Delay of Game

Book 2: Penalty Box

by Ari Baran

Genres: Sports Romance; LGBT & Pride

Synopsis

Two polar opposite teammates battle their rivals—and their own issues—in this friends-to-lovers hockey romance. 

Nate Singer is one of the good guys.

As team captain, Nate’s whole deal is sticking to the playbook, supporting his team and keeping his own issues buried. Especially since the team is finally winning, in no small part to his chemistry with one particular hotshot teammate.

Zach Reed has a bad boy reputation.

And it’s cost him. Zach’s past exploits landed him on the worst team in the league. But that also gave him the best friend he’s ever had. For three years, his friendship with Nate has grown, making them an intimidating duo on the ice—and forming an intense bond off of it as well.

When the team hits a skid, Zach and Nate go out with one thing in mind: finding someone for a quick roll in the sheets to get back to their winning ways. Only they end up in each other’s arms—and each other’s heart.

And realize that could be exactly what they’ve always needed to win it all.  

Penalty Box

Book 1: Game Misconduct
Book 2: Delay of Game

Release date: November 14, 2023

Publisher: Carina Press

Print pages: 308

Content advisory: Contains descriptions of anxiety, body dysmorphia, and drug and alcohol use.

Sample

I. TWO YEARS AGO

PrologueThe Offseason

“You are so hot,” the girl slurred, looking up at him from the floor of the bar’s bathroom. She was probably pretty cute when she wasn’t wasted. One of her tits was sort of falling out of her shirt. Her eye makeup was smudged and her hair was messy where he’d pulled it when she’d pushed him against the wall earlier, before they’d stumbled into the bathroom. She stared at his crotch like she wanted to devour it.

Zach really hoped she didn’t. Or at least, like, that she didn’t use teeth.

But what he said was, “Yeah, I know.”

The bathrooms were disgusting, but at least the door locked. The night had been a blur, the kind of nirvana-level drunk where everything seemed like a good idea and it was impossible to say no. So far he had said yes to a lot of shots bought for him by fans in the bar, yes to the kind of ill-advised shirtless dancing that would make his agent scream at him once she saw the social media posts, yes to snorting some coke, and yes, apparently, to getting blown in a filthy bathroom.

He was just the right kind of fucked up for that, but at least the sink was there to keep him from tipping sideways. His hands were white-knuckled where he gripped the porcelain for balance.

“Oh my goddd, I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’ve, like, watched you play forever. I even saw a game in Vancouver—”

“Look, are you gonna like...uh, I really, really don’t wanna talk hockey right now.”

“Oh, yeah.” She swayed a little. She hiccupped. “Gimme a sec, I’m not tryna puke on your dick.”

“Thanks,” he said. He had just enough hand-eye coordination to undo his belt buckle and zipper and pull it out, but anything beyond that was iffy.

She was sucking him off messily and enthusiastically and he was just starting to get into it when his phone vibrated against his ass. No one usually called him at this time of night unless it was a tier-three-to-four bro trying to party, or his agent trying to let him know that he’d fucked up. It was like Russian roulette, whether the night would continue, or whether he’d have to do damage control. Zach closed his eyes, enjoying the last few seconds of the high and getting his dick sucked, before it was time to face the music.

He pulled the phone out of his pocket while the girl was still working and saw Kelly flashing on the screen.

Shit. Agent.

Zach took a deep breath, answered the phone, and tried not to sound too fucked up when he answered. “Kellyyyyy... Kells...uhhh...hey.”

So maybe a two on the one-to-ten scale of not sounding too fucked up.

He’d do better next time.

The girl started to pull away and Zach waved his hand like shh, shh, no, and, rolling her eyes, she went back down.

“Reed, what the hell are you—” Kelly was furious, but she was always angry with him. She was a great agent, and he was a nightmare client. There was a reason her contact photo was the frowny face emoji. “Well, never mind, don’t tell me. It’s this kind of behavior that got you traded.”

Zach jerked backward, pulling his dick out of the chick’s mouth, not even caring that he scraped himself on her teeth. “Traded?”

“To the Philadelphia fucking Constitution,” Kelly said grimly. “You didn’t see? They announced it on fucking Twitter before they even called me, for Chrissake.”

“I’m—a little—fuck, fuck, a little busy—”

“Are you fucking—I told you to stop doing that when you answer the phone, for fuck’s sake, Zachary, get your shit together!”

