Coach Jacobsen wasn’t happy. I got an earful in the tunnel after the game about the difference between intensity and recklessness.
I didn’t care, but I said all the right things. Showered and got out of there.
Condensation pools around my fingertips as I rotate my glass. I don’t know why I’m here. Feels better than alone in my room.
“This seat taken?” The voice is familiar. Steady.
I look up. Conrad Kingston is standing there, wearing jeans and a Blue Ox hoodie. Hair still damp from the shower, droplets darkening the fabric on his shoulders.
Great. The team’s unofficial therapist is here to fix me.
“It’s all yours,” I say.
He sits on the stool next to mine. The leather creaks under his weight. He signals the bartender with two fingers, the universal sign for “one for me.”
We sit in silence while the bartender pours Conrad a Coke too.
He takes a drink. Sets it down carefully on his own coaster. The TV’s moved on to highlights from some other game. Someone scores a beautiful goal, the announcers losing their minds over it.
“You want to talk about it?” Conrad asks finally, his voice gruff over the music.
“About what?”
“Whatever’s got you playing like you’re trying to kill someone.” He pauses. Takes another drink. “Or yourself.”
“I’m fine.”
“You know, you’ve said that a lot lately. I’m starting to wonder if you know what it means.”
“I’m playing hard. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”
“There’s playing hard, and there’s playing angry.” Conrad turns on his stool to face me fully, one elbow on the bar. “You blocked six shots tonight. Six. And you fought a guy who outweighs you by forty pounds.”
“He was running his mouth.”
“About what?”
I don’t answer. Can’t answer. Because I don’t actually remember what he said. I just remember needing to hit something. Someone. Anything to release the pressure building in my chest over the last week.
Conrad’s quiet for a moment, studying me. Then, “It feel good? Throwing that punch?”
I look at him, surprised by the directness.
“Yeah,” I admit. “It did.”
“I get it.” He takes another drink. “Sometimes punching something is easier than dealing with whatever’s actually wrong.”
I look away. Wow, he’s lethal.
“Kane. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Just focused on the game.”
He doesn’t believe me. I can see it in his face, in the way his eyebrows rise slightly and his mouth tightens. Yeah, I don’t believe me either.
Mostly because that kiss with Chloe won’t stop looping in my head. What. Was I.Thinking?
I wasn’t. And that’s the problem. I wasn’t thinking, just feeling.
