I pushed myself off the door and started peeling off my hoodie.
As I changed clothes, I walked myself through everything I needed to do so I didn’t wind up on the tradingblock. Focus on hockey. Stay upbeat around the team so they didn’t feel like they had to walk on eggshells or handle me with kid gloves.
No more drinking with the team, either.
And I should probably do something about Peyton before tomorrow night’s game.
CHAPTER 18
PEYTON
What was I supposed to do now?
I’d heard that old cliché of the tension in a room being so thick you could cut it with a knife, but experiencing it for real at this morning’s team breakfast had been something else.
The usual banter and chirping had been MIA. Some of the guys had exchanged looks now and then like“what the hell do we do?”I’d felt like a kid in junior high, avoiding Avery’s table, but what else was I supposed to do? Sit with him and see if he was still as pissed as he’d been last night?
Laramie and Ollie hadn’t been there last night, but after I’d told them about it, they’d both insisted it would blow over.
“Two of the guys on my last team almost got into a fistfight over something,” Laramie had whispered in the near-silent banquet hall. “And Calds is a good dude. He probably just got wasted and went off on you.”
I’d grunted and continued picking at my eggs. “Yeah. Probably.” I hadn’t believed myself. I also hadn’t looked tosee if any of my teammates were any more convinced than I was.
Now I was back in my room, packed and ready to head downstairs to get on a bus to the airport. Normally, I’d go down now and mill around with the guys in the lobby or chill with them on the bus. Maybe sign things for fans who’d gathered outside, which they often did.
This time, I lingered in my room.
I wasn’t sure I could face my team after last night. Breakfast had been excruciating, and now I’d have to get on the bus and on the plane with them. What was I supposed to do when that was unavoidable? Especially when Avery joined us? We could avoid each other to some degree, but sooner or later, we would have to be in the same room. The same bus. The same plane.
The same line.
I closed my eyes and scrubbed a hand over my face. How the hell did we go back to normal after last night? What was I supposed to do? Because what happened at the bar—that was my fault. Avery’s too, but I was the one who’d pushed him when he’d clearly wanted me to back off.
I should’ve backed off. At the same time…
I stared up at the ceiling as I gnawed the inside of my cheek. Hockey players drank. Some more than others. There were a few among us who didn’t, but a hockey player drinking was about as shocking as a sailor drinking. Especially when we were chilling out on a night when we didn’t have practice or a game the next morning, sometimes we drank.
But every time Avery had taken a sip—and God help me, every time he ordered another round—I’d gone back to that night in Detroit. To him drinking alone late at night, so hammered he couldn’t even walk, and then he’d…
I winced and sighed.
That had happenedonce. I hadn’t seen him do anything else alarming or stupid, drunk or otherwise, since.
Still, last night…
Something was wrong. I could feel it. I hadn’t wanted to give him shit or piss him off—I wanted to help him. I wanted to stop him from self-destructing the way he was apparently determined to do. Or maybe I’d just been jumpy after how trashed he’d been in Detroit. It was possible that had been a one-time thing, and now Avery could drink like the rest of us without issue.
Why couldn’t I convince myself that was the case?
And what could I even do if hewasself-destructing and his drinkingwasbecoming a problem?
I could get the hell out of Pittsburgh.
That thought made my stomach wind itself into knots. I didn’t want to leave, least of all when this team was already struggling to hold itself together without Erlandsson. I didn’t want to do that to these men.
But did I want to continue having a front-row seat to their captain pretending he wasn’t being ripped apart by grief?
Part of my contract had included a no-move clause, but I could always waive it and request a trade. I knew for a fact there were three other teams who would salivate at the chance to snatch me up, and two of them had some assets that would make a trade worthwhile for Pittsburgh. If I wanted out of Pittsburgh, I could be gone before the week was over.
