A shiver of nervous excitement worked its way up my spine at the thought of doing something out of character so that I could spend a few precious hours more with Ash.
I might have a panic attack about it later, but that was a problem for tomorrow’s Cade. My shoulder muscles loosened with each step closer to the “Exit” sign.
I rounded the corner at the end, eyes on the heavy metal door of the stairwell, my ears alert for any doors opening, hearing nothing but the hum of the nearby ice machine.
“Well, Tiger. The kids just grow up so fast these days, eh?”
The disembodied voice of the Hammerheads’ captain had my shoulder slamming into the wall to my right, the chair-rail digging into my spine as I pressed backward to see where the voice had come from.
I located the captain and his alternate in the nearly hidden alcove diagonally across the hall from where I’d frozen in shock.
My roommates stood there, both with their arms crossed over their chests. Kovac, all six-foot-five of him, filled more than half of the oversized archway with his shoulder span alone. Captain Hawkins completed the wall of disapproving hockey players with his strong build.
“Hmm,” Kovac murmured, neutrally. “Is Caden in big trouble, Cap? He should get fined, yes? Maybe have to carry all our bags to the bus tomorrow?”
Kovac’s straight, white teeth appeared as his grin grew with each suggestion. He cast a glance at Hawkins’ inscrutable expression, raising an eyebrow.
Hawkins turned his head, giving Kovac a slight nod to acknowledge his thoughts.
“Maybe.” Hawkins turned back to me, locking his eyes on mine. “What do you think, Rook? I think the punishment needs to fit the crime, eh? So, let’s figure out what we’re dealing with here first, okay, Tiger?”
He moved his arms so that he could make a sweeping gesture like a Vegas dealer spreading out a brand-new deck of cards on the table.
“Fine. But I will keep thinking of better ideas. You talk.” Kovac waved his hand in my direction, clearly more interested in plotting than whatever Hawkins thought he could drag out of me.
I didn’t know how I felt about the fact that the captain thought I had a table full of mistakes we needed to examine.
I barely spoke in the apartment, for god’s sake! If I didn’t replenish my food in the fridge once a week, Hawkins and Kovac wouldn’t even know they had a third person living with them.
“Yep. You do that.” The captain nodded to his best friend. “Now, you.”
He pointed at me like I was in a lineup at a police station, even though the hallway around us was completely deserted.
“Are you sneaking out to go to a bar like Romero and Klein, whom we caught half an hour ago?”
I shook my head. What was going to happen to the other rookies since they’d already been discovered after a team agreement that we would stay in tonight because we had an early-ass departure time tomorrow?
But I’d be damned if I told them the truth. There was nothing they could say to me, no asinine task that I’d have to complete, that would ever make me say a fucking word about Ash.
Kovac must have run out of meniallaborideas because he scanned me from head to toe in my raggedy sweatpants and ancient hoodie.
“Wait, Hawk. I think I know.”
He brought his right hand up to his chin. His face was partially obscured by a neat, thick beard that he apparently grew every season and maintained before shaving it off in the summer. The sound of his fingernails scratching through thecoarse hair was the only thing to break the silence in our hallway triangle as Hawkins waited patiently for his next words.
“Okay,” Kovac began, dropping his hand from his face. “This young man is not sneakingout, Hawk. He’s sneaking in somewhere.” This time, both of his eyebrows rose, daring me to disagree with him.
My stomach crashed through every floor of this hotel down to the lobby.
I opened my mouth to deny it, hoping that whatever came out would convince them to let me go back to my room.
Except no words passed my lips. Instead, I closed my eyes and dropped my head back against the wall with a thud.
Let them do with me whatever they wanted. It was probably better to keep my mouth shut at this point, anyway.
A deep guffaw had me peeking through my lashes.
“Shit, Rook,” Hawkins reached across Kovac’s chest as they collapsed against each other, laughing uproariously. “You’re too easy, man. We really didn’t mean to scare you. Have you ever known anyone on the team to have some kind of consequence that didn’t come directly from Coach?”
