Page 9

SEVEN

SANTA

I start jumping lightly on my feet in front of my cubby like I do before every single game. It’s easy and doesn’t take a lot of room, so it’s always been my preferred way of warming up before we go out for the actual warmups on the ice.

What’s different, of course, is the asshole in the cubby next to mine who’s tapping his feet to an unheard tune in his head. That’s right, he’s such a weirdo that he’s not even wearing any headphones and none of the younger guys have put on their playlist today.

It’s getting on my nerves and I can’t let it.

I can’t let him see that anything about him has an effect on me. I don’t want to hear another fucking tap, though. I really don’t. I...

“Stop that fucking shit,” I finally snap. And okay, it didn’t take long, but come the fuck on. I’m trying to get in the zone here before I put my skates on.

Heart opens his eyes slowly, as if coming out of a trance or something, and he turns his head up toward me like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

“Stop what?” he asks as if he doesn’t know. He even furrows his brow like he’s confused. Yeah right, I’m not buying it.

“Stop tapping your feet like you’re on speed or something.” I make an effort to whisper because I don’t want anyone else hearing the words coming out of my mouth.

He only stares at me for an uncomfortably long moment and then shakes his head.

“Why would I do anything you ask after your warm greeting yesterday?” he asks, but he’s already putting his head against his cubby and closing his eyes again.

“I can’t fucking hear myself think with all the fucking noise,” I tell him quietly. It’s only when I’m bending over to keep talking to him that I catch myself. I’m not supposed to talk to him. I’m not supposed to give a flying fuck about anything he does. And I’m blowing it with my accent. “Just stay the fuck away from me,” I mutter as darkly as I can with the thickest accent I can manage.

Then I turn on my heels and go to the back of the locker room where I can get some damn peace.

“You okay?” Bear asks me quietly when I stand next to him.

I simply grunt and get back to jumping. I even close my eyes so I won’t be distracted by anything. I want to smash something, I want to throw a fucking fit at having to share my team with Heart and how much he’s affecting me. How much his presence changes me.

And then Laney comes in and a hush falls over the room. Looks like I’ll need to get in the zone some other way today. I frown at the carpet while I hear Laney pumping us up to start the season as winners.

“And lastly, we’re gonna try something different today.” That gets my attention and I look up to see what he’s going to say. We never try anything different. We haven’t needed to try anything different since he became our head coach three seasons ago. We’ve won the Cup two out of those three seasons for fuck’s sake.

“Mater, like we discussed, you’re gonna be pairing up with Bates on the second line.” I turn to see Mater nodding at our coach and feel betrayal flood my whole body. “Santa and Sweetheart are on line one, all right? All right,” he cheers and claps, like there’s anything to cheer and clap for .

There isn’t. There fucking isn’t anything good about any of this.

“Suit up.” The yell is somewhat of a tradition around here, something Laney has been saying not only for those three years, but for every year he was here as a player too. He was the captain when I was called up from the farm team fourteen years ago. He welcomed me into this team, into this locker room, and he told us to suit up before every single game .

Now it feels like an empty tradition, though.

I barely feel Bear’s clap on my shoulder, then I walk back to my cubby as if through a fog. I put on my skates, grab my helmet and my mouthguard, and follow everyone to the tunnel on autopilot.

Normally I’d be shouting, bullshitting with my teammates and just shooting the shit basically. Up until the spot where the tunnel opens up I can be my true self, and then I get my game face on and I take everything seriously.

Not this time. This time I can’t focus on my teammates, I can’t focus on the walls, I can’t focus on any sounds or smells.

But then, as the light of the arena gets brighter, a face appears in front of me, and suddenly I see red.

“Dude, are you okay?” he shouts in my face.

And I snap.

I take his shoulders and turn him around until his back hits the cement wall hard . Then I follow it up by putting my forearm right up against his windpipe.

“Stay. The fuck. Away. From me,” I growl at him, letting every single thing I’m feeling power my movements and show in my face. I shove hard against him, probably choking him a bit, and then march toward the ice like a bull.

Finally, no one is in my way.

I skate for all I’m worth, blocking out everybody except the men on the ice. I don’t go over to the net to stretch with Bear. I don’t fistbump Benny or give Picard a pat on the shoulder. I just skate for five minutes around and around until I hear the whistle, and then I step out and march back to the locker room.

It’s not until I see Laney leaning against the door, looking at me like he’s two seconds away from murdering me, that I realize what I did.

Where I did it.

How I did it.

“Get in my office, now ,” he shouts angrily at me when I’m only a step away.

That’s a tone he’s never taken with me.

