Page 149 of Over the Line

He saluted me playfully and left the room.

Alone with my grandson’s partially constructed dresser, I exhaled into the stillness. Now I felt impossibly guiltier. Chris knew I was seeing someone, and he’d taken me at my word that we just weren’t ready to introduce each other to family.

Technically all true.

But also a pretty solid lie by omission.

I believed to my core that this thing with Liam wasn’t a fling. It was too soon to know if we were in for the really long haul, but he was going to be around for a while.

Which meant that, when the season was over, we were going to come clean.

And for the millionth time, I just prayed like hell that I was wildly overthinking Chris’s reaction.

The guilt I felt for seeing Liam behind Chris’s back was strong, but it wasn’t strong enough to keep me from leaving that evening’s game and heading straight to Liam’s place. I spent the whole drive second-guessing myself, of course. I actually considered turning around twice just because it felt weird to go see him just hours after the conversation with Chris and Jasmine.

One minute, I couldn’t wait to be naked with the man I’d watched tearing up the ice. The next, I remembered who’d been playing beside him and who might not understand that I was seeing his teammate.

But I reminded myself over and over that I wasn’t actually doing anything wrong. A little weird and unorthodox, sure, but I couldn’t honestly find a reason to say it was wrong.

Right or wrong, before I knew it, I was pulling into Liam’s garage.

As I got out of the car, he appeared in the doorway, and all my guilty thoughts scattered. We would tell Chris when the time was right, and with any luck, he’d understand.

In the meantime…

“Hey,” I said with a smile as I moved closer to Liam.

“Hey yourself.” He grinned and greeted me with a kiss, but then he grimaced. “It’s, um… It’s not going to be an exciting night, I’m afraid. Again.”

“Oh yeah?” But then I noticed he was standing kind of gingerly. “Still sore?”

The grimace intensified, and he nodded. “Different kind of sore this time.”

Alarm surged through me. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He gave a quiet huff of halfhearted laughter. “That hit I took tonight—it wasn’t even that hard, but it wrenched my hip, and now everything else hurts.” He huffed sharply and rolled his eyes. “This meat puppet is bullshit sometimes.”

I chuckled and gently reeled him into my arms. “Welcome to getting old.”

He made a hilariously whiny sound as he leaned into me. “Bodies are stupid.”

“They really are. And it just gets worse.”

“Fuuuck.”

I just kissed his temple and nudged him toward the living room. “Why don’t we sit? We can order something horribly unhealthy and watch a movie.”

“There’s hockey on,” he suggested.

“We could also watch hockey.”

“Perfect. Let me get some ice and we can find a game.”

Once he had some ice and we both had beers, we went into his living room. He took a minute or so to get situated on the couch with his various icepacks. When he was as comfortable as he could get, I sat beside him, and he leaned against me.

I barely paid attention as he scrolled through the different games that were on tonight; I was too caught up in how perfect this was. And how much I wanted Chris to know. And how afraid I was⁠—

“Garrett?”