The girl, who’d gone back to sucking him off despite his best efforts, moved her head away from him but kept one hand curled around his erection. Like she wasn’t quite ready to give up yet. “Bad time?”

“Hang on, I gotta take this,” he whisper-shouted to Kelly, then looked down at the girl again. “That was great, but uh, yeah. A really bad time. Sorry, you were great. Like really great.”

She rolled her eyes and hauled herself to her feet. “You’re hot, but you’re kind of an asshole,

, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, with a deep sigh, and watched her go. She flounced a little bit as she slammed the door behind her, and he sighed again. Then it hit him. “They traded me to Philly?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, you fucking moron.”

Zach suddenly felt like if he didn’t sit down on the floor, he was gonna end up there anyway. He was too fucked up to really feel it, but he knew it was lurking around the corner. He sat down on the floor. It was wet and whatever he was sitting in soaked into his jeans.

They’d traded him?

“But I was—I was gonna buy a house.”

“Well, clean up your goddamn act and talk to a Realtor in Philly, my boy, because you fucked this one up royally. I’m sure you’re too fucked up to appreciate the elegance of that particular fucking pun, but also, fuck you, Zachary.”

“Kells, I—I gotta go.”

“Don’t fucking hang up on me, Zachary—”

Zachary Reed, twenty-two years old and a Cup champion, formerly of Montreal, sat on the floor of a filthy bathroom with his dick out, completely fucked up, and thought, Well, you won’t feel it if you stay that way.

---

Zach felt like he was sweating alcohol. It was probably a good thing that even when he was blacked out he could keep his shit together, for the most part, or he’d have to drink at home with no company.

The last two weeks were mostly wiped out of his memory, but the stuff he did remember pretty much sucked as much as anything he could remember sucking, even worse than the first time he’d left home for a billet and missed his mom so much that he’d cried silently into the pillow the first night but couldn’t tell anyone, because you couldn’t admit to shit like that.

Crying on some bar counters.

Throwing up in some bar bathrooms.

Telling a lot of bartenders exactly how the Royal had done him wrong.

He’d probably fucked some people in the middle of all of it, but the only concrete memory was boning some dude in an apartment he didn’t recognize and then having to stop because he had gotten really emotional thinking about the trade and lost his erection, so...probably better not to remember any of that.

At some point he’d gotten a text message from some rando on the Cons but he’d ignored it, because fuck. Philadelphia?

“But like...” he said, lip trembling, “how could they trade me? I helped them win a Cup?”

“It’s rough, bro,” the bartender agreed.

Someone put a hand on his shoulder and Zach almost cried again, because he was completely alone in this world, and it was a comforting touch.

“Dude,” Jamie Ayer, his now former teammate, said, “c’mon, let’s get out of here.”

“I’m not done, though.”

Zach wasn’t a small guy, but Jammer was bigger, and Zach was having a hard time coordinating his limbs to fight back. So he let Jammer half drag, half carry him out of there. He’d done the same for Jammer over the years, although probably Jammer hadn’t ever been this embarrassing.

Zach was suddenly overcome by the fact that even if it had been years since they’d hooked up, Jammer was his best bro and they wouldn’t ever play on the same team again, and his eyes welled up. “Jammer,” he mumbled into one beefy shoulder, “this is it for us, you know? We’re...never...gonna play together again. This is the end of an era.”

“I know, bud,” Jammer said, helping him into the car. “It sucks. But also, it’s time to, you know...sober up a little. Or at least drink at home where people can’t see you.”

Zach stuck out his lower lip, mulish, and sank down farther into the seat. He felt dizzy and nauseous and probably looked like shit. He hadn’t really gone home much over the last week or so and hadn’t really remembered to eat. He knew it was bad, and he was overwhelmed with love for Jammer and hatred for Montreal’s GM.

“I fucking hate Poulin,” Zach said angrily. His body listed to the side. He tried to right himself, but it was too much effort.

Sleeping would be better.

Zach woke up in the shower, naked, water in his eyes and nose. He spluttered, “Jammer, what the hell?”

“Oh, you’re awake,” Jammer said cheerfully. He sat on the floor of the bathroom, his back propped up against the sink cabinet. He was holding a Kindle. Looked like he’d been there a while. “Wasn’t sure if that would work.”

Zach thought about getting up, but it seemed like a lot of effort. The floor was where he belonged.

“So you rejoining the world of the living, or what?”

“No,” Zach said stubbornly.

“You can’t stay in the shower forever.”

“Watch me.”

