He had the icy good looks and determination of his supermodel mother and an absolute sniper’s aim from his father—the kind that made even seasoned goaltenders quake in their skates.
Breaking his concentration could only be agoodthing.
“Yeah,” Connor said drily. “Except he tends to make Tanner lose his cool too.”
“He does not!” Tanner protested from across the room.
“Oh, come on,” Connor scoffed. “Every single fuckin’ game we play against them.”
Tanner scowled.
“What’s your beef with him anyway, Clay?” Graham asked, taking a seat in his stall and double-checking the tape on his stick.
“He’s—he’s just a fuckingdick, okay?” Tanner said, yanking off one of his skates. “We played together in Juniors in Massachusetts, and he always acted like he was so muchbetterthan everyone else.”
“I mean, hewas,” Connor said with a laugh. “They kept calling him a prodigy, even if he was a little undersized for a while. And his skating wasn’t quite there yet. But we could all see the potential. Tons of teams were hoping they’d get him in the draft. I know Boston was for a while there.”
“Yeah, well it got really fucking old to play with him when he was acting like a snobby-ass bitch all the time,” Tanner snapped, unlacing his second skate.
“Why do you fucking care? He’s a forward and you’re a defenseman, it wasn’t like you were competing for spots on the roster or anything.”
Graham ripped off the tape, catching a glimpse of Tanner’s scowl.
“We were on the PP unit together a lot. And I had to put up with him being adickabout it, acting like he knew how to play my position better than I did.”
Tanner yanked off his second skate and stalked across the locker room, disappearing into the equipment area.
Connor winced. “Shit. I probably made this worse. Now he’sreallygoing to lose it tonight.”
“You want me to talk to him?” Graham asked with a frown.
Connor grimaced. “Would you?”
Graham set his stick aside. Mickey had risen to his feet too, frowning after him but when Graham frowned, silently asking Mickey if he wanted to take over—he was Tanner’s roommate, after all—he shook his head, then nodded for Graham to go after him.
Graham found Tanner still in the equipment area, sitting on the floor in his gear and holding one skate. Not doing anything with it, just staring at it.
The sullen, quiet stillness was so unlike him it sent a flicker of unease through Graham’s body.
“Uhh, hey,” he said quietly. “Everything okay there, Clay?”
“Yes,” Tanner snapped, then sighed, all the fight going out of him. “No. I don’t know.”
“So, you and Leif?—”
Tanner’s head snapped up. “Whataboutme and Leif?”
“I don’t know. It just seems like you take the stuff with him pretty … personally. Normally it rolls right off your back. What’s that all about?”
Tanner exhaled and let his head fall back until it thunked against the wall. “I don’t know. I—you know me. I always want to be friends with everyone. And Leif … he was always kind ofaloof.”
“Okay,” Graham said slowly. That explained some of it. Maybe.
“So, like, when we played together, I kept tryingharder. And he acted like more and more of an asshole. And it turned into athing.”
“What kind of thing?” Graham asked carefully.
“You know, I’d needle him, and he’d wind even tighter until he’d explode and it was funny. Well,Ithought it was funny.” Tanner shot him a faint grin, looking a little more like his normal self. “He didn’t find it as hilarious.”
