The room erupts with laughter. Someone yells, “Kiss. Kiss!” and Connor winks exaggeratedly at Max. “He couldn’t handle me.”
“Handle you?” Mickey says. “Dude, your stamina’s shot after one beer and a chicken wing.”
“Watch it, rookie,” Connor warns, pointing his stick like a weapon. “You don’t get to chirp until you’ve scored more than once this month.”
“Once,” Mickey repeats, holding up a finger. “And it wasbeautifulonce.”
Even I can’t help the slight smirk tugging at my mouth.
The banter fades a little as the topic shifts back to me, unfortunately.
“Still bullshit, though,” Max says, “Someone jumps you inour ownparking garage? What kind of crap security are we paying for?”
“Yeah,” Mickey adds. “I mean, what if someone messed with my car?”
Connor laughs. “Relax, rookie. Nobody’s gonna risk jail time to jack your old Toyota. It’s worth less than your stick.”
“Hey! That car’s got character.”
I finally speak up. “It was an isolated incident. Nobody’s ever messed with anything in there before.”
“Still bullshit,” Max mutters. “We’re supposed to be the Chicago Reapers, not the Chicago sitting-ducks.”
Connor grins. “I like that. Someone gets marketing on the phone.”
The guys laugh again, the noise bouncing off metal lockers, but I just sit back and stretch my ribs, feeling the dull ache underneath the laughter.
Nikolai Ivanov and Dominic Belkin, our two wingmen, hang out by their own lockers, not really participating in the conversation.
They seem to be engaged in some other, private discussion, just talking low, in that clipped Russian cadence that sounds like secrets even when it isn’t.
Nik is our team captain, and Dom is his right-hand man. At one point, they both turn and look at me with curiosity.
They’re not my friends, per se.
I’m not particularly close to anyone on the team, although I get along with them all just fine.
Still, it’s not that surprising when the other guys finally file out into the tunnel, Nik hangs back.
“You okay?” he asks, nodding at me, or maybe at the whole wreck of me. My face is still bruised, but other than that, it’s the only outward evidence of the beating.
“I’ll live,” I say with a shrug. “Just sucks I can’t be out there with you guys.”
“It’s only six weeks,” Nik says, swatting away the thought like an annoying insect. “We all have injuries sometimes.”
“Well, just hockey injuries,” I say.
That makes him pause. His expression doesn’t change.
Finally, he says, “Not the same thing. Is it?” He tilts his head, studying me like he’s trying to see past my skin. “It was strange. The way it happened?”
“What?”
“Two random guys hanging out in a mostly empty parking lot, in the middle of the night on a weeknight? Just randomly waiting for a person to show up so they can beat them senseless but not rob them?”
I don’t meet his eyes. My throat bobs as I swallow. “Yeah, weird. I was just unlucky, I guess.”
“Hmm. Very unlucky,” he agrees. He lays a hand on my shoulder and looks me straight in the eye. “When you feel like talking about it, find me. I think you’ll find I’m… anunderstandingear.”