It hasn’t been necessary for one, but when you’ve known someone for so long, it’s not easy to reprimand them in a meaningful way. Well, Laney just achieved it flawlessly.

I hang my head and keep walking until I’m in his office. I decide to stay standing, not wanting to anger him any more by sitting down—which I know would piss him off.

“What the actual fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asks before he’s even through the door. Then he slams it behind him and rounds on me. “Attacking one of your teammates is a stupid enough thing to do, Nikolay.” Oh shit, he called me by my first name. I’m in seriously deep shit now. “But you go ahead and do it right before going out for warmups?” he keeps shouting.

“I—”

“Shut the fuck up,” he stops me.

His face is as angry as it was eleven years ago when we lost our chance to go to the playoffs because of a shitty call by a rookie ref. He got expelled from that game with three seconds left on the clock. That’s how little of a shit he gave about the consequences of getting in an official’s face. And right now I’m the lucky recipient of his “death face.”

“You don’t get to talk right now. You only get to listen. Unless you can tell me right fucking now that Sweetheart did something to you to deserve being choked and slammed against a wall, I don’t want to hear your fucking voice for a full week, do you understand?”

I clench my teeth, giving it some serious thought. Thankfully, I dismiss the idea of explaining anything to Laney quickly, and I just nod my head to show him I’m listening to him and I hear him.

“Now you’re gonna be puking tomorrow morning from how many suicides I’m going to have you doing, you better be sure of that, but for tonight you’ll keep your spot on the second line and I’m putting Sweetheart on the first with Mater.” Then he points a finger in my face. “You better stay in fucking line, Santa, or I swear to god you’re not gonna like the consequences.”

He leaves me alone in his office then. I follow behind him, hauling ass back to the locker room, and get there just in time to hear the announcement.

“Mater, you’re on first with Sweetheart.”

Laney leaves without giving anyone a chance to react, so it’s me they’re all left staring at. Bear marches up to me and pulls me out to the hallway.

“What the fuck, man? What did he say to you?” he demands. My heart breaks a little. I fucking love how loyal Bear is.

“Nothing.” I tell him the truth. “Nothing bad. I just snapped,” I confess, confused. Why can’t I keep my shit together when it comes to Heart? Why do I let him get to me like this?

“Are you sure?” Bear checks again, with doubt all over his face.

“I swear,” I tell him seriously. “Come on, we should go back in. We have a game to win.”

And everything that happened in the last twenty minutes probably fucked with most of the guys’ rituals.

Fuck.

Charlie’s is the first face I see when I step back into the locker room—because I might have been looking for him, but lets not focus on that—and the anger reaches boiling point in less than a second.

I really fucking hate his face.

I stare at him, hard, and he stares right back. For the first time, I see anger on his face and it brings me a sick satisfaction.

I got under his skin too .

So there’s that.

We win only by the skin of our teeth.

What should’ve been a standard divisional game against Phoenix was a shitshow from the second it started, but in the end we did get the W, pretty much all thanks to Bear, if I’m honest.

We went into overtime and Jules put a beautiful one in the back of the net—but only after Charlie dived in to make a fucking heroic-looking save. I hope he has that bruise on his ribs for three fucking weeks .

Jules picked up the puck after it bounced around and broke away to the other side of the ice, and made it look fucking easy.

No one but Bear has talked to me since before the warmups and I don’t fucking blame them, but can’t they see that it’s not really my fault?

It’s Charlie who’s at fault here. He’s the one who came in here and didn’t even bother owning up to all the bullshit that’s happened over the years.

He’s the asshole, the piece of shit, and the fake nice guy. I’m not falling for it the way Milkman is. I see him go up to Charlie after the game, and Eagle and Spiderman follow, the dumbasses.

I shake my head and decide to just clean up and get out of here. I need to get back to having a cool head. I need to get back to ignoring Charlie Heart’s existence.

I look at Jules as he walks out of the showers and know just the way to do that.

I rush through my own shower—I’ll take another one when I get to my suite anyway—and find Jules gone when I get back .

“Where’s Picard?” I ask Spiderman.

“Family room,” he says between bites of his sandwich. I nod and dress back in my suit quickly, then haul ass to the family room.

Maybe the kiddos are here today. I forgot to look for them during the game because... well, it’s obvious why, but hanging out with them is just what I need. There’s nothing cuter than Jamie, Jake, Jules, and Sterling’s kids, and I want to hang out with them tonight. It’s the only thing that will bring me peace.

But when I step into the room, I know there’ll be no peace any time soon.

There he is, surrounded by his brothers... and cousins, aunts, uncles, and mother by the size of the group around him. All of them smiling. All of them cheering for him.

Fuck this shit, and fuck Charlie Heart.