The Long Way Home

Jay  

Ten Years Later…

The first thing you learn in the NHL is that nobody gives a damn about where you came from. Not your junior stats. Not your hometown. Not the rink you grew up freezing your ass off in while your parents screamed from the bleachers.

The only thing that matters in this league is what you do on the ice and for the last ten years, I’ve been answering that question the same way every night. I’ve made damn sure everyone knows exactly who Jay Mercer is and what he can do.

The Tampa Bay Bolts locker room smells the same as every other NHL locker room in existence. 

Fresh tape, sharpened steel and hard sweat.

Skates clatter against the rubber floors while guys move through the room finishing practice rituals. Sticks knock together, guys chirp each other across the room and someone blasts music in the corner that’s way too loud for ten in the morning.

I lean back against my metal locker and roll my shoulders once, feeling the lingering burn in my muscles from practice. Coach ran us hard today, bagged us until half the team was puking. Fine by me.

Pain on the ice has always made everything else easier to ignore.

The jersey clings to my back with sweat as I pull it over my head and toss it into the laundry bin without looking.

Across the room someone whistles, “Mercer was flying today.”

“Guy’s always flying,” someone else calls out.

I smirk faintly and reach for a clean shirt. They’re not wrong. Speed has always been my weapon. Well, speed and the kind of controlled aggression that makes defensemen panic when I cut across the blue line.

I lace my fingers behind my neck and stretch slowly,  pulling tight across my shoulders. 

You don’t stay a first-line center in this league by being humble. You stay there by being better than everyone else.

Now I’m one of the best damn centers in the league.

Three All-Star selections. A sixty-goal season two years in a row. A highlight reel that gets replayed every time someone mentions the Tampa Bay Bolts power play.

One of the nastiest power-play one-timers in league history.

Yeah. I’ve done alright. 

Not bad for a guy who walked away from everything he knew at twenty-one and never looked back. 

My phone vibrates against the shelf inside my locker.

I glance down, unknown number sprawls across my screen. I ignore it. But then the phone buzzes, again and again.

Persistent motherfucker. Shit.

I sigh and grab it. “Mercer.”

“Jay,” my agent’s voice drawls through the phone which immediately means something’s wrong. Agents don’t call this early unless something big is happening.

“What happened?” I ask, cutting straight from the small talk bullshit.

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “You’ve been traded.”

The words land like a bomb between us and I sit up straighter on the bench. “Where?”

Another pause lingers for a minute too long like he knows I won’t like it. “Dallas.”

For a second I think I misheard him. Dallas. My stomach drops and I feel my wolf still. There’s only one reason that name hits like a punch to the ribs.

Dallas is Nash Walker’s team.

Nash Walker isn’t just another NHL captain. He’s the Alpha’s heir, leader of the pack I walked away from ten years ago.

The same pack whose future Beta slept with his sister the night then disappeared without another word. 

“You’re joking,” I say flatly.

“I’m not.”

I run a hand through my hair slowly. Dallas of all the teams in the damn league. 

“Why?” I ask.

“Cap space shuffle. Defenseman swap. Tampa needed a roster change and Dallas has been trying to get you for three seasons now.”

Great. Fantastic. Just absolutely incredible. I feel like the Earth has suddenly tilted. 

“You report in forty-eight hours,” my agent continues. “Press conference tomorrow morning.”

Ten years.

Ten years of skating harder than everyone else, training longer, hitting harder. I’ve won every battle without question.

All so I could build a life far away from the one place I knew I could never go back to.

I lean forward, elbows sitting on my knees. My brain is already running through the implications.

Dallas means one thing. I’m going home. 

Back to the one man who has every reason to want me dead.

The name Nash Walker washes over me.

My best friend, my future Alpha, my brother in everything except blood.

The same guy whose sister I pinned against his father’s desk the night before I disappeared from his life.

I exhale slowly.

“Jay?”

“I’m here.”

“You good with it?”

I bark out a dry laugh. “Does it matter?”

“Not really.” Figures.

The NHL doesn’t care about pack politics or old loyalties.

Or the fact that the captain of my new team might try to cave my skull in the second he sees me. Business is business.

The call ends a minute later and I lower the phone slowly, my brain still trying to make sense of it all.

Across the locker room someone notices my expression. “Everything good?”

I glance up and shove my phone in the pocket of my shorts. “Yeah. Just got traded.”

That manages to get the room's attention. A few heads turn immediately. “Seriously? Where?”

I lean back against the bench again. “Dallas.”

A whistle cuts through the room. “Walker’s team.”

Nash Walker was born to wear the captain’s C. The guy’s been dragging teams forward his entire life. Hardest worker on the ice and toughest guy in the room. He’s the kind of captain every player wants to go to war for.

Everything he’s built? He earned it.

I rub a hand down my face slowly. This isn’t just awkward. This is a damn explosion waiting to happen.

Nash and I haven’t spoken in ten years. 

Not since the morning I walked into his father’s office and asked the Alpha for leave.

Not since the night I crossed the one line I was never supposed to touch. Madison.

My wolf stirs beneath my skin. Her face flashes through my mind before I can stop it.

Her long blonde hair, those hazel eyes, that soft sun kissed skin. The way she looked up at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered. Fuck.

I’ve lived that night over in my head hundreds of times because I sure as hell haven’t been able to erase her from my mind. Not now, not ever.

I shut the thought down immediately knowing if I let it, it'll spread like wildfire.

Ten years is a long time and she probably hates me. Hell, she should.

I left without saying a word. Didn’t even look at her that morning. Because if I had, I never would have left. And staying? Staying would’ve destroyed everything.

And Nash?

Knowing him like I do, Nash might finally get the fight he’s been waiting ten years to finish.

I exhale slowly, accepting my newfound fate. 

Yeah. Dallas is going to be interesting.

But this time… this time, I’m not running.