"Does that go for everyone else?" Benne questioned. "You'd do a chick with a kid?"
For whatever reason, Benne looked right at him. Seg lifted his beer, opting for a nonverbal no comment on that one. It wasn't the kid thing he had an issue with. It was the chick thing. At the moment, he was so caught up in his thoughts of Roan, Seg wasn't even sure a woman could make his dick hard again.
Which scared the shit out of him.
It wasn't a secret that Seg had been one of the biggest players on the team. Hell, he remembered a few occasions when he'd had more than one woman in his bed at a time. Sure, it generally involved copious amounts of alcohol. But he'd been looking for something to scratch that particular itch. The problem had been that he hadn't known what that itch even was.
Until Roan.
What freaked him out the most was that the one night he'd spent with Roan had sated him in ways he'd never imagined. And yeah, it had left him wanting more.
With Roan.
Seg had battled those desires for as long as possible. He'd simply been hoping that the next woman in his bed would be the one who made him feel whole, complete. That never happened. And now he knew why.
He was gay.
Not bisexual, not bi-curious. He was gay with a capital G.
And he could admit it to himself. However, it was a secret he would have to keep to himself for as long as he hoped to play in the NHL. He could only imagine how freaked his teammates would be if they ever found out.
Damn. Seg remembered a few years ago when a football player came out publicly. He couldn't remember who it was, which likely meant the guy had faded from the limelight, sidelined indefinitely, never to be heard from again.
That was the way shit worked in professional sports.
Thankfully, there weren't many men in his past who could come forward with that sort of accusation. The two that could were from so long ago, and those nights were nothing more than fuzzy memories obliterated mostly by all the alcohol. Hell, Seg hardly remembered them; surely his partners at the time didn't either.
Except Roan.
Seg remembered every single minute of that night.
And he knew Roan did, too.
Damn it. He wanted to see the man.
As it was, it had been five days since he'd heard from Roan, and every time his phone chirped, he lost a year off his life. Roan had promised to call him again. The anticipation was going to be the death of him.
"No issue with kids," Mattias noted. "But that's tricky. Can't simply throw some MILF a bang, you know? Not cool."
"Sure you can," Benne stated. "Nothing to say that sex means commitment. What? You think they don't have needs, too?"
Seg knew this conversation could go on for hours. There were times these guys got into arguments over the stupidest shit. Of course, he'd been known to chime in quite often. But not tonight. They'd already been at the Penalty Box for two hours, and he was ready to call it a night. They had the entire weekend off before they headed out of town on Monday morning for their next game.
If he left now, he could scrounge up dinner and veg on the couch while watching … something … for the next few hours. Yep, that was what he would do.
"I think I'm going to head out," he told the others before pushing to his feet. If he left soon, he could miss the influx of puck bunnies that would likely flood the place in the very near future.
"Cool. See ya, Seg."
"Later, Seg."
He made a quick trip to the bar to close out his tab before getting in his Range Rover and heading home. He'd been in his house all of five minutes when his cell phone rang.
A quick glance at his screen and Seg felt a jolt in his chest. If Roan kept this up, there was a chance that Seg wasn't going to live to see thirty.
"Hey," he greeted as he headed to the refrigerator to see what he could make for dinner. "You called."
There wasn't a response, so Seg immediately thought he'd lost the connection. Sometimes he didn't get calls inside the house. He glanced at the screen. Nope, not disconnected. It was still counting the seconds. He put the phone back to his ear. "Roan? You there?"
A sigh was the only response, but Seg knew he was going to say something.
"That dinner invitation still open?"
It was a good thing he didn't have a beer in his hand because he would've been cleaning glass up off the floor. "Uh … yeah … it's still open," he assured Roan.
"Can I come over?"
Seg swallowed hard, then counted to ten, not wanting to sound too eager. "Sure. When?"
"Right now," Roan stated.
Seg was about to tell him that he'd see him soon, but the doorbell rang.
"That's me," Roan said. "I'm standing on your front porch. I'm gonna hang up now."