Page 43 of Rock Pucking Bottom

Scuba racked up his weights and asked, "So what's next, my capitaine?"

He pointed to the jump boxes at the side of the room. "Squat jumps followed by skater lunges with resistance."

Scuba said what I was thinking, "Oh so we're going to avoid the weights now? Are you afraid of being outshone?"

Carter scoffed, "No way. It's about active recovery this time of year with a hint of explosive power. I'm just following out the plan that Derek created for us."

I looked at Suzuki to see if he bought Carter's defense. Suzuki pulled out his phone. "Someone's skipping a step. There's also the leg press set first."

That brought out a smirk. It seemed like we all tried to cheat a little on leg day. But, at the same time, we all knew we needed a strong leg day to compete in the NHL.

The four of us moved over to the two leg presses and stacked the weight onto the machine. I looked towards the guys. "Are we starting with the single leg presses or both legs?"

The three of them all said, "Both legs. Are you a sadist?"

"No. I'm a masochist." It was one of the few times that I made fun of my drinking issue with the new team. "All right, let's get at it."

As Scuba pushed the metal plate up, "I got to do the weekly vibe check. Everyone good with their girls?"

I stayed silent as I focused on lifting up the weights with my legs since I wasn't sure how I felt about last night's night terror. It messed up Emmy's mood by seeing me shift and I hated that for her and it wasn’t like I could say to these guys, 'Hey, I fucked up and transformed into a wolf while I slept.' I wasn’t back home where I could make that sort of confession.

Thankfully, Suzuki was the first to speak up. "Nat's the best. But you all know that."

Suzuki basically all but forced me to hire her for my social media content and it'd been good. I briefly used her as a personal assistant like the others. Apparently, she wanted to focus on the social media thing. I couldn't blame her, and it gave me the perfect excuse to give Emmy my key a few months ago.

As Scuba and I stood up to swap spots with Suzuki and Carmichael, Scuba said, "That's not an answer if you two are perfectly happy?"

"Who the fuck is perfectly happy planning a wedding?" Suzuki groaned, but it got the rest of us chuckling since he was a hundred percent right.

Scuba stood up and peacocked with his hands on his hips as he said, "Well, I had fun planning mine."

I dipped my head. I still owed the guy a dinner for fucking up his wedding with my drinking. At least, he'd been good at pretending that I didn't mess things up. If anything, he acted like nothing happened except for marrying his sweetie.

As I felt more comfortable with my new teammates, I could let my guard down and joke around with them like I did with the Wild. "Probably because he said yes to everything and Annie didn't rein him in too much."

Scuba dipped his head and seemed slightly embarrassed, but we all knew that Scuba would do anything to make his family happy.

Suzuki pointed at him, "Only person who has him more wrapped around his finger is Eric."

"Not-ugh." Scuba said as he shook his head vigorously, "Annie is the boss. She tells me no more than I like when it comes to Eric. Apparently, it's a bad idea to spoil your son. Cartsy, don't think you can get off without sharing anything about your love life."

Carmichael gave Scuba the stink eye. I knew very little about his girlfriend other than he lived with her and things had to be hush hush.

After a full rep, Scuba finally held up his hands. "I'm not asking for details. Just vibes."

We were switching back for our leg press reps, Carmichael gritted out, "It's fine."

If he wasn't spotting me, I would have chalked it up to the weight that he was pushing up. I wasn't going to be the dickhead to ask him what that meant.

Scuba was about to say something when Suzuki interrupted him, "What about you, Wild Boy? Things still solid with what's her name?"

That was a new nickname for me, but it wasn't the worst thing in the world.

I pushed out my weight. "Still with Emmy. Things are fine."

"When are you boys going to learn that fine is the exact opposite of what you're saying? I let Cartsy slide." Scuba said, but he paused as Suzuki raised an eyebrow and Scuba gave up defeat. "Fine, Suzuki stopped me from digging into the issue, but seriously boys. Give me something."

I looked at Cartsy. He wasn't going to give us anything. I would love to know that story behind that, but I wasn't going to be that prick who kept poking.

---