“Sure, dude. I’m gonna order us some pizza, see you downstairs.”

Just to spite him, Zach stayed in the shower for another hour, until the water was freezing cold and he was freezing cold. His fingers were all pruny. So was his ass, probably. He tried to crane around to look at it, because when else would you see what you’d look like as an old man, but his head hurt too much, so he gave up and lay back down on the tiles.

Life was so unfair.

---

Hey, Nate had texted, this is Nate Singer, from the Cons. Just wanted to welcome you to the team and let you know that whatever happened in Montreal, it doesn’t matter here.

It had been an olive branch of sorts, but Reed hadn’t responded. Nate knew he

 shouldn’t worry about it, but the sick feeling anchored firmly in the pit of his stomach. Had he phrased it badly? Offended Reed?

It wasn’t every day that guys got traded in that kind of a situation, and the first thing he’d felt was sympathy. It probably wasn’t easy to go from a Cup championship team to the worst team in the league, and under those circumstances. He tried not to think about it, but he was already worrying about training camp, so it was just one more thing to add to the list.

His fiancée, Rachel, was looking at her phone as she ate the dinner he’d made them. Probably scrolling through work emails; she had the kind of job where you were always on call even when you weren’t, supply chain management for one of the big pharmaceutical companies down at the Navy Yard. He was proud of her, because she was brilliant, and if he sometimes wished she had a little more time for him during the summer, he couldn’t judge because he was never around during the rest of the year.

She looked up midbite and saw him watching her. “What’s wrong?”

“Just thinking about training camp. We don’t have a captain and there are so many rookies, and now Reed...”

“You’re going to be the captain,” Rach said, looking back down at her phone.

“Rach, we’ve been through this, and I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. You’re the backbone of this team. You’ve been here the longest, through all the personnel changes. You’re still young, so you can be a franchise face if Cote somehow manages to pull this team the fuck around. You’re going to be it, Nate.”

He looked down at his plate. He didn’t want to be it. He really hoped she wasn’t right, even though she usually was. Captain was a lot of responsibility, and he didn’t think he was ready for that. Didn’t think he’d ever be ready for it. You thought of the captains as the stars, the talent, and he had never been that. Sure, he worked hard, and he played his heart out every night, no one could deny that. But there was a reason the Cons had taken him in the fifth round, and it wasn’t because he was captain material.

“Ugh, stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“You’re thinking about how you don’t deserve it. Well, you know what, Nate? You do, and if they don’t make you captain, you should talk to your agent and see what your options are looking like for next year. I know you have a few seasons left on your contract, but you could always demand a trade.”

“Rach! I couldn’t—even if I wanted to be captain, I could never leave Philly.”

Rach’s unreadable face was doing things. A twitch of her mouth and a tightening of her jaw. “I know. But maybe you should.” She got up from the table abruptly and stalked over to the sink.

No one could do angry dishes like Rach, Nate thought, sad and fond.

Nate went out onto the roof deck after Rach went to bed, lay on his back on one of the reclining chairs, and stared up at the sky. You could barely see the Summer Triangle with all of the lights, but locating it made him

 feel better, somehow.

His phone buzzed.

Reed had responded, Thanks.

That wasn’t much better than no response, and Nate sighed. He really, really hoped he wasn’t given the captaincy.

Altair, Deneb, Vega, he repeated to himself, eyes tracking the stars in the sky as he did, until he felt less upset, if not necessarily less anxious.

---

“All I have to do is prove them wrong, right? That’s the best revenge, right?”

“I’m not really sure if you should be looking at it as revenge, bro,” Jammer said, because he was annoyingly reasonable these days.

“I absolutely should!”

“You’re only gonna sabotage yourself if you’re doing it to make these assholes sorry,” Jammer said, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. He passed the bong to Zach. “You gotta do it for the right reasons, man. You gotta do it for you.”

Zach inhaled, let it sit in his lungs, savoring the taste. He exhaled again, coughing a little. Jammer always had the best stuff. “When did you turn into a fucking philosopher, man?”

“Therapy, bro. Maybe you should, like, look into it?”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nah,” Jammer said, shrugging and making a sort of grabby hand motion at the bong. “You’re too high strung to fuck around with. Like kicking a puppy.”

“Fuck you,” Zach growled, but passed it anyway. Jammer could be obnoxious as fuck, but he was still a tier one bro.

“So you write back to Singer yet?”

“Ugh, yes. That asshole.”

“Thought that was nice of him, actually. Considering you’re damaged goods and all now.”

