Page 95 of Breakaway Goals

Hayes didn’t often feel jealous of Morgan, but whenever he thought of how the Bandits had let him retire a Bandit on his terms, he felt an unpleasant jolt of it.

“No,” Barty admitted. “No. Probably not.”

“So then I’d be thirty-four, and the offers wouldn’t be as good as they’d be now.” It was unusual that Hayes had to push Barty to be this honest. Usually he loved being brutally frank about a situation. That told Hayes it was serious. That Barty was genuinely not convinced hecouldget the Sentinels to come around.

“No,” Barty said, shaking his head. Finally not offering any kind of qualifier.

It was shitty. There was no way around it. In some ways, they had him by the balls and they knew it, which was why they were acting this way.

Hayes took a long swig of his beer. Barty had been right. It sort of helped.

“What do you want me to do?” Barty asked.

“Give me the best-case scenario—not the one where they come to their senses and give me six years, eleven million a year,” Hayes said. “Theotherbest-case scenario.”

Barty drummed his fingertips on the table. “We push them the whole season and then see where we’re at. You’ve got a locked down no-trade clause. They can’t move you. They know that. So, we get them as far as we can, re-assess at that point, and if we have to move to the open market, come back with whatever juicy offers we get. Which will be a lot.” Barty paused. Tipped his martini glass in Hayes’ direction. “Especially if you keep on this tear you’re on. Point and a half per game? Thirty goals so far? You’re killing it. Then maybe the Sentinels want to match that, want to keep you, but maybe they don’t. We cross that bridge when we come to it.”

It was still shitty. There was no erasing that. Part of Hayes felt angry. Unwanted. Rejected. Even though he knew, better than most, how the NHL was a business.

He’d learned the hard way, being sent across the country practically in the middle of the night.

Traded for a whole bunch of draft picks, so the Mavericks could startanotherrebuild. Hayes had ranted to Barty, to Zach, to literally anyone who would listen to him, that if the Mavericks had just done the rebuild right thefirsttime and put the right pieces around him, they wouldn’t have had to start over.

Eventually Hayes had been forced to accept that this was just how things were. It was almost pointless to get angry about it, because there was nothing you could do to change it. Even your performance on the ice sometimes didn’t matter.

In the end, it had been fine. Good, even. And then great. The Sentinels had become his team. They’d won a Cup together.

But the lessons he’d learned hadn’t faded.

He’d only forgotten them for a little while.

“Okay,” Hayes finally said. “That’s the plan then. We push them as far and as hard as possible. I’ll give you all the ammunition I can. The rest is . . .” Hayes shrugged. He didn’t have to say it. Barty knew it.

“Not up to us,” Barty agreed.

Chapter 15

Morganhadlearned,prettyearly on in the season, that if he sat in the regular stands or too far to the front of the management’s box, he would spend half the game worrying that the camera would catch him at the worst possible moment—or that the media would spend the whole game trying to interpret every single one of his expressions.

Now he hid deep in the box. The view wasn’t as good, but it was better for the whole fucking world not to see every single one of Morgan’s lovestruck expressions as Hayes continued to play like he was ten years younger, out-skating and out-shooting and just plain fucking out-thinkingeveryone else on the ice.

Six years ago, he’d been reluctantly in awe of Hayes’ hockey.

Now, he couldn’t miss it.

“Dad, you don’t have to come tonight,” Finn told him very seriously as he’d caught a ride with his son to the arena. Jacob was in LA for a few days, doing some work for his foundation, so Morgan would be on his own tonight. “I’m not starting.”

Morgan knew that was true. He didn’tneedto be here, but it was even better watching Hayes in person, even if he had to do it from the back of the box.

But he couldn’t tell his son that.

“What if Silov gets hurt? What if he gets pulled?” Morgan questioned.

Finn only made a face. “Then I go out there without you or Jacob watching in person. It’s fine. I can handle it.”

“You’ve also won five in a row,” Morgan pointed out. “That’s not nothing.”

“It’s not even the longest win streak in the league this season,” Finn said.