PROLOGUE
HUNTER
“YOU HAVE NO CLUE WHAT you’re talking about!” Rage fires, as I stare at my agent and verbally reject every rebuke he’s throwing at me while silently agreeing he’s right.
“I don’t?” he yells. “What the hell was that stunt then? Fighting against the opposition is one thing, Hunter, but punching your own damn teammate?”
“Is it that he’s my teammate or that he’s another one of your clients you’re trying to pimp and sell to the next highest bidder? My guess is, it’s that. My gut tells me it’s because he’s your newest golden ticket to a higher commission and, since the press already caught wind of the fight, that pristine reputation of his might be a little tarnished.” I shift on my feet and move a step closer. “Ever stop to think how the press already knows? Huh? Ever think that maybe Dyson picked a fight with me, staged the bullshit so he could get his name out there on social media? It’s hard to live up to your self-proclaimed wonder-boy status when someone like me outperforms him every damn night, hands down, and steals what he thinks are his headlines. What is it they say? No press is bad press? Seems to me like he’s looking to play off that.”
Finn Sanderson chews his lip as he stares at me. His hair, his clothes, his everything, are in their usual styled perfection, but there’s a flicker of uncertainty in his expression that I can’t quite read. His dark eyes never leave mine as they stare and assess and scrutinize.
He draws in a deep breath and purses his lips as the silence falls stagnant. “What’s going on with you, Hunter?”
Here we go again.
“What do you mean, what’s going on with me?”
“Exactly what I asked. What the hell is going on with you? You’re about to smash three long-standing records within a ridiculously short time frame. That’s unprecedented. You used to play with finesse and poise, and now you play like a feral cat about to—”
“About to what? Seek and destroy? What does it matter? My numbers are better than ever.”
“I was going to say you play like a man ready to win at all costs. Even if those costs include collateral damage.”
“Sometimes winning requires that.”
His chuckle is low and condescending at best. “At what expense though? Your teammates? Your club?” He shows his frustration with a subtle shake of his head. “They’re putting up with it because you’re winning, but that’ll only go so far. You’ve been in this game long enough to know that losses happen and the tide can turn.”
“I know, a whole twelve years in the league, and knocking on records it took others a lot longer to hit makes me a relic.” I don’t hide the sarcasm. Instead, I play it up so he knows how ridiculous he sounds.
“Winning will create tolerance . . . but your antics off the ice are going to cost you in ways you’ve never imagined.”
“Fuck this.” I say the words, but I know he’s right. The problem is, I can’t find a flying fuck to give right now.
“If that’s how you want to be, fine.” He shrugs in indifference. “Then no one is going to be cleaning up your messes in the press. Not the brawl you started at that hole in the wall. Not airing your grievances to the press about the bullshit in the locker room. Not the snubbing of fans as you walk by—”
“Glad to see you believe the press over your own client,” I say.
“It was on video. It’s kind of hard to dispute the fact that you walked right past a kid in a wheelchair holding out a sign for you to autograph.” Fuck. I never do that. Never.
I used to be that kid. In many ways, I still am, so the fact I missed seeing him makes it all the worse. The notion that the press is using it against me only adds insult to injury.
I replay the scene he’s talking about. My mom on my cell freaking out about Jonah and refusing to let me talk to him because she said I’d upset him. Her insistence laced with guilt, the ever-constant reminder of what happened, whose fault it was, and how it made us into the people none of us wanted to be. How I was ducking my head down, finger to my other ear, so I could hear her. The flash of the cameras still in my eyes like a thousand bright lights glittering at once. The weight of the game still heavy in my mind highlighted by all the opportunities I couldn’t convert into goals. My teammates behind me, Dyson with his loud mouth and shitty attitude, which I was trying to tune out completely.
And I didn’t see the kid.
I wish I had.
I know how it feels to hope and want and dream . . . and then to live that dream but at so many costs.
“Once the public turns the tide against you, you’ll have a helluva time getting them back.”
“And what about you, Finn? Has the tide turned against me with you?”
His eyes hold mine as he chews his gum with vigor, but he doesn’t voice the fucking thoughts I can see in his eyes.
“Really?” I ask, exasperated and disappointed when I shouldn’t be either anymore. “You’ve been with me since the get-go. Represented me right out of college through the trades and renegotiations of my career. It’s been twelve years and now . . . now, you want to walk away because I’m having a tough time?”
I walk toward the window. There’s a world beyond this hockey arena, but it’s not like I can see it. I’ve lived my life with one goddamn goal since the accident, one goal since being traded to the LumberJacks two years ago, and now with time running out, it’s the only goal I can focus on. It fuels the anger that’s always been there but has now surfaced. The guilt that owned me but now eats away at me. The tears that threaten burn bright, but I blink them away as I try to find my way back to the man I used to be months ago, all the while knowing he doesn’t matter.
He never has.
“And that history is why I’m standing here asking what’s going on with you.”
“I didn’t snub that kid intentionally. You know that’s not me. I wouldn’t have—”
“I don’t know much these days other than it seems you have your head up your ass,” he says and folds his arms over his chest.
“There used to be a time you defended me. There used to be a time when you stood up for your clients. Seems to me you now love chasing after everybody in a jersey with potential to maintain that name of yours instead of taking care of those who you stand on top of to make that name of yours glow in neon.”
He winces, but he doesn’t bite with the anger I was hoping for. “I’ve got three sponsorships waiting to be yanked from you with one more fuck-up, Maddox. I have management calling, asking me why their captain—my client—is the problem and not the solution here. They want me to tell them what’s eating you and to figure it the fuck out because if you don’t, your upcoming contract negotiations won’t be pretty.”
“Ah, the threats. The bait and switch to lower my contract when any other team out there would kill to have me.” My words are straight bullshit, because I don’t want to play anywhere else. I want to be here, with the LumberJacks. I want to be on a team where hockey rules the management’s decisions instead of money like so many of the big teams.
And more than anything, I want to be known as the star who turned down those huge contracts to play for the Little Engine That Could Team and then helped win that team a Stanley Cup.