“It was so fucking condescending, Jams!”

“How was it condescending?”

“‘It doesn’t matter here,’” Zach said, with an exaggerated accent, like he imagined a Philadelphian must talk. He mostly only had Rocky to go on and he hadn’t seen that in years. It probably didn’t sound like someone from Philly at all, but he hoped that wherever Nate Singer was, he felt insulted, somehow.

Jammer looked at him pityingly.

Zach tried not to think about all of his broken promises: the team breakfasts he’d missed, the practices he’d been present but not-really-present for, constantly telling Kelly he’d clean up his act next time. Well. Kelly had dropped him, and so had the team, and now all he had to look forward to was Philadelphia and Nate fucking Singer.

“Besides. I’m just gonna go and I’m gonna play hockey and I’m not gonna get in any more trouble and it doesn’t fucking matter what Captain America

or the rest of the team thinks about me.”

Jammer raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

“What?”

“I love you, bro, but you know...”

“What?”

“It was what the rest of the team thought about you that got you traded in the first place.”

Zach reared back, like Jammer had punched him in the chest. That’s what it felt like. It felt like betrayal. “Jams?”

“I didn’t think that, obviously. But I’m not the whole team. And you’re so fucking good, Zach, you could be like—legendary. If you’d just fucking get your shit together.”

Zach put his head down in his lap and did not cry, but shit, his head was a fucking mess. “I just gotta go and I gotta prove them wrong.”

“For you,” Jammer said, patting his back.

Zach didn’t know if doing it for himself was gonna be enough, but he didn’t have the heart to tell Jammer that. “Pass it, bro. I got a week before I gotta start training again.”

Jammer beamed at him. “That’s what I like to hear.”

---

The first thing Zach thought when he landed in Philly was that the city was a lot uglier than Montreal and it smelled like piss. That seemed appropriate, given his overall life experiences recently. He breathed it in deep, just to spite himself, and thought, this is the first day of the rest of your life, buddy.

The second thing he thought was that there was no way he was looking up anyone on the team before he had to. They might’ve been in the same city, but that didn’t mean they had to be friends. He’d ignored friendly text messages from Nate Singer, who’d gotten his number from someone Zach was going to have to yell at later.

No. He was going to unpack his shit, figure out how to get around to the practice facility from his apartment, and work the fuck out at the gym until he could show everyone on the ice that even if he’d fucked up his life, he was still one of the best players out there.

The weird thing was that it felt like being in a billet again. Like he’d left home for the first time.

He’d really loved the guys on the Royal, with the exception of the Morin twins, who always looked at him like they’d look at some shit on their shoes, and although Zach tried to tell himself they looked that way at everyone, it was especially geared at him. He’d really loved Montreal. He’d really loved the house he’d been so close to buying. He’d put in the offer right before the trade and he had been ready to adopt a dog.

It was a whole life he’d never actually get to have, and Zach, for the first time he could remember, found out that it really fucking sucked not to get what you wanted.

He’d worked off the sadness fat, he’d worked himself into top beginning-of-the-season shape, he’d grown a beard, and he knew he looked good. The last few weeks in Montreal he’d looked and smelled like a hobo, which was the natural result of the amount of alcohol he’d drunk and

the kind of food he’d been eating.

Now he was getting checked out at the gym again, and the grocery store, and when he walked down the street. Normally this would have cheered him up, but even the satisfaction of knowing that total strangers wanted to fuck him couldn’t penetrate the fog.

So what if he was sad.

So what if he missed Jammer and Greenie and Legs and even Safy, the untouchable, responsible, self-sacrificing captain.

He was here to play hockey and he could certainly fucking do that. He showed up for the first training camp early, and it was the first time he’d ever been early for anything in his entire life. This was a year of firsts.

He waited on the bench while he watched Group 1 skating. He wasn’t nervous. The Cons were the worst team in the league, and he was definitely better than even their best player, probably. They were a mess on the ice; so what if he was a mess off of it?

He wasn’t nervous, even though the Morin twins’ little sister would be there, and he wasn’t nervous, even though he was going to have to deal with that condescending fuckhead Singer without being a Problem. He wasn’t nervous even if probably half of these guys he’d never met before had already seen embarrassing pictures of him on the internet.

The younger Morin had shown up early too. She was a big girl, taller than him even though she was a few years younger. Her brothers were big too. She was striking, in the sense that she looked like she’d punch you in the face. If he hadn’t been in such a bad mood, that thought would have amused him. Striking and punching, you know?

