“It doesn’t have to be written in the contract to know what’s expected of me,” he says answering my unspoken question.
“Winning is expected of every player.” I laugh, but it falls when I see the gravity in his expression. “That’s why you play the game, right? That’s why every player is out there on the ice. No one forms a team hoping they’ll be mediocre.”
“The teams without the big purse strings do.”
“You’re missing my point, Hunter.” I shake my head and lean back and stare at him. Now, he looks like the weight of the world is on his shoulders, and I wish I could take it all away. “Do you know how many exceptional players never won the Cup? I can list a ton of them.”
“So can I, and my name would be one of them.”
“Your career has been phenomenal. Even if you never win the Cup—”
“Don’t bullshit me, Dekker. You can be the greatest there ever was, but if you don’t ever win, it doesn’t mean shit. The greats win the Cup. More than once. So that was our deal. He paid me a ridiculous amount of money, and expects me to build the team around me that will help win the Cup for the first time in franchise history.”
“You’re staring down your first playoff berth. I’d say the team you built around you is working just fine.” But at what cost, I wonder. “What is there, fifteen games left in the season?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a hell of a lot of pressure,” I murmur more to myself than to him.
“You have no fucking idea.” He sighs. “And we’re almost there. We’re so close I can all but taste it . . . but, fuck if I know if we can do it.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, reaching out and putting my hand on his to stop him from pulling away.
“Never mind. It’s nothing.” His smile is tight as he downs the rest of the beer. “It’s late. We should get going. It’s a long drive back.”
I sigh as he scoots his stool out and goes to close out his tab, because I feel like we were making genuine headway. The positive in this? My hunch was right. Hunter Maddox has reached his emotional limit, and he doesn’t know how to admit it to himself.
Instead, he’s angry. He acts out. He burns the candle at both ends. For a man who prefers to fade into the background, he’s the face of a team who I think is going to take center stage in the coming weeks.
How is he going to handle it? Because if his reaction to the pressure he’s under now is any indication, it’s not going to be good.
Will helping him realize he’s burned out help the situation or hurt it?
CHAPTER TWENTY
DEKKER
“JUST SAY IT.”
The fight he’s angling for, the one I can sense in his tone of voice and how he’s pulled into himself and thoughts since we parked, I don’t really have the energy to give.
“Say what?” I ask as I glance over to Hunter as we walk through the parking lot toward the hotel entrance. It’s been a long drive, it’s late, and I’m beat.
“Whatever the fuck it is that has been on your mind since we left the bar.”
“Who said I had anything to say?”
“You’ve always been shit at hiding your emotions. You think you’re so good at it—a hard-ass—but they’re on your sleeve when it comes to me.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“Huh. Then I guess the last time I saw you before, when you walked out of the hotel, I misread you and had you pegged all wrong.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Caution vibrates through me.
“It means you walked out because you broke the rules.”
My feet falter, and I have a hard time swallowing as his words hit my ears. “Broke what rules?” I feign ignorance.
He takes a step closer to where I’ve stopped and stares at me. I’m glad for the cover of the night, but I don’t think it’s going to mask the sudden anxiety I have about where he’s going with this. “You tell me.”
Our gazes hold in an awkward dance where it seems he doesn’t want to follow through with whatever accusation he’d planned. I don’t want to open Pandora’s box.
I’m not sure what’s worse, him telling me he knew I had feelings for him or me realizing he knew and let me walk away without saying a word.
I shake my head when I realize why he made the comment. Such a Hunter thing to do. Dodge. Deflect. Turn the topic around to the opposition by changing the subject so he doesn’t have to answer and be the one to open himself up. Classic fucking Maddox.
I’m glad I didn’t say anything. I’m glad I didn’t give him the distraction he was angling for and answers he might not have realized.
“Tell me something,” I ask, bracing my hands on my hips.
“Nothing good ever came from a sentence starting like that.” He crosses his arms over his chest, already on the defensive.
“You’re the one who came after me, so why can’t I ask you a question in turn?”
His exasperated sigh fills the silence around us. “Look, it’s been a good night. We had fun. We didn’t kill each other, which is always a bonus when it comes to us, and while it’s a good thing, it’s also kind of unnerving because it’s us, right?” He chuckles but there’s an exhaustion to it. “Just let whatever it is go that you need to know and don’t ruin the night, okay?”
“What do you do in the off season?” I ask.
He laughs in protest. “I’m not doing this, Dekker. This isn’t the discussion we’re having.”
“Just . . . humor me. Please. I . . . please.” I reach out to grab his arm to stop him when he begins to walk, but I see the minute his shoulders fall and know he’s going to give me an inch here. “It’s not a trick question. It’s just . . . what do you do in the off season?”
“Practice. Work out. Practice some more.” His arms fall to his sides.
“And in your downtime?”
“Study hockey, film, opponents, weaknesses.” He says the words like I should know this—and I do—but I need him to hear it. I need him to listen to himself and realize his single-minded focus.
“And what else do you do besides hockey?”
“What is it I do?”
“Yeah, besides twenty-four/seven hockey, what else do you enjoy doing?”
The crooked grin that crawls over his lips and the way his eyes scrape down the V of my shirt and back up has me shaking my head.
“We could go upstairs and I could show you exactly what I enjoy.”
While my body reacts viscerally to his words, my head remembers his complete rejection from the other night.
“I’m sure we could, but that’s not part of this conversation.” I shake my head. “Seriously. What do you do besides hockey and the one-night stands?”
“Two-night stands.”
“Funny. I’m serious.”
He stares at me. “Plenty.”
I bark out a laugh but the sound settles as he stares at me.
“You asked me why I took you to the Dartmouth game tonight. You asked me to stop talking in circles . . . so I’ve stopped . . .” Every part of me prepares for the fallout from what I’m going to say. My shaky inhale reflects it. “You’re burned out, Hunter—fucking fried—and you need to recharge your engine somehow—”