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Going Home
By Heather Lire
2 Flaming Pucks
Hero: Micah Morales
Hero: Blake Griffith
Series tag line: Sometimes going home is the only thing you can do…
Blurb: When he left Vegas ten years ago, Blake swore to never to return to the city that had wrecked his family, and yet here he was. And not just for a visit. No, Vegas had been granted the only expansion team in the NHL, and he’s been hired as one of their coaches.
When it comes to bed partners, Micah doesn’t discriminate. Love isn’t about gender for him, though if he were being honest, he’s only really loved one person. And he let him walk out of his life.
Until he walks back into his bar. This time around, Micah isn’t letting Blake get away. He will do whatever he has to convince him to give them a chance. Even if it means slaying the demons of the past.
Chapter One
BLAKE GOT OUT of his car and swore, long and low. Fucking A, it was hot. He had not missed the desert heat in the years he’d been gone. Hell, there wasn’t much of this town he’d missed.
But he’d come back for a job.
Granted, he loved the job.
But Christ, why had they chosen Vegas?
Not that anyone had asked his opinion of where to put the newest pro hockey team. He’d have chosen Salt Lake City over Vegas; close enough that Vegas fans could go to games. But no, the bid had gone to Vegas, so here he was.
A car pulled into the driveway behind his, and he waited for the real estate agent to climb out. The sooner he had a home, the sooner he could move out of the hotel room he was currently living in. Most people, he was sure, wouldn’t mind staying in a hotel long term, especially one like the MGM, but fuck him if he wanted to.
He preferred his own space where he could come and go as needed. Have sex without worrying about whether the people in the room next to him could hear him. While he wasn’t in the closet, and he wasn’t playing anymore, there was still a stigma with being gay in professional sports. So, he did his best to keep his sex life away from everyone. It helped he had a reputation of being an insanely private person anyway.
God, he missed sex.
He didn’t want to think about how long it had been since he’d actually had sex. Really good, break the bed, marks on the body sex. He hated to admit even to himself it had been months, but life kept getting in the way.
He’d been offered the Assistant Coach position with the new professional hockey team in Vegas, tendered his resignation with the team he’d been working with, packed up, and sold his house in Denver. Then there’d been the search for players to put on their roster.
“Mr. Griffith, it’s nice to meet you in person.”
He shook the hand she offered to him. “Likewise.”
“I think you’re going to like this house. The neighborhood was started just before the big construction crash, and it’s only been in the last couple of years that the builders have started coming in and finishing all the homes that were planned.”
He was very familiar with the Vegas construction crash. His dad had gone from making over a hundred grand a year, between hours and bonuses to being on unemployment and home. All the fucking time. Thank fuck it had happened during his senior year of high school. If he’d had to deal with him all the time back then, he didn’t want to think about what would have happened to him. He honestly had no clue how or why his mom put up with the asshole.
“I’m sure I’ll like it.”
Hell, he was positive he’d like it since he’d already looked at all the pictures of the house she’d provided. He didn’t need anything fancy or huge: A nice kitchen, a room for an office, a guest room, his room, and a pool.
That was a necessity.
He hadn’t needed nor wanted a pool in the years he’d lived in Denver, but there was no way in hell he was going to live in Vegas without a pool. It was just too fucking hot. He followed her into the house and listened with one ear as she described everything.
“I’ll take it.” His tour of the house done, he had no desire to see any more.
“Are you sure? Don’t you want to look at any other houses?”
“No, it’s perfect. I don’t need to see any more. How long until I can move in?”
He waited while she pulled something up on her phone. “You have your financing in order, and the owners are anxious to sell since they’ve already relocated. I’d say two to three weeks once they’ve accepted your offer.”
“Perfect. Do you need any more paperwork from me?”
“No. I’ll let you know as soon as we’re ready to sign.”
Blake left her in the house and made his way back to his car. Now that his housing situation was taken care of, he could really start thinking about what needed to happen with the team.
As an expansion team, they’d gotten the players that no one wanted anymore for one reason or another. Some coaches might groan and grumble about those players; they were the ones he liked working with the most. Because for them to make it to the majors, there had to have been something there, and while they might have lost it along the way, he knew he could help them find it.
He pulled up the mental list of their players and their strengths and weakness as he drove away from his soon to be new house. Tomorrow morning, his new players were either going to love him or hate him. He didn’t care which, so long as they bonded as a team and busted their asses for him.
Chapter Two
THE PULSING BEATS of Breaking Benjamin pounded through the house, the sound bouncing off the myriad boxes strewn through it. True to the word of his realtor, Blake had received the keys to his new house three weeks after he’d done his walk through. That had been two days ago. For two days he’d slept on an air mattress in his new bedroom while he waited for his furniture to be delivered. He hadn’t seen a point in paying to have it delivered to Vegas before he’d bought a house and had somewhere to put it. As soon as he’d walked out of the title company’s office, he’d called the moving company in Denver who had his belongings and given them his new address.
