“Ah, thank you, Mr. Jackson.” He grinned, revealing a bit of parsley stuck between his front teeth. “I knew Beau Beckett wouldn’t get here on time.”
“Probably sleeping off a hangover.” The loser of the bet grumbled through his bushy, coffee-stained mustache and smacked his malfunctioning laptop with his palm. “It’s like the kid doesn’t want to play hockey.”
Magnolia’s jaw tightened. “Here we go.”
“Can you blame him?” Another reporter rubbed puffy eyes beneath his horn-rimmed glasses and struggled to stay awake. “You know his story, right? He never wanted to play hockey. Got roped into it because his older brother played in high school and went to the junior league. But Beau was good, better than his brother. So, Beau got all the attention—and Brady coped with pain pills.”
“That’s awful,” I whispered.
“No sympathy from them,” Magnolia grumbled.
The journalist continued. “They shipped Beau from coach to coach for training. Made him into a prodigy. He was forced to eat, sleep, breathe, and shit hockey for the past fourteen years. I’d get tired of it too.”
The mustached man wasn’t convinced. He pointed over the ice. “That’s no excuse. The rest of the team wants to be here.”
“Here?” Glasses laughed. “Not a damned one of them wants to be here. Well, maybe Alaric because he’s fucking relieved he has a chance to play despite a pair of crushed balls. But the rest of them?” He snorted. “The goalie—Oz—had his agent on the phone with ten different teams in the league. He’s out of here the first chance he gets. Leo Telane and Felix Ferraro will kill each other before the first face-off. Cash Harrington is one dirty hit from getting bounced from the league. And Vasha Morozov is bound to be deported before he ever hits the ice.”
“Sounds like you’re a fan,” Parsley teeth said.
“I’m just watching a team of miscreant, egotistical assholes trip over a world that’s handed them everything. These bastards get what they deserve.”
That wasn’t true. Adrian didn’t see it that way.
He knew the Forge wasn’t functioning as it should, but a team was a team, regardless of how damaged the players. It’d take hard work and good leadership to turn it around, but he could do it. After all, the league and every journalist had already written them off, and Adrian worked best when he was the underdog.
If the Forge could survive the antagonism and disrespect, if they would listen to their captain, they’d come out of this darkness as formidable men strengthened by adversity.
But they needed to rally around Adrian.
And unfortunately, he was losing his patience to unite the team.
The whistles blew, and the rest of the media shot out of their seats, grabbing their cameras as the shouting echoed from the rink.
The team blasted blue line to blue line, their skates chewing through the ice as they raced each other to the brawl breaking out in the middle of practice.
Leo swung first, clobbering Felix in the side of his helmet. Felix ducked the second punch. He tossed his jersey onto the ice and circled Leo with raised fists and an already bloodied nose.
Adrian reached the skirmish before the rest of the team. He skidded between the two men and held his arms out to make some space.
Wrong place.
Wrong time.
Felix let loose and jumped Leo. His fists went wide as Leo ducked, and he accidentally connected with Adrian’s chin.
Adrian staggered. Fell. Crashed to the ice.
And that’s when Felix’s stick slashed between Adrian’s legs.
I leapt out of the seat, nearly toppling the media’s laptops and cameras. My stomach turned.
Not again.
A grunted profanity echoed through the arena, captured in perfect audio quality for the waiting cameras.
The man couldn’t catch a break.
The coaches separated Leo and Felix, but the trainers dashed to Adrian. They brandished towels and water bottles, but Adrian’s snarl forced them away.
He lumbered to his skates and snatched the stick from Felix. With a fierce crack, he snapped the stick over his knee and threw the pieces of wood into the net, narrowly avoiding a pissed off Oz.
Adrian shoved the coaches away from Leo and Felix as the team went silent. He grabbed both men by the collar and hauled them close.
“This shit stays off the ice.” Adrian’s ragged words splintered like the ruined stick. He stared the men down, nose-to-nose as his profanity shamed them. “Fuck this bullshit. You’re supposed to be working. You’re both a part of this goddamned team—so fucking act like it.”
Adrian pointed to the rest of the Forge. A few of the men chuckled, amazed to learn that their captain did indeed have a temper, and it only took a slash to his virtue and vice to rouse it. He pushed the trainers away and skated to the locker room by himself to inspect the damage caused by the hit.
Fortunately, he didn’t look hurt. Just pissed.
Angier than I’d seen him in a long time.
As angry as he’d been since our night together.
I didn’t know how to help him then. And I wasn’t sure how to fix it now. But I had to do something. For him. For us. For our future…if we still had one.
I had to tell him that I loved him.
And I prayed our friendship would survive.
21
Adrian
Here I thought I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders because I was the only one who could handle the pressure.
Fuck, was I wrong.
There was nothing noble about getting crushed under the burden of my own stupidity.
The team was a disaster. The only thing worse than the undisciplined catastrophe was the goddamned violence which bloodied members of our own team.
What the hell was I supposed to do with men like these?
Half of the team pissed on the rule book. The other half got pissed on by the league.
And the media made us famous for all the wrong reasons. We earned headlines because of our past injuries, became the subject of panel shows regarding our depraved behavior, and broke Twitter with every trending hashtag that featured some aspect of our genitalia.
And, somehow, I was supposed to unite us.
Fucking how?
The situation had spiraled so far out of my control that, for the first time, I thought long and hard about how much seven more years in this league really meant to me. Like a fool, I’d signed the contract and indebted myself to the Forge, believing I could build the team around me and lead us to a championship.
My idiocy didn’t surprise me anymore. Not about the Forge. Not my body. Not about Clover.
But was it even worth begging her forgiveness anymore? Because she was right. At the end of the day, after the showers and the media interviews, when the lights went out in the locker room and the doors slammed shut for the last time…
All I had was my guilt.
No one waited for me. I had no reason to peel my ass from the bench.
Home was meaningless.
My bed was empty.
No family to call my own.
And I had no one to blame but myself.
Clover had seen it all happening, yet I still blamed her for the truth. Every loneliness and isolation I saw in her was a projection of my own reality. Hockey had been my life, my obsession, and my only solace. I had nothing else.