Page 16 of My Pucking Enemy (The Milwaukee Frost #4)
“I should have,” Luca says, already flipping open his binder, then looking up at me. “A few years ago, they put Callum and Sloane through some shit too. It’s such a waste of time, a waste of everyone’s energy and resources.”
With a start, a sudden recollection, I realize what he’s talking about. That would have been during my trial, before my time with the FBI. Back then, I’d made friends with one of the jailers, and she’d bring me her gossip rags when she was done with them.
I hadn’t thought it important back then—in fact, the reason I loved those magazines was because everything was so unimportant. But now I can clearly remember Callum and Sloane splashed over the front.
“Wait,” I hold my hand up, “did Callum date Christie Elle? Isn’t that what that whole thing was about?”
“They’re just friends,” Luca sighs, and the room falls silent.
“Right.” I pause, looking down at my notes, shifting from foot to foot. Reading people might be one of my specialties, but I’m good at exploiting weaknesses, not comforting. I don’t know what to say to help him feel better.
There’s game film on my phone, and notes in my notebook, and I realize, sitting here, that Luca is normally the one who opens the meeting. He’ll talk about the team, what he knows, what happened the last time he was on the ice with them.
And now, he just sits in his chair, staring blankly into the distance. Quiet.
Any other man might be losing his shit right now with the knowledge of reporters outside his house and outside this arena, pushing up on the boundaries of his life trying to see inside.
But Luca McKenzie is, of course, still. Calm. Everything that’s tumultuous inside him hidden under the surface.
“Are you…good?” I manage, sitting up a little, eyes darting past him.
My dad was never comfortable sitting in bad feelings.
When a relationship ended, it was time for the next big, better thing.
If there was a problem, we fixed it with action.
Creative thinking. There was never any time for moping, and now, when I see a version of it on Luca’s face, it makes impatience ripple inside me.
“Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat and flipping over to another page in his binder. “Great.”
Then, nothing. This room, which is normally so full of life when we’re here together, is painfully silent now, with nothing but the sound of our breathing to fill the space.
It makes me want to crawl out of my skin.
Shutting my notebook a little too hard, I say, “I thought you said you weren’t in love with her.”
He looks up, blinking at me, as if genuinely surprised that I’ve navigated the conversation back to his divorce after such a non-engagement in our strategy.
“I’m not,” he says, brow wrinkling.
“So, stop.”
“Stop—what?”
“All—” I wave my hand around, gesturing vaguely to where he’s sitting “—this. The moping, or whatever this is.”
“I’m not moping.”
“Well, you’re definitely not doing your job, and it’s freaking me out.”
He stares at me for a second, then a little bubble of incredulous laughter comes out of him. “It’s freaking you out?”
“Yeah, do you want to do something about it? What is bothering you? Because I know a couple of tricks we can do to fuck with the paparazzi. We could drive by and blow glitter on them—though we’ll have to spend a pretty penny on glitter. The edible stuff—it’s the most difficult to get off.”
“No, I don’t want to assault the press,” he says, shaking his head. “And I’m not going to ask why you know that.”
“Glitter is a good non-weapon,” I argue, sitting back in my chair and crossing my arms. “So, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that my personal life is on display for the world!”
He doesn’t raise his voice, exactly, but he definitely puts more emphasis on it than he has since I first saw him inside the door today.
“Okay, so—how do we fix it?”
“I’ll just have to wait for it to go away.”
“And throw the season in the meantime?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Our voices start to rise, and I know there’s something wrong with me—how I crave the adrenaline of this, how I start to get out of my seat, eyes fixed on him.
He’s a big man, probably strong enough to throw me, but I’m the one with the upper hand here. Because I know something about him that he doesn’t seem to understand.
“Luca, if you just wait for this to go away, the team’s going to suffer. Lose more games. That will occur not just from the loss of your performance, but from the loss of their leader. Your attitude affects a lot more on the team than you think.”
“The whole point of this is for you to focus on the other teams, Beaumont. Not me.”
“No. The point is for me to make sure you win games. And right now, I can tell you with a certainty that you’re going to get pulled from the ice again, and the team is going to lose again, just like you did against the Bruins.”
Luca’s face is a storm cloud. “That’s not—”
“You want to talk strategy?” I come around the table, face him. “Then we need to talk about how you can get over this. If your head isn’t on right, then the team is out of alignment.”
“Well, what would you suggest?” he asks, turning to me with something mirroring actual exasperation. “I can’t get Mandy back. I can’t ask them not to date publicly. And anything I say to the press is just going to get twisted around.”
“Easy.” The idea comes to me just as quickly as it comes out of my mouth—the obvious answer to this question. The next move on the chess table. It’s so clear I’m shocked I didn’t suggest it earlier this week after the loss. “You date someone else.”