Page 4 of Rule 4: Never Get Stranded with a Sports Reporter

Or what to do about the man clutching my waist like I’m the only thing keeping him afloat.

Three days ago, I strode into the locker room under a different kind of heat—one I’d brought on myself.

CHAPTER TWO

Jason

Three days earlier

The second I enter the locker room, I know everything I feared since I saw the news on X has come true.

Some of my teammates glower. Others avoid my gaze.

No one smiles.

“You fucked up.” Axel leans against his locker, his dark hair not yet curling from sweat, his arms crossed as if to resist the impulse to strangle me. His pale-blue eyes are as cutting as his jaw line and excessively high cheekbones. I look away, like I always do when my teammates strut half-naked, but this time, it’s not from discomfort.

The boa constrictor wrapped around my chest ever since I read that Dmitri Volkov, my linemate and all-around top teammate of the month, every month, was deported, tightens its grip.

Would he have been deported if I hadn’t told the media that his relationship with Oskar Holberg, the Coach’s son, was fake?

Guilt gurgles in my gut.

Jesus, if only I hadn’t scored a goal that night. If only I hadn’t been in the pressroom. If only I hadn’t seen fucking Cal Prescott for the first time in a decade and felt like my world was careening off-kilter.

I rarely score goals.

I’m the guy in the background, the guy to pass a puck to when you’re surrounded by players from the opposing team. I show up, do the job, skate hard. I’m there when the first-line players need a break, and when I’m on the ice, the cameras are normally panning to them.

I never rock the boat.

But now I’ve set fire to its hull.

When Dmitri tried to shift the conversation from himself and his marriage to Oskar to me and my unusual goal, I bristled. Cal didn’t need to hear that my playing is somewhere short of mediocre, that my dreams remain far above me.

My gaze slides to Dmitri’s locker. His things are still there. He was hoping for a last-minute reprieve. It never came. Immigration rejected his request to stay in the US.

“He’ll be back,” I say weakly.

Axel and Noah and Finn snap their gazes to me.

“You’ll see. He’ll be back in time for Christmas. Probably bringing some ridiculous dessert.”

Noah frowns. “I mean, I hope so. I really do. No one loves the US more than he does. But immigration...” He shakes his head. “He was deported because the US didn’t believe his marriage with Oskar was true.”

Axel’s eyes glare. “And you helped them believe that.”

“But it was fake.”

Dmitri is straight. He was my partner in crime at many sports bars. I’ve seen him flirt with puck bunnies and used to wait outside our shared room while he banged women.

There’s no way he was married to Oskar for anything other than a green card and to cheat the system.

The guy was desperate. I understand. But facts are facts.

“Oskar left the country with Dmitri,” Axel says.

I blink. “Really?”