Page 49 of Edging Coach
“So that eliminates?—”
“Jack.”There. I’d fucking said his name. To the one person who would never, under any circumstance, give away my secret.
Mickey blinked. Then frowned. “Showalter?”
Bleakly, I nodded.
“Like…holy shit. You’re not a rule breaker, so you’ve got to know how fucked up this is.”
I saluted him with my beer.
“Tell me everything.”
And so I did.
When I returned to the hotel, Hairs wasn’t there. In fact, he didn’t show until twenty minutes before the bus was scheduled to leave. I was in a panic—trying to figure out what I’d tell Jack.
In the end, I didn’t have to. But I stayed away from Asshole Hairs on the bus, because he reeked of vodka and sex.
Man, it’s going to be a long season.
CHAPTER 15
JACK
“What the fuck is a lake effect?” Kulie asked.
“That.” Anty pointed emphatically out the hotel restaurant’s window at the thick blanket of white that had dropped on the city overnight. “Thatis the lake effect.”
Kulie cocked his head, clearly still confused.
Saffron started speaking to him in Russian, gesturing outside and up at the sky. Presumably, he was explaining the lake effect to Kulie in their native language.
At the next table, I sipped my coffee and stared out at the snow. My stomach was tied in knots. It had been for a while now, even more so since Devon and I had talked in the stairwell a few days ago. This morning, it was a tangled mess, and Devon was only part of that problem.
The Grizzlies’ last couple of games had been a mixed bag of morale. The worst part was the injuries. Rizz was day to day after a mild concussion in the Belleville game. Arts was still being evaluated after the game in Brampton; he’d stayed behind along with one of the trainers, and he would most likelymeet us back in Abbotsford. I hadn’t gotten any updates on him yet, but given the way he’d fallen and his inability to put weight on that right leg, my money was on a torn ACL. His season was likely over. Good thing we had a couple of spare forwards with us, or we’d be fucked.
Though the injuries weren’t great, the team’s overall performances were encouraging. Brampton had been an unfortunate 3-2 loss after a well-played game. The game in Belleville had started sluggish, with two goals against in the first ten minutes, but the guys had rallied. They’d tied up the score at 2-2 by the end of the first, fought hard for the next forty minutes, and went into overtime with a score of 3-3. In the end, Abbotsford lost in a five-round shootout, but we got a point, and especially after the shit season this team had been having, a fight like that was good for morale.
Next game. We’d win the next game.
We had, too—our trip veered north to Sudbury, where we had a decisive victory that included an empty net goal from Devon that put us up 4-1. I’d wondered on the way down to Buffalo afterward if we could end this road trip with two wins in a row.
The question right now, though, was when and where our next game would actually happen.
We were due to fly out right after we played Buffalo tonight, but at the moment, both the game and the flight were questionable thanks to last night’s blizzard. The snow was still falling, and it was forecast to continue all day. The whole city had ground to a halt, as it sometimes did thanks to the weather phenomenon Saffron was currently explaining to Kulie. Erie’s lake effect liked to bitch-slap Buffalo with snow that had to be measured in feet. The city was as accustomed to that as anyone could be, but there was only so much you could do to workaround that much snow, especially in the immediate aftermath. Right now, we were waiting to hear if the game was canceled. Ditto with our flight home.
As I sipped my coffee and picked at my breakfast, I hoped like hell Buffalo pulled off a miracle. Even if we couldn’t play hockey tonight, I was desperate for that flight home. I’d still be staying in a hotel, since my rental house wasn’t quite ready yet, but I’d be… home. Ish. I’d have my car. I’d be able to get the fuck away from the team and breathe a little.
Away from the team. Right. Because the Grizzlies were what was driving me insane right now.
I fought the urge to steal a glance at Devon, who was sitting with some of the guys a few tables over. I hadn’t heard his voice in quite a while; he was quiet this morning. Or at least not participating in the bantering and chirping. He’d been that way the last few days—dialed in on the ice, kind of checked out the rest of the time.
I was worried about him. Worried I’d put him in that headspace. Worried there was something else going on. He was a lightning rod for most of my thoughts anyway, and now that I had a reason to be concerned… Christ, it was a wonder I concentrated on anything.
I had forced myself to take his advice, though. After we’d talked in the stairwell, I’d made a profile on Leathr. With a little liquid courage thanks to the hotel’s minibar, I’d activated my profile and perused the app.
It turned out to be a lot like all the other hookup apps out there, just with a focus on kink. Reading through people’s kinks and limits had been… educational. I’d quickly compiled a list of things I had absolutely no interest in trying; to each their own, but I was zero percent interested in anything involving bodily fluids. And I kind of missed who I was before I typed “what issounding?” into a search engine. I wasn’t about to judge people who were into it, but me? Absolutely the fuck not.
