Page 3 of Slew Foot (Scoring Chances #3)

He sounded a little exasperated and Mickey knew the feeling. Mickey had begun to suspect all North Americans were prone to dramatics and leaping to conclusions. He’d expected better from the Canadians, but no such luck.

“Then what is going on?” Crawford asked, settling back in his seat and, thankfully, sparing Mickey’s eardrums more damage.

“Well, I’ll tell you as soon as everyone is here. But we’re definitely not leaving Massachusetts, so get that out of your head.”

“The only way the Harriers would leave this fuckin’ city is over my dead body,” Connor O’Shea said in his thick Boston accent.

Several other guys nodded, agreeing with their captain.

Mickey wouldn’t take it quite that far, but he couldn’t deny he was relieved. He’d finally started feeling settled here in Boston and wasn’t keen on the idea of going anywhere else.

There were low murmurs of conversation as a few more guys slid into the room, along with some of the other coaching staff.

Finn O’Shea appeared too, closing the door behind him, then taking a seat at the front of the room. His appearance made Mickey’s frown deepen. What was their captain’s brother doing here?

It wasn’t unusual to see the family around the practice rink or arena. Declan O’Shea—the patriarch of the family—was a retired Boston Harrier and he and his wife, Catherine, stopped by regularly. Connor’s older brothers, Finn and Pat, were also retired but here fairly often.

But they never attended meetings.

Odd.

But before Mickey had time to see if Connor seemed surprised by his brother’s appearance, Gavin held up a hand and cleared his throat.

“Clearly you’re all wondering why I called you in here today,” he said.

“Before the speculation gets too wild”—he shot Crawford a look—“let’s get one thing clear: the team isn’t going anywhere. ”

Crawford kicked the back of Tanner’s chair.

“And no, we’re not being sold either.”

Several guys let out audible sighs of relief.

“What’s happening is I’m stepping down as president of hockey operations.”

Murmurs rose from the crowd, and he silenced them with a gesture of his hand. “This isn’t because Ned Merritt or anyone else from the ownership group has asked me to. It’s voluntary because I need to make some lifestyle changes.”

Mickey listened intently as Gavin described the heart issues he was having—nothing immediately serious, thankfully—but a situation that could easily become a massive heart attack if he wasn’t careful.

“You’re still our GM though, right?” someone asked when he was done.

“Yes.” Gavin smiled. “I’m going to put my focus on drafting, development, and building the best possible roster I can.”

“Who is taking over the other duties?” Anker Henriksen asked.

Mickey glanced over at Finn O’Shea. Ohhh .

“This guy,” Gavin said, gesturing toward Finn and confirming Mickey’s theory.

“So, I’m going to have to put up with your annoying ass all the time now, huh?” Connor called out as Finn stood.

He was tall and lean, with pale skin and reddish blonde hair—not at all Mickey’s type—but the bright grin he shot his younger brother transformed his face into something appealing. “You sure are. You’re going to be seeing a lot more of me around here moving forward.”

“I already see too much of you!” Connor shot back.

The entire team laughed.

When the sound died down, Finn continued, still smiling.

“Guys, I’m not going to make a big speech.

I just want to say I’m excited to be back with the Harriers and to work with the team this way.

I’m glad Gavin brought me on board. I think all of you know who I am”—everyone in the room nodded—“and you know I bring years of NHL experience as a player and a degree in finance. However, that doesn’t mean I plan to make a huge number of changes around here. ”

He took a sip of water from the bottle in his hand.

“Gavin’s already doing a great job, so I don’t want to undo the progress he’s made. What I want to do is help him achieve the plan he’s already set out for this team and this organization with a little less stress.”

“So does this mean you’re the boss around here now?” Crawford asked.

Finn laughed. “No. In some head offices, that’s the way it works, but when Gavin and I sat down, we agreed my role would be more like what some franchises call ‘senior advisor to the general manager’.

Although I’ll have the title of president of hockey ops, technically, he’s still the boss if we’re looking at it from a hierarchical standpoint. ”

“But honestly,” Gavin said, stepping forward. “Finn and I are committed to working together. As much as I enjoy being the one in charge”—he shot a grin at Dakota Crane, the team’s yoga and Pilates instructor—“I’ve recently learned that flexibility matters.”

Mickey frowned, unsure of what that was all about with Dakota.

He felt like he was missing a joke or something. His mother, who had lived in the United States in her twenties before he was born, had taught him English growing up and he’d formally started it in school at the age of ten. He’d picked up a lot in the past few months as well.

But as fluent as his English was, the subtler things sometimes went over his head.

Oh , but Gavin must be talking about flexibility because Dakota was the one working with the team on that. Made sense.

Mickey tuned back into Gavin again who said, “… means Finn’s dealing with everything else behind the scenes.

There will, undoubtedly, be a ton of overlap in our roles and Finn and I will have to hammer out how that all works.

But we’re both committed to this being as smooth and seamless of a transition as possible.

If we do it right, you shouldn’t notice much difference other than me working a few less late nights. ”

There were a few more questions, but the meeting wound down fairly quickly.

