Theo wraps his arm around the top of my shoulders. “Matty! You were unstoppable tonight.”
“That’s a little generous. I scored one goal.”
“After not scoring any in the last few weeks, I’d say you were on fire.”
Theo laughs, releasing me and bumps his shoulder into mine. We all file off the ice and down the tunnel to the dressing room at the end of the hall. The energy in there tonight is vastly different than it has been the past few weeks.
“Matty fuckin’ Ford!” our assistant coach, Coach Frost, calls out as I walk in. The guys break out into hoots and hollers. “Goddamn, we missed you.”
“Asshole,” I mutter under my breath, laughing as I pull off my helmet and walk over to my spot. Physically, I’ve been here, but recently, I disappeared on the ice. Until tonight.
Everyone starts stripping out of their gear and Cross rises to his feet. “Alright, boys. I think we know who the player of the game is tonight without even saying it.” He holds up the hawk mask, his gaze pinning on mine. “We’re a family. We all feed off each other’s energy, and tonight, someone truly brought what we needed. He stepped up and pushed himself, which made all of us push even harder.”
Our head coach stands off to the edge of the room, a hint of a smile on his lips, but he doesn’t dare to fully let it show. He looks over at me, his dark gray eyes meeting mine.
Coach Ford is ruthless. He has high expectations of all of us and me being his nephew doesn’t grant me any free passes. If anything, he pushes me harder than anyone else.
Cross strides over to me, holding out the hawk mask. “You earned this tonight, fair and square.”
I take it from him, pulling it over my face as the guys break out, chanting my name. “Matty! Matty! Matty!”
Adrenaline courses through me and I climb up onto my seat, curling my fists as I start to hold my arms out to the side, elbows bent. I tip my head back, letting out the most obnoxious, high pitched hawk call that sounds like a war cry.
The room breaks out in similar variations of the sound and honestly, we all just sound like a bunch of psychotic men mimicking raptors from a dinosaur movie. Shaw was the one who informed us that they actually use hawk calls when they make those movies.
A pointless piece of information, but oh well.
I jump down, my bare feet hitting the floor as I pull the mask off and toss it down. “We’re gonna do exactly what we did tonight, every night. We’re so fucking back. No one is going to be able to stop us.”
Theo whistles and the other guy’s clap. The energy in the room is insane, you’d think we just won the biggest game of the season. I sit back down on the bench, busying myself with my gear as I put everything where it goes.
“What’s your secret, Matty?” Anderson, one of the other centers, calls over to me.
“Yeah, did you break your resolution?” Tyson chimes in.
I shrug, glancing at the two of them. “I don’t know. Not really.”
“Not really?” Theo questions me, casually slipping into the conversation.
I grab my clean clothes to head to the showers. There’s no one I’m talking to, although, there’s someone I can’t stop thinking about. “I met a girl at the coffee shop the other day, but that was it.”
“What’s her name?”
Her name rolls off my tongue. “Jade.”
“No last name?”
I laugh, shaking my head. “I didn’t get it.”
“You get her number?”
A chuckle rumbles in my chest as my mind drifts back to Jade. She had such an attitude, I liked it. “She wouldn’t give it to me.”
The thought of chasing her has me by the balls. That’s got to be where the excitement and the distraction truly comes from. The chase before getting what I want.
“You gotta see her again. That will be the real test of the theory.”
“I will.”
