“You could just get a new car. At this point, you’re sinking more money into it than it’s worth.”
“Rude.” Sandro patted his SUV when they neared. “Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t understand the relationship between a man and his car.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Roman leaned back against his own car, conveniently parked next to Sandro’s. His expression was darkly amused when he said, “I lived out of my car when I got kicked out for being gay, remember?”
Sandro winced. “Yeah, all right. Sorry.” Roman was so settled now, both professionally and personally, that Sandro often forgot that hadn’t always been the case. “She’s my baby, though, you know?” He patted the side of his SUV again. “She was my first big purchase after I started playing for the Trailblazers. She’s been with me since the beginning. We’ve been through four Stanley Cup wins, three team uniform redesigns, five—or is it six?—head coaches, and more than one rookie who’s puked in the back seat on the way home from the bar. She and I? We’re in this until the end.”
“Speaking of rookies, how’s it going with Eli?”
“Good. He hasn’t asked for a trade yet, so I think I’m winning.”
Roman’s laugh was a low rumble. “Glad to hear it, because I need you to take over the mentorship program.”
Sandro laughed, but when Roman didn’t join in, Sandro gaped at him. “I’m sorry, what?”
Casually, as if he hadn’t just handed over the program he’d been nurturing since its infancy, Roman crossed one ankle over the other. “There are a couple of programs I want to get off the ground this season or next, but I can’t do that without letting something else go. There aren’t enough hours in the day.”
“Okay,” Sandro said slowly. “So I’d be what? Your assistant?”
“More like a program coordinator, but the title doesn’t really matter. I need you to run it but also expand it to include a wellness initiative. Playing professionally can be overwhelming and intimidating without the right support in place.”
Sandro thought of what Eli had said earlier about the NHL being nothing like the AHL and couldn’t fault Roman’s logic.
“But the wellness initiative isn’t only for rookies,” Roman continued. “The team’s got medical staff to treat the body and therapists to treat the mind, but this initiative needs to treat the space between—identity, transition, peer culture. That ‘who am I when I’m not playing hockey’ question.”
Sandro swallowed hard. He’d been grappling with who he was outside of hockey for a while now, and Roman wanted him to walk others through that?
“Why me?”
“Because you have the lived experience. You’ve been with the team for sixteen years—you’re universally respected, you know what rookies fear, and you know what vets try to hide.”
“So? That doesn’t give me the credentials for this kind of thing. Don’t you want to hire someone with project management experience? Or at the very least someone with a degree in something other than general studies?”
“No. I want you.” Roman jabbed a finger in Sandro’s direction for emphasis. “You don’t need credentials. Look, you might not recognize it, but you’ve shaped men here for years. You have trust, empathy, and experience, something no degree can give you. Players will follow you, whether you’re playing or working in the background, and I want to build something that lasts.”
Warm fuzzies erupted in Sandro’s chest. Was that really how Roman saw him?
Except Roman ruined it by saying, “Plus, this way you’ll have a job lined up when you retire at the end of the season.”
Stomach bouncing until it settled somewhere in the vicinity of his toes, Sandro let out a half-amused, half-panicked tch sound. “What are you talking about? I’ve got two seasons left after this one, minimum.”
Roman’s expression went very Bitch, please. Who are you trying to fool? “We both know your body can barely handle this one.”
Annoyed now, Sandro dug in his pocket for his keys. “Fuck you, Roman.”
“What part of your body doesn’t hurt right now?”
Because he wanted to give Roman a truthful answer, Sandro did a mental inventory. “My head.”
Roman sighed. Straightening, he tugged open his driver’s side door. “I’ll schedule us a meeting in a couple of days to talk about the program. I have ideas.”
Of course he did.
chapter seven
Bennett’s new footage for the docuseries was—Christ, he couldn’t believe he was going to admit this, even in just his own head—uninspired.
Sitting at the desk in the spare room of the townhouse the Trailblazers had set him up in, he tried not to cringe as he watched the interview footage he’d shot earlier in the week. First Dabbs, then Michael Hughes, then Sean Gaffney. He’d spliced it into a five-minute video featuring the week’s highlights and he’d sent it to David a few hours ago, but he didn’t need the inevitable phone call from his executive producer to know exactly what he’d say about it.
