I jabbed the elevator button as she came skidding to a halt. “We're not done here.”
Taylor stepped in front of me, and I let him. I simply didn’t have it in me to fight with them anymore, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’d fight for me with every last breath in his body.
“Look, lady. I know you’re used to calling the shots, but we are absolutely done here.”
“This doesn’t concern you,” she spat.
“Yes, it fucking does. I love that man.” He pointed at me, keeping his eyes locked on her. “And I refuse to stand here and let you hurt him any more than you already have.”
“What gives you the right—” she sputtered.
The elevator dinged, signaling its arrival, and Taylor took hold of my hand, leading me inside. As the doors began to close, my mother stepped into view, her face red and splotchy. “Goodbye, Mother,” I whispered, feeling my limbs begin to tremble.
I held my breath until we began moving, then crumpled. Taylor pressed me into his chest and rocked me gently back and forth as I finally let the tears I’d been holding back all night begin to fall.
I didn’t know if they’d ever stop.
CHAPTER 37
TAYLOR
We wonour game against Brooklyn. I knew I played because my legs were tired and sore afterward, but I couldn’t have described a single shift I was on the ice for. Physically, I’d been in the arena, but mentally I was on the other side of town, where Sebastian was hunched over his laptop, searching for the sister he’d never known.
This morning, I found him in the business center when I went downstairs to meet the team for breakfast, his fingers jabbing at the keyboard while his bloodshot eyes darted across the screen. I’d only just managed to convince him to come back upstairs to get showered and changed.
Before I left for the arena, I’d begged him to take a nap instead of coming to watch me play. He’d finally agreed to sleep, but I knew he wouldn’t. The last image I had of him as I walked out the door was him sitting at the small desk in the corner of our room, a cup of cold coffee pushed to the side.
I hadn’t had the heart to point out that this woman almost certainly knew her father was billionaire Charles Carruthers—which meant she knew Sebastian existed, knew he was her brother, and had never once reached out.Sebastian was alreadybarely holding himself together. That particular truth could wait.
“Yo, T!” Cally called out, approaching my stall, where I was bent over, tying my shoes.
“What’s up?” I pushed to my feet, grabbed my coat from the hook, and shrugged into it.
“A few of us are heading out to get our drink on to celebrate the W. You should definitely come.”
I wouldn’t, not with Sebastian back at the hotel spiraling. But Cally didn’t need to know that.
I forced a grin. “I don’t know whether to be flattered that you think I can keep up with a bunch of twenty-two-year-olds, or be suspicious of why you want an old man like me there in the first place.”
He gave me a lopsided grin. “Shit. Was it that obvious?”
“Kinda, kid.” I turned and grabbed my wallet from the shelf, pulling out a wad of twenty-dollar bills and passing them to him. “First round’s on me.”
“Dude!” Cally launched himself forward, wrapping his arms around me and lifting me off the ground like I weighed nothing. I wasn’t the biggest guy on the team, but I wasn’t small either.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, patting his back and untangling myself from his grip. “Have fun, but not too much fun. Our flight leaves at nine, and I don’t want to see a repeat of Minneapolis.”
Ports, being from Minneapolis, had asked Coach if he and Cally could spend the night at his parents’ house instead of at the hotel. Since Hendricks was secretly a big old softie, he’d said yes. A couple of minutes before we were set to head to the airport the next morning, a red minivan came skidding to a stop alongside the team bus, the two rookies tumbling out with their hair wrecked and their clothes looking like they’d been put on in the dark. When they passed me on the way to their seats, I saw that Ports had a hickey the size of a quarter visible abovehis collar. I could only imagine what kind of debauchery they’d gotten into, and didn’t want to see a repeat performance here in New York.
Cally smirked, his cheeks and the tips of his ears turning pink. “Yes, Dad.”
A year ago, I’d been the guy who kept his head down and his mouth shut, grateful just to still be in the league. Now I was handing out drink money and curfew reminders to the rookies, and they listened.Huh. I’d spent the better part of a decade fading into the background of every locker room I’d ever been in, and somehow, somewhere along the way, I’d quietly stopped being that guy.
Bell sidled up alongside me, shaking his head with a fond smile, his eyes tracking Ports and Cally’s exit. Ports had climbed onto Cally’s back, his arms draped over his shoulders, hands fisted in the front of his hoodie. Cally had his arms hooked around Ports’s calves, his head tilted to the side and slightly back to see his face, that big goofy grin of his spread wide.
“I know I shouldn’t speculate,” Bell whispered under his breath, “but do you ever get, like … vibes … from those two?”
I watched them disappear through the door, Ports’s happy laugh ringing out.
