Laughter rips through the room as the press eats it up and the team grins.
“Damian,” the reporter says—steady enough to sound smug—“do you think your relationship will affect Elias’s career? Are you… favoring him?”
The room stills all at once, and beside me Elias makes a soft, strangled sound that has nothing to do with guilt or shame and everything to do with rage barely contained by disbelief. I take my time looking up, fixing my eyes on her, letting my expression settle into something calm, measured, dead flat. “I see,” I say, my voice cold enough to sting. “So we’re pretending stats don’t exist now?”
She shifts but doesn’t retreat, not yet. “He’s a rookie, and the team just advanced to the semifinals—”
“He works me ’til I puke,” Elias cuts in before she can finish, chirping with a bright, acidic grin. “Ask anyone. I’m throwing up by the second drill.”
Nervous laughter ripples through the room. He does not throw up. He never did. He fainted once, sure, after a workout before the playoffs when he was still filling in. But not once did he throw up.
I keep my gaze on her and speak slow. “He’s got the best center stats in the league,” I say. “Most faceoff wins. Most assists. Fastest zone entries. Cleanest plus-minus. You want to accuse someone of favoritism, at least do the homework.”
Her mouth opens. I don’t give her the chance. “What would I be favoring him with?” I ask, tone razor-sharp. “Ice time he earns? Shifts he dominates? You think I’d waste a playoff spot on a pretty face when I’ve got a Cup to win?”
Beside me, Elias leans back, stretching his arms behind his head, still smiling that smug, feral little smirk. “You think I’m just pretty?” he mutters under his breath.
The boys snort. Cole chokes on his gum. Shane full-on wheezes.
I reach over, smooth Elias’s hair back just enough to make the gesture look casual to the room and a warning to him.
The air in the room goes thinner than ice. One second we’re chirping through stat sheets and playoff grit, the next—“What about when you’re going to hang your skates?” a reporter asks, his tone light. “Will you guys still be a thing?”
I lean into the mic, flat and even. “Do you divorce your wife when you stop working?”
The room freezes. The reporter’s eyes widen like he’s realizing too late that he just stepped into traffic.
Elias stops breathing beside me. Dead silent.
The reporter fumbles. “Are you saying Elias is… your wife?”
It’s like someone shut the barn doors on a thunderstorm. Every whisper, every shuffle, every dumb cough from the back—gone. Even Cole stops chewing gum. Shane’s posture goes straight. Mats lowers his phone. Viktor looks like he might vaporize the man where he stands. And Elias—my center, my chaos, my fucking heartbeat—is choking on his own spit beside me, hand flying up to his mouth. He’s blushing hard enough to sizzle through skin, freckles glowing, wide green eyes locked on me.
The press doesn’t laugh this time. They don’t dare. Because they felt it. The weight in my voice. The finality. The threat. And the truth so thick in the air it tastes like metal.
My eyes cut to him. "Not yet.”
The silence that follows could bury cities. No follow-up. No stupid laugh. Just that sentence hanging in the air like a matchhovering over gasoline and Elias, wide-eyed beside me, looking like he forgot how to function. His lips part as he stares at me.
I don’t look away. Not from the press and certainly, not from him.
Another reporter coughs into the silence like it might hide his fear. Everyone’s still reeling, still digestingnot yetlike it was a grenade lobbed into a wedding aisle, and the fallout hasn’t even finished settling before the poor bastard opens his mouth. “So… uh… any comment on the Bastards?”
The room exhales in collective relief—yes, please, let’s talk about anything other than whether Damian Kade just casually proposed to his rookie center on live television.
I lean forward, elbows on the table, hands clasped. “They’re hungry. Fast. Mean. They hit hard and chirp harder. They’re also third in the league for penalty minutes, and they cracked two ribs on their last center during Round Two.”
Elias finally moves. Shifts beside me like he’s trying to reboot his brain. I don’t look at him.
“But they’ve never played us.” That gets a ripple. The reporters perk up, pens twitching, eyes narrowing, hunting for soundbites. “They’ve never played a line like mine. Never skated against a defense that hits before the whistle and after. And they’ve never faced a goalie like Shane.”
In the corner, Shane perks up.
“And our center?” I tilt my head, finally turning to Elias. He’s still pink around the ears, tie crooked, eyes blown wide. I smirk. “He’ll eat them alive.”
Elias blinks, then lets the grin spread slow and deliberate—real unhinged—as he leans in and murmurs, almost pleasantly, “Better make sure they’ve got dental.”
The press room door swings shut behind us, and the second we hit the tunnel, Elias takes off like someone lit a fire under hisass. He’s five steps ahead of me, shoulders tense, curls bouncing with every frantic stride. The jacket flaps as he moves.
