“Is that really the best you can find?” Mom asks. “Honestly. Getting into fights? Staying in a run-down hotel? Noah. Are you having a midlife crisis or something?”
“Tenley.”
“Mom.”
“What?” She moves away from the screen. “I can’t worry about my son?”
“He’s fine, Tenley.”
“Look, I have to go. We’re going to be heading out soon and I don’t want to be late. I love you guys.”
“We love you, son. Make sure you get into your place soon, okay? I can only hold Mom off for so long,” Dad tells me, a smirk on his face.
“I heard that.” Mom pops up behind him. “Play well, sweetheart. Love you.”
“Love you. Bye.”
I end the call before I can get my ass handed to me again.
Chucking everything I need into my overnight bag, I sling it over my shoulder and walk out the door. Their advice wasn’t bad.
I’m better than this. Better than stewing over what I lost and fighting it—and teammates—because it’s not what I know. What I’m used to.
Hell, if that happened during a game, we’d be the laughingstock of the league for years to come.
I need to get my head on straight. The Knights is my team.
Graham Fisher is my teammate. I can make this work.
I have to.
Because otherwise, I have no other option. When I got traded, Nashville put a no-trade clause in my contract. After this, if they don’t want me, that’s it. I’m cut.
No other team would want me.
Fake it ’til I like Graham Fisher is going to be my new motto.
I can make it work.
Right?
“That was a great goal tonight,”Graham tells me. It’s hard to miss the awkward intonation in his voice.
“Thanks.” I drop the bag onto the hotel room bed as I watch him shrug out of his suit jacket. There’s a stilted silence between the two of us. “D looked good.”
Graham nods back to me. “Thanks.”
God, is it always going to be this hard?
Be the bigger person, Noah.
Graham extended an olive branch, so there’s no use in throwing it back in his face. I need to ignore the voice in the back of my head saying that he started it all.
Bigger person.
“We played well as a team, even if we lost. Defense is looking good.”
“Yeah, thanks. We’ll have to clean some stuff up in practice.”
