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FORTY-EIGHT

JACK

MARCH

What the fuck had I done.

I stabbed a man. I almost killed a man. I tried to pin it back on him, but what I did was fundamentally wrong. I awakened the demon inside me.

I mean, the knife was there, and that was somewhat self-defense, but I wasn’t the one who ended up with a knife sticking out of my leg.

My mouth dried at every cop car I saw on the road. Every man who looked remotely like Bryce made my armpits sweat immediately.

He could easily come after me. I did this to protect my family, and now I was possibly making things even harder for Mara.

If I was in prison, she’d have four kids to take care of on her own.

But why would she even want me? I was violent. Everything she hated about Bryce, I’d become. Conniving. Brutish.

Evil.

There was one way out, but I had to act fast.

“Leroy! Jesus!” I sat in the chair in Coach’s office, my leg jiggling while I waited for him. “What are you doing in here? We don’t have practice for another two hours.”

“Close the door,” I said, wiping a sheen of sweat from my brow.

“I’ve got a meeting with the GM in a few,” he said.

“Just close the door and sit,” I said, my tone more stern.

He gave a single nod and shut the door, taking his bag off his shoulder and rounding the desk to take a seat. “What? You look like death.”

“I need you to trade me.”

His eyes widened and he sat back, not breathing for a moment. “Oh . . . kay. This feels sudden. Did something go wrong?”

I shook my head. “I need to go somewhere shitty. Small. The Midwest. St. Louis. Detroit. Ohio. Fuck, Buffalo if I have to.”

He clamped down on his perpetually present piece of gum. “And there’s nothing behind it?”

I flicked my head to the side. “Something.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Jack, you’ve been with us for eleven years. You could easily finish your career here.”

“But I can’t,” I said. “I need to lay low.”

He stopped chewing again. “Christ, Jack, what the hell did you do?”

I pinched my lips into a line, steepling my fingers. “How much do you want to be accountable for in a court of law?”

Coach’s lips popped open, then shut, repeating the movement two more times as he looked at each item on his desk. A messy pile of papers. A puck. A ball of used tape. His phone. A picture of his wife. “I don’t want to know, do I?”

“No.”

He ran his tongue over his teeth. “And you’re sure this is the only answer?”

I gave a single nod. “I’m sure.”

His fingers rubbed his forehead and he tented them at his temples. I’d have told him I’m sorry, and I was sorry for causing him any grief. But the team would survive without me.

Now my actual family was more important than my found one.

“Is this the first time something like this has happened?”

I folded my hands behind my head, spreading my elbows wide. “Yep.”

Sort of.

“And you want me to trade you to Ohio? You don’t just want to retire?”

“No retirement. A trade. A move. It’s the only way out.”

Coach leaned in, his brows stitching together. “Is someone threatening you? We can get you security. This town’s full of people who specialize in that.”

“No. Trade me or I start talking shit in the press so everyone knows I’m trying to leave.”

He cocked his head back. “Jesus, boy. It must be bad.”

“Trade me. Please. Before the deadline. Tomorrow if you can.”

In March, teams have to make their final calls on trades. There’s a deadline mid-March, and if you don’t make the cut-off, the traded player can’t play in the playoffs. There are often mad dashes to trade various players to try and arrange the best playoff odds.

Coach shook his head. “I’m going to need some kind of reason. Otherwise, Ohio’s going to wonder why I need to get rid of you. Your stats are still good, so I have no reason to get rid of you.”

My knee continued to bounce. “I’ll start a fight. On the team. People expect that from me.”

Coach tipped his head to the side. “You can’t injure one of my guys and leave.”

“I won’t really hurt them. I’ll just start a very obvious beef and we’ll push it to where the press can easily find out. A shoving match in the hall or something during a presser.” I thought for a moment. “Mike’ll do it with me. Your two goons. No one will have a reason to doubt it. Hell, he’ll enjoy it.”

Coach paused, looking me over. “I mean, yeah. That would work.” His pained expression made him look like a dog right before they throw up. “You’re sure you have to leave? You can’t resolve whatever this is here?”

“No. I need to leave.”

“I’ve got a connection with Ohio’s coach.” He sighed and chewed his lip. Then he shook his head and lifted his desk phone’s receiver. “Dev’s your agent?”

“So we’re really doing this?” Mikey grumbled under his breath.

“I’ll owe you big, brother.”

“I don’t want to lose you, buddy. You’re sure?”

Sorrento locked eyes with me, raising his brows. He was the only one who had any inkling of what I really did, and even he didn’t know the full extent of it. I didn’t even breathe a word of it to Romelski other than telling me he needed to cover for me about the fishing trip. The bro he is, he didn’t ask questions.

“I’m sure. You want it to be about Jessie and Mara? It’s an easy enough thing to fight about.”

“And Jessie will think it’s hot,” Mikey said with a grin. “That usually works in my favor.”

I shook my head. “I don’t need to know about your kinks. And make sure she knows it was just an act after. Come on. Let’s sell it. There are cameras coming in.”

Mike shoved me backward with considerable force. “The fuck did you say about Jessie?”

“I said, she’s a jealous fucking bitch and she needs to quit talking shit about my wife,” I shouted, lunging for him. The cameras swung our way. Showtime.

“She thinks she’s so hot with all that ginger hair—” Mikey tried, shoving me backward.

“You’re a fucking ginger, dumbass!” I slapped him upside the head and his eyes went betrayed. Must have actually hurt. Oops.

This was literally the most ridiculous thing we could be fighting over, but given our reputations, it worked. “The fuck you just call me?” he yelled, getting in my face with a little bit of spittle landing on it.

“You just spit on me, bro?” There. Turn the conversation away from Mara and Jessie.

“I’ll spit on whoever the fuck I want to,” Mikey yelled back, grabbing me by the shirt. We gripped each other’s shoulders and wrestled out into the hallway. I had plans to push him to the ground, but we mutually tripped anyway. He fell on top of me, but quickly flipped so it looked like I had the upper hand. We rolled around on the ground, half making noises that were just grumbling instead of words like we were in a cartoon. I was just getting ready to pummel Mike’s face when Romelski ran in to pull me off him.

Next came Coach in his designated role. “What the fuck is going on here? Both of you, my office, NOW.”

As we stepped into Coach’s office, Mikey patted my shoulder and shot me a wink. Fucker. He was going to blow our cover.

I shoved him into the doorframe—and accidentally split the skin at his temple.

“Jackie!” he gasped, scandalized.

Well, guess it looked real enough now.