“Morin, right?” he asked, glancing sideways at her. Her face was carefully blank, like she didn’t want anyone to know a damn thing about what was going on in her head. “Tell your brothers I said bonjour. If you talk to them. I mean...of course you talk to them, but. You know, right?”

“Ouais,” she said, and looked very steadily directly into his eyes. “I will...pass your regards.” Her eyes flicked downward. She had the same heavy Quebecois accent as her brothers. On them, it sounded pretentious. On her, it just sounded a little awkward.

He sighed. She’d definitely seen pictures of his dick. “You googled me, didn’t you?”

Morin’s face looked like she was having an aneurysm, but she said, level as anything, “I prescout all potential teammates.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

So if Morin had seen it, they’d probably all seen it. He hadn’t googled recently because he hadn’t wanted to see what had come out of his posttrade mess, but he knew the third result pretrade had been an extremely ill-advised nude he’d sent to the girl he was seeing at the time. She’d promptly sold it to TMZ.

“Well, at least the team is so bad that you, ah, won’t be the story for very long.”

He knew. He looked back out at the ice, at the team of guys who hadn’t made the playoffs in fucking years. His team. “All I wanna do is play hockey, Morin.”

“Then we are on the same page, Reed.”

“I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m not going to fuck it up here too.”

“You are here early.”

“I’m going to do a lot more than that.”

Thankfully she stopped talking to him after that. Knowing the Morin brothers, he didn’t think she’d feel sorry for him, which was fine. He didn’t want pity. But he also didn’t want to talk. In their own ways they were both gimmicks, except she was still on her entry-level contract, and they’d paid a lot more for him. That wouldn’t stop them from trading him again, of course, if anyone would even want him after this.

Maybe it wasn’t pity after all—maybe they were just in exactly the same boat.

Maybe she was nervous too?

“Hey,” someone said, and Zach’s head snapped up and his heart stopped.

Okay. So he’d caved. He’d looked Nate Singer up, so he knew about him vaguely, knew what he looked like in headshots. But Singer, it turned out, was one of those people whose photos didn’t really look anything like them in motion. He was a tall, burly guy, but it was his face that caught Zach’s attention. He was just kind of bland looking in pictures, like a caricature of a guy who spent all his time working on a farm, but there was something about him in person, something in his blue eyes and the way he held himself, about the firmness of his jaw and the almost nervous smile, that made him—

Jesus, he had to get it together. Singer was an overly friendly, condescending problem and also Zach definitely did not shit where he ate anymore.

He’d learned that lesson the hard way too.

“Hey, Singer,” Morin said so casually that Zach almost rolled his eyes. If she was anything like her brothers, she was more than a little mercenary no matter her nerves.

The corner of Singer’s mouth tipped up and Zach, even though he felt like puking all over his skates, almost felt the urge to smile back.

Singer was talking, in a voice that did have a distinct accent, one Zach couldn’t place. Weird a’s, a little nasal. It was a good voice, though. A steady baritone. “I just wanted to check in with you both. I’m skating with your group, but if you’ve got some time I’d like to talk to both of you separately. Morin, I’ll catch you after it’s done, yeah?”

“Sure. I’ll...catch you then.” And she vaulted herself over the boards onto the ice.

Zach turned to Singer, who stared back at him, all serious business, no smiles. His head was very close to Zach’s, leaning in. Zach realized too late that he had folded his arms extremely defensively, like Singer was gonna start lecturing him. For all Zach knew, he was.

“Look,” Zach said, trying to head it off. “I know what you’re probably thinking, but I promise you, I’m not going to cause any trouble for the team. I learned

my lesson. All business now. I’m gonna stay away from alcohol and drugs for like, months, at least, you know...you don’t have to keep an eye on me or anything.”

“That’s not why I wanted to talk to you,” Singer said, taken aback. For such a big guy, he almost seemed to unconsciously try to make himself smaller, his shoulders hunched over. “I just wanted to make sure you were settling into the city okay, see if you needed anything?”

“I’m good.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Also, if anyone gives you a hard time about, uh, everything that happened, I just wanted you to know that I’m, uh, in your corner, and I’ll put a stop to it. It’s one thing to chirp, but that should, uh, be off-limits. I think.”

Zach stared at him, trying to see if Singer was fucking with him, but his face was almost painfully earnest. Earnestness shone out of every all-American pore, shone out of his deep blue eyes and extremely white, ...