Page 81 of Breakaway Goals

“They low-balled him initially. He says it’s gonna be fine, but if he’s worried, then I’m sort of worried.”

“Shit. Monty. That’s ridiculous. Of course they want to keep you. You’re their captain.”

“Yeah, so was Marchand, and look what the Bruins did to him,” Hayes said.

Zach made a frustrated noise under his breath, and his eyebrows pushed together, eyes narrowing. “And you’re in your fucking prime.”

“Thanks,” Hayes said dryly.

“What’s Barty’s plan? I know him. He’s got one.”

And of course, like everything else, even a subject change circled back to Morgan.

Hayes sighed. “He wants me to convince Morgan as Finn’s dad to talk me up.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Zach choked out. “You’re not going to let him?”

“No.No. Hell no. Just . . .” Hayes had been sitting out here, watching as the sun skimmed across the sky and eventually dipped past the horizon, thinking of this the whole damn time. “Just, what if he’s right and it would help? I want to stay here, Zachy. What if it helps me do that?”

“And heowesyou,” Zach said, more than a little self-righteously.

Hayes didn’t know if he’d go that far. “I guess.”

“You guess? He fucked you up, Monty.”

“We fucked each other up,” Hayes said heavily. That much had been obvious, from the way Morgan had looked up at him in the mirror when he’d opened the bathroom door. “It was probably never going to turn out differently. Even if I hadn’t kicked him out in New York, it was always going to end badly.”

Zach pursed his lips, looking like an overly concerned grandmother, even though he was a year younger than Hayes. “You should do it, Monty. I bet he’d agree, no question. I still remember the shit he said to the media about you at Four Nations. He knows just how good you are. And you’ve only gotten better.”

“It could turn into a circus, all over again,” Hayes said, still not convinced. He wanted to stay in Tampa, but he didn’t want to do it at this cost.

He’d tried so hard to distance himself from Morgan and Morgan’s legacy, over the years. He didn’t want to erase all that work just because he was desperate and it was Barty’s first idea.

He’d find others. He’d find a way to make it work. He always had, before. It was why he’d never considered switching to a different agent. Barty was the best. There was a reason he had a freaking yacht.

“Just think about it,” Zach said, echoing what Barty had said himself, when they’d said goodbye a few hours earlier.

Hayes wanted to say that he wouldn’t, but he knew himself. He was a self-professed obsesser. There was no way this question wouldn’t linger. That he wouldn’t turn it inside out dozens of times in the safety of his own brain.

“Sure,” Hayes said.

“And maybe they’ll come to their senses without it. I’m sure they will. The Sentinels love you,” Zach said loyally.

Nobody was as loyal as Zach; it was one of the many reasons they were still friends, over ten years after they’d met for the first time.

“This is a business, Zachy,” Hayes reminded him and Zach made a face.

This was why Zach had retired early from the NHL. He hadn’t liked being athing, a pawn to be moved around on the board as management saw fit.

Hayes couldn’t say he loved it either, but even though he’d been traded across the country once, it had always seemed like a decent tradeoff to play the sport he loved.

The millions of dollars didn’t hurt, either.

“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Zach said. “I can talk you up, too. I’m not nobody, not anymore.”

Hayes smiled. “You’ve never been nobody.”

“Yeah, but now I’ve got a national championship under my belt and it turns out that people take that really fucking seriously.”