“I’m sorry.” My gaze didn’t waver, and I hoped he could see the sincerity in my eyes and hear the regret in my voice. For a long moment, he held my gaze, then looked away. He picked up his helmet decorated with the caricatures and names of his five children and tucked it under his arm. I wondered if he’d had Bria on his helmet previously or if she’d never been on there.

“Sorry? For what? Hitting too many into the net?” he said with the ghost of teasing smile.

“Nah, I’d never be sorry for that. For this mess I created because I was a careless horndog.”

He leveled me with a look I really couldn’t interpret. “You didn’t know.”

I blinked a few times, almost lost my balance on my skates, and struggled to stand upright. He chuckled.

“Don’t make me stop hating you.”

“I would never think of depriving you of that pleasure.”

“Good, because if I couldn’t blame you, I’d have to look at myself and wonder why I wasn’t enough to please her.”

“No man will ever be enough to please that woman.”

“You’re probably right. Truth be told, I stopped trying to years ago.”

I indicated his helmet with a nod of my head. “Did you ever have her name on your helmet?”

He looked down at the shiny surface of his goalie mask and back up at me. “Not for a long time. We stayed married these past few years for the kids. In the beginning, she was my life. I had her name on my very first NHL helmet. Fuck, I even have it tattooed on my bicep. Never have a woman’s name tattooed on your body.”

“I don’t plan on it.”

Much to my surprise, he kept talking.

“After the last kid was born, she had her tubes tied, and things shifted after that. We haven’t been a loving couple in years. She went her way, and I went mine. My mother left me as a child, and I didn’t want to ever do that to my kids, so we had an unspoken agreement. I pretended things were good for the kids, and she was discreet about whatever she was up to. Until you.”

He wasn’t in love with her anymore. I could tell that, but her sleeping with a teammate had stung his pride. “I’m so sorry this happened.”

He merely nodded, his face unreadable once again. Then he skated slowly off the ice. I waited for a few minutes, contemplating what’d just happened.

I might just be breaking through to Jock and healing some of the hurt I’d caused.

~~Axel~~

Following the workout with Jock, I had the rest of the afternoon and evening to myself. The team didn’t play until tomorrow night. While it wasn’t always good to leave a bunch of young hockey players to their own devices, I wasn’t carrying that Puck Brother torch very high tonight.

One of the reasons I suspected the team had sent me back down to the minors during the preseason was because of my partying and not taking the game seriously enough. This time I was all about the game, and my partying was nonexistent because of my rededication to my sport, of course, and my screw-up with Bria. My disinterest in chasing women and drinking until I passed out had nothing to do with a certain stubborn goalie’s sister. Not one damn bit.