I suck in a breath.Grab the tape. Start the process. All eight times because that’s the first time Denny told me she loved me. At eight. As a brother, sure. But it always mattered to me.
Being a part of her familyalwaysmattered to me.
“Did you hear someone talking?” Pecan puts a hand to his ear. “It was like… some littlebitchspeaking out loud.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Alec groans. “We need to win this one!”
Ignoring him, I snag the bottle of water Gregg tosses at me before clapping Alec on the back.Hard enough for him to almost fall into my cubby.“I think you know what to do if you want us playing cohesively.”
Cursing, our captain strides off, but Gregg mutters, “Suck on that, fuckface.”
If I weren’t so furious, I’d laugh.
In the second period, I intercept a pass between two Xavier Cougars players and shoot the puck down the ice to Gregg.
Who purposely fumbles it.
Even though the goal’s clear, wide open, no D-men around.Well, there weren’t any. Gregg’s so slow, half the Cougars show up and the puck goes out of play, proving that he’s deep into the sabotage.
Alec roars, “Gregg!” but he just shoots him a grin and skates back to the line.
The rest of the game’s a mess.
Dissent in the ranks isn’t fun, and Alec doesn’t have the people skills on a good day to manage us. Never mind a shitty one.As for Coach, he’s too busy screaming up a storm to actuallycoach.
We lose 9-1.
One of the worst defeats in team history and a personal disaster forPeeks’ GAA—one that he, along with the other goalies, embrace after being shuffled in and out of nets the entire game.
“Is it wrong that I’m glad that score will be associated with my name for all to see and know until the end of time?”
“According to Denny, civilization’s on its way out, Peeks.”
“Gah, she would say that. I hope it goes on and on just so that in 2451, some punk’s looking through our records and wonders how a pretty decent team lost 9-1.”
“They’ll never think it’s over our star forward’s girl.” Mason cackles.
Honestly, it’s strange for everyone to be so happy that we had such a sound defeat, but there ya go.
As they trudge into the showers, I notice they bump fists with Peeks.
“What did you do?”
He shrugs as I stop him from heading that way too. “Showed up for Denny. Should have done last year. I failed her.” His Adam’s apple bobs. “Had to figure out thatshowingis better than telling.”
“Hailey told you that, huh?’
“Maybe. Denny’ll be mad that we threw the game.”
“Yup.” I clap him on the shoulder. “But she deserves no less.”
“Damn straight. We’re about to get hauled over the coals by Coach.”
“Worth it.”
We bump fists too.
Coach lets us shower then, as predicted, while he hands us back the phones he confiscates before every game, he tears into us.
