Taylor. Of course.
As he mixed some sugar into it, he asked, “How’s your knee?”
“Better.” I flexed and straightened it under the table as if to make sure I was telling the truth. There was a faint twinge, but much less than last night. “I’ll be fine for practice. And tonight.”
Taylor nodded. “Good. Playing through injuries is the worst.”
“Always is.”
He studied me. “This your first bad injury? Like, one that took you out of the game for a while?”
I shook my head. “Not in the NAPH, but I got a concussion in major juniors that put me out for a month. And I’ve had a few things here and there. This is the first time I’ve missed so many games, though.” I met his gaze. “What about you?”
“A few things, yeah. Never something that required surgery, thank God, and the longest recovery I ever had was for a wrist injury.” He shrugged. “But that was during the playoffs, so I only missed like three games and then had the whole off season to recover.”
I thought about that. “I can’t decide which is worse—missing a lot of hockey, or being hurt for the off season.”
“I’d rather not do either if I can help it,” he grumbled. “One of my teammates broke his jaw during the very last game of the playoffs.” Taylor squirmed, chafing his arms. “Spent half the off season with his mouth wired shut.”
I grimaced. “Yeah, that’s one injury I’d rather not have again. This one”—I gestured at my knee—“sucked, but at least I could eat.”
“Perspective, right?”
And just like that, we were lost in conversation, comparing war wounds and battle scars. We’d both had some ugly ones in our pre-pro days, which led us into telling stories about major juniors and our youth teams. It turned out that not only had we both started our professional careers in Las Vegas, our paths to pro hockey hadn’t been too far from each other. Not that it was too much of a shock—hockey was a small, small world. His U16 team had been the one to knock mine out of the playoffs in the first round four years after I’d moved on, breaking their streak of making it to the division finals. I’d played in Kitchener for major juniors, and he’d been on my team’s biggest rival, Moose Jaw.
“Coach Gleason went to Moose Jaw, didn’t he?” I asked. “I lost track after I left, but I thought I heard he went there.”
Taylor nodded, bringing up his coffee for a sip. “He didn’t last long, though.”
I cocked a brow. “Really?”
“Mmhmm.” He sipped, then put the cup down. “It was funny, all the parents were super excited to bring in this coach who was known for being a hardcore disciplinarian who didn’t take shit from kids.” Taylor laughed and rolled his eyes. “Then they chased him out of town for… being a hardcore disciplinarian who didn’t take shit from kids.”
I barked a laugh. “Really? They couldn’t handle him?”
“Nope. And like, the club was mostly ignoring the complaints for a while.” Taylor grimaced. “But then he made this one kid bag skate for like a week and bumped him down from the top line to the fourth for ten games.”
I furrowed my brow. “What’s wrong with that? He did shit like that all the time.”
“Yeah, but the kid was the son of Harvey Bronson.”
My stomach flipped. “Ooh,shit. And Harvey got him fired.”
Taylor nodded. “Rumor has it he called the commissioner of the whole major junior league and basically said, ‘look, if my kiddoesn’t get the treatment and the ice time he deserves, and if a single scout sees him playing anything but the top line, then maybe I don’t need to keep sponsoring anything.’”
I rolled my eyes and groaned. “For fuck’s sake.”
“I know, right?” Taylor tsked. “His kid was a little punk, too. He never let any of us forget that his dad was one of the greatest hockey players of all time, and that he was going to follow in his footsteps while the rest of us faded into obscurity.”
“That sounds like a Bronson,” I muttered. “They’re all full of themselves.”
“Yeah? You played with—oh, right, wasn’t the older kid on your team?”
“Unfortunately.” I sipped my own coffee. “He was always bragging about how he was going to be just like his dad, including having all of hockey licking his balls long after he retired.”
Taylor wrinkled his nose. “Definitely runs in the family, doesn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.” I grinned. “But one of his teammates back then—one day, he’d just had enough. Looks right at Bronny and says, ‘Buddy, everyone respects your dad as a player, but the only reason they all lick his balls as much as they do is because they want his money.’”