When it was over, their head coach, Hoyt Kent, called out, “On the ice in twenty, guys! No dawdling in the locker room.”

Several guys grumbled but everyone rose to their feet. There was a bit of a lineup going out the door as players alternately congratulated Finn and expressed their concern over Gavin’s health.

Mickey did the same and when he was in the hallway, he wound up with Crawford and Tanner in front of him.

“I can’t fucking believe you made me think the team was moving,” Crawford grumbled, hooking an arm around Tanner’s neck and giving him a noogie.

“It’s not my fault you’re fucking stupid enough to believe what I say,” Tanner argued, his face turning red as he tried to squirm away.

Mickey hid a smile as he followed their awkward, stumbling gait down the hall toward the locker room. He dropped back a little, so as not to get accidentally punched in the face, and heard Finn and Connor in a similar friendly argument behind him.

“Seriously. I thought I’d gotten rid of you,” Connor grumbled.

“You’ve missed me and you know it!” Finn protested. “Just think of all of the brotherly bonding we can do now.”

Mickey’s smile was impossible to hide as he thought about the O’Shea siblings’ interactions.

He’d never seen a family argue so much—or as loudly—as the O’Sheas did, and yet they seemed unshakably close.

There was a certain fierceness to the way they interacted, whether it was arguing or loving one another.

Very different than the relationship Mickey had with his own half-siblings. He’d been an only child when his parents divorced. His father had remarried, then gone on to have two girls.

Clara and Lena were in their early teens now, bright and vivacious and funny, but Mickey wasn’t particularly close to either of them.

He liked them, liked his stepmother, but the girls were more than a decade younger than him, so they hadn’t grown up together.

Especially because he’d moved from Cologne to Munich for hockey.

He’d lived with a host family there and only seen his sisters sporadically.

Now that they had cell phones, he did text them though. Which reminded him it had been a while since they’d talked, so he pulled out his phone as he did the mental calculations about the time difference between Boston and Cologne.

The cities were six time zones apart, so the girls were long out of school by now, even if they’d stayed to take part in one of the clubs they were active in.

Mickey pulled up the group text he had with Clara and Lena and, since they liked to practice their English, he sent, How are you? What’s new?

Not very clever of an opener but his phone buzzed a moment later with a few lines about school and activities and he texted with them for a few minutes.

Inside the locker room, Tanner waggled his eyebrows at Mickey as he spotted him sending a goodbye message to the girls. “Oooh, are you talking to someone?”

“Yes. My sisters,” Mickey said drily.

“Oh.” Tanner’s face fell. “I thought you were dating someone.”

“No.” Mickey tugged off his Harriers tee, then slipped on his base layer top.

“You had a hookup a few weeks ago though, right?”

Mickey nodded.

He hadn’t dated much since he’d been here in Boston, but he periodically went home with someone from the bar or met someone on a hookup app who seemed interesting. He was nowhere near as devout about keeping things casual the way Crawford was, but he had little time for something more serious.

Hockey was the most important part of his life right now.

“Well, are you going to hook up again?” Tanner pressed.

“No, she was only in town to visit some friends,” Mickey said with a shrug.

“Well, what about the guy who?—”

“Clay,” Mickey replied, exasperated. “Getting laid is not important to me right now.”

Tanner gaped at him. “You are young, not horribly ugly, and you play in the NHL. You should be enjoying your life!”

“I am,” Mickey said in a mild tone, because Tanner was intense enough for the both of them. “I’m enjoying playing hockey and I hook up when I want to. I don’t need to have a rotating cast of characters coming in and out of my bedroom.”

“I still think Clay’s full of shit about all his hookups,” Crawford said from Tanner’s other side. “There’s no way he gets laid that often.”

Mickey strapped on his elbow pads. “I can confirm it’s true. Unfortunately, I hear the people he’s having sex with far more often than I’d like.”

“He’s probably paying them to pretend,” Crawford snarked.

“Even more unfortunately, I have literally seen it,” Mickey said with a sigh. “But now Tanner knows sex anywhere but the bedroom is off-limits.”

He shot his roommate a pointed look.

“It’s my fuckin’ apartment,” Tanner groused.

“Yeah, but you were the one stupid enough to rent a three-bedroom place on an entry-level salary,” Crawford shot back.

Mickey tuned them out because this was going nowhere good. It hadn’t the last six times they’d had this silly argument, and he doubted it would go any better now.

Tanner had gotten himself into a rather bad position, unfortunately. He’d signed a lease on a place far too big for both his needs and his budget.

It was how Mickey had wound up moving in.

There were days when he questioned if that had been a wise move. Tanner was almost entirely useless at anything beyond flirting, playing hockey and video games. He certainly had no idea how to cook or clean, or—in Mickey’s opinion—behave like an adult.

But he was also kind and funny and welcoming, and he’d smoothed over some of the rough edges of Mickey’s transition to living in a new country and playing with a new team.

“Get a move on, guys!” Coach Hoyt bellowed from the hallway and Mickey hastily began lacing his skates.

He meant what he’d told Tanner earlier.

Hockey was his only priority.