Stretching, Blake broke down the last box and threw it at Dex Mendenhall, his new center. Dex had had a few rough years since he’d left college and joined the ranks of the professional athletes. Acquiring him from Dallas had been a personal victory.
When everyone else on the coaching staff had wanted someone else— someone with fewer issues— Blake knew something none of them did. If they gave him a chance to be a part of a team in Vegas, he’d lay everything on the ice.
Because there was nothing a town loved more, especially Vegas, than a hometown boy making it big, and showing the world that Vegas could produce a winning team and winning players.
He also knew the real reason Dex’s career had gone off the rails. And why he’d lay everything on the ice for Blake.
“You talk to your mom lately?”
Blake chugged back some water before answering. “Yeah. Told her I bought this place.”
“How’d she take it?”
Blake took a moment to think about his answer. “You know how it is. So long as I’m living somewhere else, they can pretend they have the perfect little family. That their son isn’t gay and no longer a member of their church. Plus, you know that whole hockey thing.”
Dex shook his head. “I’ve never understood your parents. I mean they forked over all that money when we were kids for hockey, yet they never went to a game and never acknowledged the fact you made it to the pros.”
Blake shrugged. He’d decided, along with the help of a therapist back in college, that he would never understand his parent’s decisions, nor was it paramount to his happiness. The fact that they’d paid for it at all was enough for him. He didn’t need to have them in his life on a permanent basis to be happy. He cal
led his mom once a month, they talked for twenty minutes, and that was it. Luckily for him though, he’d always had Dex’s family there.
“You talked to yours?”
Dex looked out the window to the pool and swallowed before answering. “Yeah. She’s excited I’m finally here. Wants me to crash there while I look for a place to live.”
He didn’t blame Linda for wanting Dex close. If he weren’t one hundred percent positive they’d kill each other in a week, he’d have offered to let him crash at his place. Even if it meant that he’d have to put his goal of finding a sex partner sooner rather than later on hold.
Because that’s what best friends from the age of five did. You were there for your friends when they needed you. Like Dex had been there for him when…he shut down that train of thought. Because of that, he knew he needed to lighten the mood.
“You mean you don’t want to live in a hotel indefinitely?” he joked.
The pensive look disappeared from Dex’s face, and he flipped him the bird. “Um not no, but fucking hell no. I don’t get why people think it would awesome to live on the Strip. Hell, I’ve been there more since I joined this team than I have my entire life.”
“Seriously man, what are you going to do?”
“What else can I do? I’m moving back home.”
If he’d said anything else, Blake would have been surprised. Home was exactly what Dex needed and one of the many reasons he’d fought so hard to get him here.
Glancing around at all the boxes still littering his living room, he decided they’d earned a break. “You been back to the high school lately?”
“Nope. You?”
“Nope. You feel up to a road trip?” He wasn’t sure why he asked the question. It wasn’t like he had a burning desire to reconnect with anyone from that time in his life. With the exception of Dex and his family and his mom, he hadn’t spoken to anyone from his childhood since the day he’d left.
Now that he’d mentioned it though, he had this urge, for one night only, to go back in time. See the places that haunted his dreams.
“Sure.”
Not that they were going on an actual road trip, but considering that nothing was close in Vegas, it sometimes felt like a simple drive to the mall was a road trip.
After a quick shower for both of them to wash off the sweat from unpacking, they climbed into Blake’s car. With the a/c blasting, they left his neighborhood to make the forty-five-minute drive to their old high school. While neither one of them had been outcasts, they hadn’t exactly fit the mold either. In a school full of football and baseball players, with more than one former player returning with either a Super Bowl or World Series ring, hockey hadn’t been on anyone’s radar. It still wasn’t.
It hadn’t mattered to them. Or that they’d had to get up at three am to drive across town to the rink and be back to Henderson before school started at seven. All they’d cared about was being on the ice.
Blake parked across the street in front of the church where the Mormon kids had early morning seminary and climbed out. Staring at them was the place that had contributed to some of the worst times in his life. There were some new additions to the building, but he knew if he were to walk inside, there would be a large stuffed wolf right there to greet them.
“Is it weird that the new team’s name is the Wolves, or is it just me?” Dex asked in the silence.
“No, I’m the same way.”
He got why the owners named them the Wolves though. As one of the oldest high schools in the Vegas Valley, and a high school the owners had attended, it was fitting. He could admit that being able to wear hockey gear with their old high school’s colors and mascot on it had the fifteen-year-old boy inside of him tapping the ice in excitement.
They stood there for several minutes before the heat drove them back inside the car.
Because he was a glutton for punishment on this trip down memory lane, he started the car and drove away from the school, heading to a part of Henderson that only those who’d lived there for years still frequented. For a reason.
Dex was silent on the drive to Water Street, as lost in this trip down memory lane as Blake was.
