5
RAFF
I hadn’t slept in days.
The team was on a bus to an away game, and I spent most of it staring out the window while my wolf gnawed at my insides.
It had been like this since the cafeteria. Every day my wolf dragged me toward Thorne's scent as if I was his pet and he was taking me for a walk. And whenever he pulled that stunt, I’d yank him back.
He wasn't handling it well. He’d gone from muted and cooperative to furious and relentless. He paced, shouted, and wailed at night. When I tried to sleep, he snarled.
It’d been so long since I’d had a decent sleep, I couldn’t remember what it was like to put my head on the pillow and close my eyes.
There was a spare seat beside me, and Angelo plonked himself into it and offered me a bag of trail mix. “You look tired, Raff.” He slapped my arm. “You should go to bed early tonight.”
“I’m fine.”
He raised a brow, left me the bag, and went back to his original seat. I appreciated that he didn’t push it, but he was human, and I couldn’t begin to tell him about my problem. “I met someone,” would be all he could understand.
I put in my earbuds and leaned my head against the window and tried not to think about gray eyes and a scent that was both the best and worst thing I'd ever encountered.
The game was a disaster. It wasn’t the team that was at fault but me.
From the first shift, I was half a step behind. My reads were off, my positioning was sloppy, and twice I lost my mark because my focus drifted at the wrong moment. My wolf didn’t care about the game and bugged me, scratching at my concentration as if he were trying to dig his way out.
Coach moved me down to the third line after the first period. By the second, I'd bobbled a routine pass and got caught flat-footed on a two-on-one that forced our goalie to bail me out.
Nobody said anything, but there were sideways glances between shifts from the other players. I knew those looks because I’d been the recipient of them from Bodie, and we’d both delivered similar ones when we’d played together before he died. The interpretation was I wasn’t pulling my weight, but they were too professional to call it out during a game.
Midway through the second period, Coach told me to take a seat. He didn’t give an explanation, and I didn’t need one. I sat on thebench and watched the rest of the game while my wolf howled and berated me while what remained of my pride slipped away.
We won the game, thanks to the guys who'd picked up my slack. They earned that victory, and I had no right to celebrate it.
The hotel was a mid-range place near the highway. Most of the team headed to their rooms after dinner, but I couldn't face four walls and my wolf’s relentless complaining. I ended up at the bar on the ground floor. There were a couple of businessmen in the corner and a bartender who wiped the bar constantly as they did in the movies.
I was on my second beer. The bartender gave me looks. She’d probably seen this before and assumed I’d either lost my job, all my money, or I’d been served divorce papers.
But Axel sat on the stool beside me and ordered a soda.
He sipped the bubbly liquid and watched the muted TV above the bar where a basketball game was playing. I appreciated that he didn't lead with the obvious, though I expected he was here to do just that on Coach’s orders.
“An angel passed.” I tossed more beer down my throat.
“Of all the things I expected you to say, that wasn’t one of them.”
“It’s from French, and it’s when there’s a comfortable lull in the conversation. It’s not awkward. It’s just that no one feels the need to say anything.”
He nodded, and we went back to our respective drinks and the basketball game. When he’d drained his glass, he said, “Rough night.”
“Try a rough couple of weeks.”
He asked for another drink and pointed to my beer, but I shook my head and put my hand over the bottle. “I’ve had bad games, but tonight wasn’t that. That was you being somewhere else and not on the ice.”
How I wished I didn’t have to respond, but I owed him an explanation.
“I’m not Coach, so I'm not going to bench you twice.” He paid for both our drinks. “But I've been where you are, and whatever's going on, it doesn't get better by ignoring it.”
He spoke with such sincerity that I believed him. He wasn’t just handing out advice but speaking from experience. He may not have a rebellious wolf, but he had emotional scars.
