for a huge group photo. I’d always loved that tradition, and it had always been cool to see my dad wearing my number.

Not gonna lie, though—it’d felt weird to see Garrett wearing Chris’s jersey. It had made my breath hitch in the moment, and seeing the photo posted to social media had done it all over again.

I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel if my dad got involved with one of my teammates.

Okay, my dad was (to my knowledge) straight, and he was quite happily married to my mom. Still—that would be weird, wouldn’t it? If a single, queer, alternate universe version of my dad started dating one of my teammates?

Dad would’ve been around Garrett’s age when I was first drafted. There’d been a few guys on the team then who were the same age I was now.

Dad dating Yuri Petrovich? Or Erik Pettersson? Or—my idol at the time—Alexandre Beaupré?

Shit. Yeah. That would’ve been weird. They were adults and all, and I’d liked all three of those players, but I struggled to imagine how I’d have felt knowing one of them was with my dad. Or how my other teammates might’ve reacted. I liked to think we’d have been more mature about it than when my U16 winger’s mom had started dating our coach. My teammate had been mortified, and the guys had teased him relentlessly about it, but I mean… we were stupid teenagers.

Not that pro-level guys were all that far removed from teenagers sometimes—boys will be boys and all that—but we were adults. Most of the team was married and better than half of them were dads themselves. So it should stand to reason that we’d be collectively more mature than the little shits we’d been back then.

At the end of the day, I’d want my hypothetically single dad to be happy. As long as his partner wasn’t a jerk to him or to me, then I could get used to them. Right?

By some miracle, I made it through the morning skate. In the locker room after, I was relieved to be off the ice, but that relief didn’t last long.

“Hey, Saints.” Barns’s voice turned my head. “You and your dad still joining us for lunch?” He gestured at Temo. “He needs a final count for the reservation.”

I thought about it, my brain record-scratching briefly when I heard Chris’s voice elsewhere in the room. Were he and Garrett going? Maybe, maybe not, but it wasn’t like I could tactfully ask without tipping my hand.

I cleared my throat. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. What time?”

“Rideshare vans will be there at 11:30.”

“Got it.”

So, at the designated time, my dad and I joined my teammates in the lobby. We piled into a couple of rideshare vans, which deposited us at an amazing bar and grill we always went to when we were in town.

And…

Oh God. As we got off the vans, I saw Chris. If Chris was here, that meant…