"When we met, you said all you could give was one-night. We’ve had months of them now and I thought that meant you could see what I see." The elevator door opens.
"What’s that?
"I see a man who lives for joy, but who doesn’t understand sometimes the pain makes the laughter sweeter."
I nearly collapse to the floor, instead pressing my head into the wall in front of me.
No.
This pain isn’t sweet.
Everything is sour, and dull, and a thick grey fog is creeping in around me.
How will I ever laugh again?
Rhys murmurs something and walks away. He must have pressed the button to send me back up because when the doors close I ascend.
I ignore the evidence of a night gone completely wrong as I shuffle to my bedroom and climb under the covers. I curl into myself and drift off into an empty kind of sleep.
Chapter forty
Felix Fornier
A Good Leader Delegates
Mymenmaycallme overbearing but it’s for their own good. It’s my duty as their captain to make sure their lives aren’t going to interfere with their performance on the ice.
I support them, I get involved, I make moves to protect them.
Coach nods in my direction and I nod back. He knows the room is tense tonight. Fuck, the bus we’re on from the hotel is silent with pent up aggression. He knows we’re fired up. I’ll speak with him in a minute.
He’s only focused on the primary issue. The obvious one.
Meanwhile I’m looking at the missed injury.
Duncan Paisley is out of sorts and has been this entire trip. My spidey senses were tickled when he took a rideshare the morning after his cooking lesson to the airport instead of letting me pick him up.
And the alarms have been blaring every night since.
He was lethargic on the ice our first two games out.
He’s getting in more fights than usual.
His head is down when he’s in the locker room.
The chirps he’s dishing out to the other team are actually mean.
I glance up and observe my teammates. They’re fired up on Crosby’s behalf tonight. Duncan is taking it just has hard as I am since he has made it his responsibility to protect his best friend too.
"Pay Day!" I bark and he sits up straight.
"Yeah Cap?"
"C’mere." Time for a pep talk.
"What’s up?" I can see him attempting to muster the strength to shove his feelings down.
Why do men do this?
