“That’s what the fuck I’m talking about, boys!” Tiago called from a few feet away. “I don’t want to hear shit tonight about how Salem’s an easy win. They’re going to make it difficult for us. Jonah’s little gremlin brother is going to make it hard to get that puck in the net. So I want you focused. I want every ounce of your attention on the plays. I want to bring home a fucking win!”
“Fuck yeah, Cap!”
“Let’s fucking do this.”
“Let’s fucking goooo!”
We won, but barely. We were three minutes from OT when Tiago finally got a decent shot on goal and sent it past Micah’s pads. He was defending angry tonight, from what I could tell. But so was I. I swore I could feel his pissed-off energy cascading across the ice at me, but Tucker was right.
I had been an emotional dumping ground and a problem solver for years. Since the three of us stopped talking to Mom. And usually, it was fine. Even when I was stressed, I could take on their emotional burdens.
I wanted to ask what was wrong with Micah—what he had going on—but I didn’t have the space for it. So instead of seeking him out after the game, I turned down Tiago’s offer to eat a protein bar and shuffled onto the bus to knock out in my seat.
Which was a great plan. It was a fucking fantastic plan.
Except my phone buzzed just as we were heading out onto the road, and of course, it was Alexio.
I wanted desperately to ignore it, but he was helping to take care of my dad, and this was not a time I could ignore him.
“Yeah?” I said when I answered through my earbuds.
He sighed, and I could hear his irritation. “Not happy to hear from me?”
“What do you want? Is my dad okay?”
“Better than you, I’m hearing.”
I sat halfway up, my brows furrowed. “What the fuck does that mean? We won our game, dickhead. A shutout, if you must know.”
“Against Salem,” he said with a scoff. “I’ve seen their stats. That should have been an easier win.”
“My brother is a goddamn beast in the net,” I murmured, curling into myself. It felt like such an automatic response these days—like it was media trained into me to defend Micah’s position in that shitty-ass team. “And the Fury is rebuilding.”
“From what?” Alexio asked with a laugh.
I rubbed my temple and decided not to answer him. “Did you call to piss me off, or…”
“You need to eat something. And sleep. And take care of yourself if you don’t want to get traded to an even worse team because you let yourself fall apart.”
“You my fuckin’ mom now?” I demanded.
He made an irritated noise. “No. Because I’m here with your dad and not prancing around the English countryside.”
Rage raced through me, along with something else, and it took me a moment to feel what it really was: shame. I was ashamed. My mother had given me nothing but childhood trauma, and yet I felt embarrassed like I was the one who had left.
“Fuck you,” I hissed at him.
He snorted. “If I was there right now, Iwouldfuck you. I’d fuck you to sleep, then wake you up, fuck you starving, feed you a dozen eggs and four bagels, then fuck you back to sleep again.”
I only just manage to bite back a groan. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing is wrong with me, but I can tell something’s wrong with you.” He was quiet for a long second. “Where are you right now?”
“The bus,” I grunted. I rolled over a little in the uncomfortable stretch of seats.
“Alone?”
“No, jackass. We’re on our way to New York.” I pitched my voice as low as I could, which probably wasn’t low enough for a bus full of blind dudes who had trained their hearing to be ableto hear a puck sliding across a rink full of ice in a crowd full of screaming fans.
