Page 26

Harrison

W hen my alarm goes off, it feels like a missile piercing directly into the center of my soft, molten brain.

“Aw, fuck,” I mutter into the pillow, scrounging around on the ground by the couch with my left hand, trying to find the fucking phone that just won’t stop ringing. My skin sticks to the leather when I peel off of it, rolling onto the floor and finally finding the phone under the coffee table.

I jab the screen, turning off the offensive sound and letting my head thump back against the floor.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been on my back in the living room. Not even this week.

It’s been four and a half weeks since the last time I saw Lovie.

Almost five weeks since she invoked that stupid fucking article from that stupid fucking contract that I never should have signed.

Outside the windows of my loft, snow comes down heavily, and I already know without looking that it’s going to be the kind of icy, frozen snow that makes life a living hell.

The phone goes off again. Apparently, I snoozed it, rather than turning it off. And there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to go back to sleep now.

Not that I should be going back to sleep. I should be getting up, getting some pep in my step if I want to recover any small chance this team has of making it to the playoffs. Of getting anywhere close to the Stanley Cup.

Lovie has been doing her part. All the way from Maine, she analyzes the games and sends in her clinical, voiceless feedback. Admin is still happy with her performance, and has ignored my several suggestions that she would do her job much better from here rather than back in Maine.

All that did was earn me a couple of sly looks—and suddenly I wanted to lay out all the fuckers in that room for implying what they did.

Do I miss her body? Every second.

But I miss her more. The sound of her breathing when she fell asleep next to me. Her laughter out on the ice, realizing she could keep her balance without me. The joy on her face when I admitted to her that she was doing something, that her efforts really were having an effect on the Blue Crabs.

The building feels empty and lifeless without her here, like the brick walls around me have lost some of their warmth.

Like I have every morning since she left, I shove those thoughts down to the bottom of my mind, force myself to get to my feet, and shuffle into the bathroom. I shower and shave and pull on my clothes like there’s a reason to.

I drive to the complex. I get out of my car in the freezing cold and try to pretend I’m not royally pissed that the air hurts my face, that the parking lot is thick with muck and salt, that the snow seems to come down harder the second I’m in its direct fire.

“Good morning, coach.”

“Jay,” I manage, not sure I can push out a good morning when it’s still the furthest thing from what I’m feeling. The security guard gives me a knowing look, then clears me through, handing my bag back to me.

“Try to have a good day, man.”

I thank him and head up to my office, sitting down heavily in my chair. I should be checking in on the guys at training, make sure they’re following the routines set forth by Lovie and the team of physiologists she hired. But I don’t have the energy for it.

Instead, I pull up the film from that game.

The pre-Christmas game, after I’d ripped that stupid fucking Santa hat from my head and was forced to go down to the ice, coaching even though the only thing I wanted to do was get on a plane and follow Lovie home.

Talk to her about this.

Convince her to stay. I knew that I could, and from the look on her face, she knew that I could, too.

On the screen, I watch the team falling apart. Maybe if I’d been fully present, I could have pulled them back together after the loss of Greenhill. Maybe I could have told them to get their minds off the shit about me in the press and focus on the game.

Instead, I shouted at them to get their heads out of their asses, and made one of myself in the process.

As the morning goes on, I run through our most recent games, knowing that Deacon and Samir have been stepping up a lot.

That the games we won were likely in spite of me, rather than because of my excellent leadership.

Every day I leave this place, I promise myself that the next day will be different, that I’ll finally break out of my funk, that I’ll finally get over her.

And every morning, I wake up feeling like I’ve been hit by a two-ton truck.

“Coach.”

I look up to find Ki Park in the doorway to my office, lips pressed together like he’s had to say my name more than once. I close the videos on my monitor.

“What’s up?”

“The meeting?” Park says, raising his eyebrows, and when I glance back down at my screen, I see that tomorrow is the first of February, and that means we’ll have our monthly huddle.

“Right,” I say, pushing myself to stand, wanting to do anything else in the world than go sit in a room with those assholes. “Be right there.”

Ten minutes later, I’m sitting in a room filled with stakeholders, eyes focused on my pen as I tap it against the table. Every time I’m away from the ice, the only thing I want is to get back there and do some coaching.

But each time I take the ice, I can only think about being on it with her, feeling her gaze on me from the stands that night.

Her ghost hovers in every alcove of this building.

“…preparation for what will hopefully be a successful play-off run,” one of the marketing guys says, turning to me with a wide, white smile. “Right, coach?”

