“Captain Kade!” someone barks. “Is Mercer injured?”
I don’t stop walking as I squeeze Elias’s leg where it curls around my waist. Elias lifts his head, red-faced and grinning, and calls back, “No! I’m fine! I’m just lazy!”
Laughter ripples through the mob and flashbulbs burst while another voice shouts, “Is that true? You carried him after Game Two too!”
Elias slaps my chest, giggling. “Because he likes it.”
Cole swoops in. “She’s got a bum knee,” he yells into a mic. “Needs to be babied. You should’ve seen the hit—looked like a mafia hit job, honestly. I feared for my life.”
“You chirped the guy into a penalty,” Shane mutters behind him, and Cole snickers in response, his sunglasses sliding down his nose as he adds, “Because I’m a hero.”
More laughter breaks out and more cameras flash, the press eating Elias alive the way they always do, because he gives them soundbites and chaos—chaos with dimples. Then another reporter steps in closer and calls out, “So, Elias, how’s the leg actually feeling?”
Elias leans around me, eyes bright. “Like I got slashed by a Wrangler with abandonment issues!”
Cole screams with laughter. “That’s going on a t-shirt!”
We’re almost to the bus when one of them shouts louder than the rest. “Are you two officially together?” The noise dips for a second. Elias stares down at me from my shoulder, suddenly wide-eyed.
I roll my eyes as I stop walking and turn halfway back toward the crowd, Elias clinging tighter while my hand fists harder on his thigh, and I say, flat as fuck, “I thought we had this conversation already—he’s mine, yes.”
More flashing, a couple of gasps, and Elias turns red as hell.
“And no,” I continue, “it’s not favoritism, unless you want me to kiss everyone’s knees better.”
The gasps turn into wheezes, Cole nearly drops his bag, Shane starts hyperventilating with the sound of a dying bird, Mats breaks into applause, and Tyler’s jaw hits the floor.
But it’s Viktor’s stare that gets me. He stops cold, standing dead still at the bottom of the bus stairs, and looks back at me with one brow raised so high it’s in another time zone, because I just gave a full sentence to the press. Maybe three. He blinks like I started singing Broadway. I blink back. Shrug.
Elias wheezes into my neck, “Cap, that was the most words I’ve ever heard you say in a single breath.”
I grunt. “Hurt myself.”
Cole collapses on the bus stairs, wailing, “Someone help, he’s human!”
Elias doesn’t stop laughing the whole ride to the hotel.
The hotel room smells like bleach and regret.
Not our hotel room—this room. The one the league doctors commandeer every time there’s an away series. It’s been converted into some Frankenstein exam room—white walls, wheeled cot, metal shelves of gauze and painkillers, and a little trash bin already overflowing with tape and wrappers.
I’m on the cot with my jacket unzipped and compression shorts clinging to my thighs, my left knee elevated and wrapped in cold, damp cloth, scowling at the doctor like I might be able to set him on fire with my eyes. He’s middle-aged and balding, smells like cinnamon gum and clinical disapproval, and his name tag saysDr. Keene, though all I’ve heard so far is “rest,” “ice,” “caution,” and “maybe sit this one out.”
Bitch, I’m not sitting shit out.“I’m fine,” I mutter, eyeing him. “It’s just sore.”
He presses two fingers to the back of my knee and I hiss, grip tightening on the edge of the cot. The pain lights up my thigh, hot and sharp.
I pant, trying to play it off. “Got another game tomorrow.”
The doc gives me that look, the one adults give when they think they’re talking to a dumbass teenager who doesn’t understand consequences. “You could make it worse,” he says flat. “Risk a tear. Possible inflammation of the meniscus.”
I snort, cocky as hell even through the pain. “Yeah? Or I could win Game 4 and sweep the Wranglers into next year.”
He sighs. “Mercer—”
“You said it wasn’t torn,” I cut in. “Just bruised. I’ll tape it. I’ll stretch. I’ll chew the fucking ice if I have to. I’m playing.”
His mouth twitches like he wants to argue. But then Damian speaks, low and steady, right behind me. “How bad is it, doc?”
