When Dyers shuffles past me, again, he oinks. The urge to feed him my stick is unreal, but as my head whips around to glare at him, the puck shuttles over to me and there’s no avoiding it.
With a small clip from the heel of my stick, I watch in dismay as it powers through the air, whipping past the Cougar’s goalie’s glove and landing in the top right corner.
The crowd cheers, but I can sense the bewilderment at the lack of a celly. The team claps me on the shoulders, but I shove them off and skate over to my starting position.
Yeah, I fucked up.
By the time the first intermission rolls around, we’re down 3-1.
The craving to feed him my stick. Inch. By. Inch. Has returned.
Until I inhale and exhale it.
But I can’t. I won’t. There’s a plan. Denny’s concocting it as we play.
When I sink onto the bench in my cubby, I yank off the straps on my helmet and swipe a towel over my head.
How I let D convince me to play tonight, I have no idea. The last place I want to be is on the ice, and considering it’s my home away from home, that’s really saying something.It makes sense that we’re losing anyway—I purposely stayed away from my pregame ritual as a ‘fuck you’ to the Dukes.
No “We Are The Champions” before warm-up and I refused to change the tape on my stick.
Makes sense the game’s a bust.
When Alec struts over to me, all red-cheeked and blustery with indignation, I don’t even look up. “What the fuck, man?”
I lock my eyes onto my skates.
It’s either that or?—
No.
Denny asked me not to get into any more fights.
Instead of wringing his neck, I screw up the towel in my hands.Toss it onto the floor. Then grab my stick and peel off the tape from the handle.
One - don’t hit him.
Two - don’t walk out.
Each turn of the tape, all eight of them, has me gritting my teeth so hard that I’m going to need to visit a dentist.
“Leave him alone, Alec. You’d be fucked up too if someone on your goddamn team, someone who’s supposed to have your back, pulled that kind of stunt on your girl,” Mason snipes.
Without breaking focus on my stick, I dip my chin in thanks.
“There are scouts out there!” Alec roars. “You’re making us look bad with this?—”
“What’s making us look bad is your shit skills as a captain,” Pecan bites off. “You’re fucking around and finding out, Alec. You want us on board, playing well and winning, then you shouldn’t go behind our backs and pull some messed-up stunt to get that fucker back in the room.”
“You have no right to?—”
“Sure I do. I just bet you took that picture. The angle was right, and the rest of us hate that dick, but you keep sticking up for him.”
“God, you’re all a bunch of whining babies,” Dyers butts in, but I canhearhis smug smile.
My knuckles ache with the need to beat into him.
Fuck.Fuck.