I blink at him—am I supposed to promise him that we’ll be making it to the playoffs?

“Sure.”

I see the corners of Ki’s lips turn down, but I can’t bring myself to care. Later, he’ll say something to me about attitude, about how I affect the overall atmosphere of the meeting. I’ll suggest he stop inviting me. That will likely repeat until he either quits or fires me.

The marketing guy’s smile slips a bit, and he turns back to the others, talking about special play-off passes and perks for the fans. A meet and greet before the games, the standard things marketing ropes us into for the sake of higher sales.

Then, it’s PR’s turn. Jared Davis clears his throat and begins to speak.

Since the article came out, I’ve been CC’ed on every PR email chain.

Seen all of them talking about me and Lovie like we’re troublesome teenagers they need to reign in.

In most of them, Jared Davis has been having a field day, gathering up every article and video about us, making it clear that the internet has a lot to say about me.

The opinions are all divided. Half of them think I’m just a guy going after a hot woman. They call me a player, say I’m a silver fox.

And the other half of the comments? They say I’m manipulative. That I took advantage of Lovie. That I should be fired instantly.

Jared Davis has made sure to bring every single article to my attention, inadvertently or not.

I bite my tongue hard enough to draw blood when I look at the fucker.

Something about him has always rubbed me the wrong way.

Hair parted way too far to the side, a suit with sleeves that are too short, the sort of condescending little smirk that comes from an Ivy League, silver-spoon-up-the-ass, boys club sort of upbringing.

“After last month’s little scandal,” he says, straightening his papers and addressing the room. “I’m happy to report that we’ve got control of the comments on our social media posts again, and our surveys are coming back much more positive now.”

I clench my hands under the table and try not to give Ki anything more to be pissed off about. Breathing slowly, I bring air in through my nose and out through my mouth. Zen shit.

“Of course, there are still comments coming through, and we’ve been the subject of a few YouTube commentary videos.”

When he turns and clicks on the projector behind him, revealing the thumbnail for a video that prominently features Lovie and I standing together at the Christmas market, I hear the screech of my chair before I realize I’ve stood up.

“Mr. Davis,” Ki has already started to say, but I cut him off, turning my fury toward Jared.

“What the fuck is this?” I snarl, throwing my hand toward the screen.

Jared glances at it, then back at me, tilting his head like he doesn’t understand. “That is a picture of you and one of your subordinates, Mr. Clark.”

“She wasn’t—isn’t—my fucking subordinate, and I’m ready for you to let this go.”

“Too bad the public doesn’t follow the same disinterest path as you, Clark,” Jared says, still smirking. “It would definitely make my job a lot easier. In the future, I’d suggest not being so public with her when you go out?—”

As I stare at him, register the pleasure that he’s taking from this whole thing, something occurs to me for the first time.

Since the day that article came out, I’d just assumed it was a random fan who took the pictures of us, submitted them for a buck to a local magazine. Or maybe someone had posted us on their story, thinking it was nothing, only seeing me with a new woman.

But maybe it wasn’t a random fan.

Maybe it was someone who knew exactly how these photos would affect me, Lovie, and this team. Maybe it was someone who would have a lot to gain if PR was suddenly a lot more important and involved.

“You took those pictures, didn’t you?” The words come out of me before I can vet them, and the look on Jared’s face tells me everything I need to know the second he hears them.

“W-what?” he stammers, raising his hands in a sign of obvious guilt, glancing around the rest of the room, as though looking for confirmation that this line of questioning is totally unfair. “No, of course not. I wasn’t even at the Christmas market!”

But I don’t need to hear another word out of his mouth. I can see from the look on his face that it was him. Whether or not he took the pictures himself, he had something to do with this entire thing.

With Lovie leaving.

Why? Because he showed interest in her, and she didn’t want him?

As far as I’m concerned, this asshole should be the real target of the comments.

I’ve heard stories about him making comments to people, making his department so uncomfortable our best would rather quit than try to make a comment to HR, try to get something fixed.

And he was obviously interested in Lovie, obviously trying to do the same exact thing to her. Potentially, he even followed her to that market with me.

I’m across the room before I realize what I’m doing, and my fist is landing on Jared Davis’ smug, smirking face, his cheek crumpling under the force like the fucker is made of bird bones.

“Harrison!” Ki calls, jumping up. Other arms loop around me, trying to pull me back, but I’m able to get a hand on Davis’ shirt before they rip me away.

“If you ever fuck with her again,” I spit, fury rattling through me like a runaway train. “I’ll do a lot more than give you a black eye.”