I look up and watch as the rest of the team heads over to the bench. Mikael and Eli are both still staring in my direction. As soon as the goalie reaches them, they spin him around, and his bright blue eyes meet mine.Anders.
Anders doesn’t glare like Mikael, or stare at me in shock like Eli. He just smirks and shakes his head. That’s until he sees John. Anders glares at the older gentlemen next to me, and I shrink into my seat.
Maybe it’s a good thing. They all clearly think I’m on a date with John. Maybe if they think I’ve moved on, they will leave me alone. The three of them glance my way one more time before they walk back to the locker room with the rest of their team.
“John, I think I might need to head out.”
He smiles and puts his arm around the back of my chair. “You just got here. Let’s get some snacks. We still have two more periods to go. Plus, I’d like to talk to you more about the position while we have the time.”
I swallow and nod my head.You need this job, Charlotte. Don’t let seeing them ruin this for you. As soon as the game is over, you can escape. There’s no way they can follow you. They will be in the locker room.I go to respond to John as the woman I saw Eli speaking to approaches us.
“Congratulations, you two, you have been randomly selected to come to the locker room after the game and meet the team.”
John stands up and does a little jump, and the surrounding men look jealous but in awe at the same time. “You’re serious?” he asks.
“Yes, you can buy merchandise to be signed at the kiosk. And you will have twenty minutes with the team. I will come collect you before the third period is over.”
“Oh, John, you should bring one of the fans with you instead of me.”
“Nonsense. Let’s go to the kiosk.” The woman smiles at us and then shakes her head.
“I will need to take a picture of your ID for security purposes.”
I furrow my brows, and John takes out his license, so I do the same. She takes a picture of both of our IDs and gives us a smile before handing John her card with her number on it, in case she is late getting to us.
“I think this is a sign that the job is yours,” John says, and my cheeks heat. Fuck.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Let’s go get something for them to sign.” John seems like a pretty decent guy to work for. My options are limited with not finishing school, and it seems like there may be an opportunity for advancement. However, there’s no way that I’m stepping foot in that locker room. I’ll go along with John until the time to go in comes, and I’ll figure out my escape plan.
John puts a hand on my shoulder and directs me through the crowd to where all the merchandise is being sold. As far as sports gear goes, they actually have some pretty cute options. John refuses to let me walk away without choosing something. So I pick the navy hoodie with the embroidered fox logo with the word Foxes underneath.
Before we head back to our seats, John gets a beer, and I get a seltzer with my newly twenty-one-year-old status. Maybe some alcohol will give me an idea of how the fuck I’m going to get out of this and still get this job.
The buzzer for the next period starts. I have to sit through the rest of the game wanting to disappear. I have three sets of eyes that continually glance over at me. Luckily, they are winning by a lot, and I don’t seem to be the distraction that I was when I came to their last game.
John gets us another drink during the third period, and I feel a little buzzed. Not enough to make a fool of myself, but it does help with my nerves. Throughout the game, John takes time to tell me about himself and the company. He doesn’t ask me a lot of questions, and I’m grateful.
At this moment, I don’t think I could form a coherent sentence. Not as I watch them skate on the ice and think about our history. I shake my head. I’ll always be second best to hockey. There’s no competing with a passion like that. There’s no way they will be faithful to me on the road. I’m nothing but a distraction. And the root of it all is I don’t deserve to be happy.
My heart sinks at the three-minute mark of the last period when the woman I now know as Lori comes to collect us to go to the locker room.
I spent too much time drinking and daydreaming to think of my escape route. John puts a hand on my lower back, which makes me grimace as he directs me to follow Lori to the locker room.
Chapter thirty-one
Theentiregameisa blur of clashing bodies, terrible calls, and staring at Charlotte. Out of all of us, I probably keep my cool the best. Mikael is extra violent on the ice tonight, and Eli is making stupid mistakes. Mikael is angry at Charlotte and says that he doesn’t want her back after she ended things. Eli had lost all hope and thought that this plan was stupid, and it wouldn’t pan out the way that I wanted to.
Meanwhile, I’ve never lost faith. I’m not sure what made Charlotte disappear. Trust me, I’ve tried begging Piper for answers, and I’ve even tried calling Charlotte’s mom, with no response. I know whatever spooked her, it was only a matter of time before we would win her back.
So I hatched a crazy fucking plan, and it’s worked. Our agent, Jake, wasn’t happy, and even though Mikael might be bitter and Eli was feeling hopeless, they agreed. Eli probably lost the most out of all of us to make this happen. He was going to be the Lightning’s next big franchise player. Not that he might not be for the Foxes, but as the first pack contract in the NHL, our combined paycheck is less than what Eli was going to be making on the Lightning.
Mikael was just happy to stick together and not go back to Canada. The fact that we could somehow manage to all be on the same team was a near impossibility. But it seems like we continue to beat the odds every time. By making the NHL, having a scent match, and now playing together. Our timeline is a little fucked up now. We were hoping that maybe after we got a little more comfortable on the team, we would be able to win her back. Eli put a PI on retainer, seeing as Piper wouldn’t tell us exactly where they were living. But it just so happens that the expansion team in Connecticut was also in the same town as the college we knew Piper would be going to.
The Foxes needed a goalie desperately, seeing as the goalie that they took from the Penguins suffered a serious injury right before the season started. So we had Jake talk with our respective teams and see if we could negotiate a pack contract for us all to play together and be in one place. The contract is good for three years, and we get a combined pack salary. They can’t trade us individually, they have to trade us as a pack. It seemed like the only solution for us to play hockey and have our Omega. Honestly, if I had to choose, I would leave hockey to win her back if she asked me to.
Not having her these past few months has been torture. I miss talking to her, holding her, hearing her laugh. I know deep down that she’s not okay and has probably been hurt by whatever she’s going through. It cuts that she ran. I know we fucked up in Vegas. But I still just don’t understand why, why she didn’t just talk to us and tell us she was upset. It just doesn’t add up. Charlotte was adamant about making this work, that you don’t run away from your scent match, but she did.