“Damn, when did Pac Out close?” Dex asked.
“No clue.” He didn’t like to remember what had happened there the night before he left home for good. In all the years since, it still ranked as the single shittiest night of his life. Hell, it was worse than the night he’d been told that while he could continue to play hockey, he’d never again play at the level needed to be a professional athlete. At least, he’d been able to play for five years and been named to two All-Star teams.
He hadn’t thought he’d enjoy coaching as much as playing, but he did. To be back in the majors, coaching on this level, it was every dream he’d never had as a kid growing up in Henderson, dreaming of getting the fuck out of here. But it was a dream, he now recognized, he should have had, because as good a player as he was, he was an even better coach.
He continued to drive almost to the end of the street before it merged with Lake Mead Drive and turned onto an alley road that dumped them in a parking lot. The sign telling them the name of the building was long gone, having fallen down when Pepcon caught fire and exploded back in the Eighties and never replaced. Mick’s Tavern was an institution to the old timers of Henderson…and their kids and grandkids.
His grandpa had told him stories about the place back when it was the only bar in town and how Mick would tend bar and tell stories of Ireland and what had brought him to the desert. What it had been like to work on the Dam and live in the tent city that had turned into Boulder City. How during the war, Timet and the other chemical plants had helped to grow the small town outside of the city a few miles north that had been controlled by the mob.
His grandpa had promised his first legal drink would be at Mick’s. But he’d died long before Blake’s twenty-first birthday. So tonight, this night when he was letting his past in, he’d go inside and drink a shot of whiskey to the man who’d taught him what it meant to dream and go after those dreams.
“Come on,” he told Dex before he climbed out of the car and headed into the bar.
Chapter Three
MICAH WIPED DOWN the bar while he kept an eye on the Yankee and Red Sox game on the TV across the room. He had a hundred bucks riding on this game. More importantly, he had a bet with his sister on the outcome of this game.
He needed the Yankees to win.
There was no way in hell he was letting his sister set him up on another blind date. The last one had been the absolute worst date of his life. Not that the person he’d been on the date with had been unattractive; no, she’d been gorgeous. The problem was the fact she’d had an incessant need to share everything about herself and her life with him. He could have happily gone to his grave without ever knowing her gynecologist’s hands were always cold. As bad as that date had been, it was nothing compared to the last guy she’d tried to set him up with.
A full body shudder went through him at that memory. He quickly banished it from his mind. Too bad, he couldn’t excise it from there.
He was fully in control of his love life from now on.
The bar doors opened, and he shifted to call out a greeting. The words got trapped in his throat when he saw who it was.
The very last two men he’d ever thought would walk into his bar. Sure, he’d known they were back in town. It was all the local sportscasters could talk about. The two local boys who’d made it big in professional hockey had come home to be a part of the new franchise team. He still wasn’t sure how the city had managed that one; it meant there couldn’t be any betting on the team in any sports book in the State.
As gambling was one of the biggest income makers, it was taking a huge cut from the casino’s bank accounts. Then again, the Maloof brothers owned a professional basketball team and one of the most popular hotel/casinos in the city. From the way the city had fought for the team, he guessed no one cared about that.
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From the way they were standing just inside the door, he could tell they’d recognized him. He wouldn’t be surprised if they both turned around and left the building. Not that he’d blame them. Of all the things he regretted in this life, and there were plenty, letting Blake walk out of his life was his biggest.
He wasn’t ashamed to admit that he’d watched the press conference announcing the members of the Wolves team more than once. Drank in the sight of Blake as an adult, not a teenage boy with one last growth spurt in him. He’d filled out the suit he’d been wearing like it was made for him, and it probably was.
Tonight, he was wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt that hid what he suspected were extremely well-defined chest and abs if the way it clung to his biceps was any indication. A perfect combination of his Euro-American dad and Brazilian-Japanese mom, he stood six foot four inches; his face was a perfect symmetry that would have made Michelangelo weep. His jet black hair was spiked in that just ran his hands through way that had driven him insane as a horny seventeen-year-old. His fingertips tingled and his cock sprang to attention just looking at him.
Great, just fucking great. He so didn’t this kind of reaction here of all places. Not when his sister was due any minute to relieve him for the night. He’d planned to go home, watch the game, the press conference with Blake one more time, maybe beat one out, and then hit the sheets. He had a long day tomorrow and pulling double duty at his brother-in-law’s place during the school week sucked major ass.
He held his breath while Blake and Dex looked at each other and did that silent thing that had driven him insane back when Blake had been a part of his life. Looking back, he acknowledged he’d been jealous of Dex and his claim on Blake. A claim he hadn’t had, not that he’d had any idea what to do with it even if he’d had one. Now, however, he knew exactly what he’d do with Blake. He didn’t have to have ESP to know they were deciding whether they were going to come all the way in or head to another bar. When they stepped farther in, he took a deep breath and watched as they moved toward the bar.
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