Page 22 of Hard to Handle

Since Dekker.

Stopping to catch my breath, I rest my hand on my stick and take in the arena around me. Years upon years of blue and red pennants hang from the rafters while images of the team’s history play out over the uppermost walls. Defining moments in the franchise’s history. Defining moments in the league’s history. And while I shouldn’t care about any of it, it’s a history I never thought I’d get to be part of and now hope to leave my own mark on as well.

And that, in and of itself, makes me a prick.

How can I be grateful to play here when Jonah can’t? How can I be happy when I’m the one who took his place?

Christ. Isn’t that why I play for the Jacks? I could have been on any playoff-contending team but he told me to play here. He told me this was the decision he would have made. And since I play for him, I did what he suggested.

Who knew it would work? Who knew I’d be the starting block management built the franchise around and that in my second year here, we’d be in playoff contention?

Always the big brother, always looking out for me.

Even after what I did to him.

But that’s why this is so fucked. Sanderson is already threatening that contract talks are going to be brutal when they were the ones who begged me to come here . . . and then not keep their promises. Why can’t I just play the game I train every day for?

I close my eyes for a second and breathe it in. It’s by far my favorite time in any arena, when the nineteen thousand or so seats are vacant, and it’s just me and the ice and a game I’m lucky to be gifted at.

Nothing can beat the roar of the crowd as you’re dancing down the ice, weaving between defenders while trying to control the puck, but there’s something about the silence that is more profound. Almost as if the silence reflects the magnitude of it all.

So how come I’m feeling that less and less?

How come most days, this gift feels more like a curse?

Why have I come to rely on these early morning sessions with just me and the puck and the silence of an absent crowd to attempt to keep my head in the game?

“What is it?” Maysen asks.

I shake my head and eye his beer. “That shit better be cleared out of your system before game time.”

Grunt. Smack. Thud.

“Relax, Captain. The game is over twelve hours away and I’ve got an IV set up at noon. You know, I feel like I’m coming down with something”—he fake coughs—“so I already set it up with the doc to give me more fluids to replenish—er, flush my system.”

“How are you even any good?” I joke, knowing full well, I’d never pull a stunt like that.

“It’s in my genes.”

“You wish it were in your jeans.” I roll my eyes.

“Jealous?” he asks, when we both know my stats run circles around his.

“Drink the fuck up,” I mutter.

Grunt. Smack. Thud.

“Mind telling me what the hell is up your ass, Maddox?” he asks again, his skates cutting across the ice the only other sound between us.

“I do mind and it’s nothing,” I grumble, refusing to look his way, but swipe his beer from his hand as he skates past and help myself to the rest of it without asking. As much as it tastes good, it also isn’t what I want.

It seems I don’t know what I want these days.

“Nothing?” His chuckle resonates.

“Yeah, nothing. Why?”

He moves his jaw from side to side as his eyes question me with things I don’t quite understand. “Just trying to figure out what’s going on with you.”