Page 62 of Pucking Bad Boys

Pop Quiz

BECKER

The first game of the season is coming up.

As Star Cove’s last-minute transfer, I have a lot to prove. My teammates have made me feel welcome, although my previous team was one of their biggest rivals. Our first pre-season game together was good. My line and I had outstanding chemistry. You would have never guessed that we had been practicing together for a couple of weeks and that was our first game together. I haven’t played with my brother since I started high school, but it was as if those years didn’t exist. We found each other on the ice on pure instinct. Playing together felt good. Natural.

And yet I know that all it would take is one bad performance for the team and Coach Harrison to look at me likethe Bridgeport reject.

One bad game and they would look at me like the other Shayba brother.

Fuck. They should put that on my fucking jersey. I’ve always been Mack’s brother. Even at home, with our parents. I don’t have any doubt that our parents love me, but Mack is the one who makes them proud. Even when I achieve the same results, Mack gets there first.

And here he’s the team captain and the Cove Knights’ biggest star. So I need to play ten times better, fight ten times harder to earn a place on this team in my own right.

It doesn’t help that in the past few days I’ve been distracted. My head isn’t in the game ever since Mack and Talia became an item.

There isn’t one woman on campus who wouldn’t give her right arm and her firstborn to get a chance to date my brother. And of course he had to choose the one I liked.

When I saw them kiss at the Zeta party, I was annoyed. But I was shocked when they changed their relationship status the morning after.

Rumor had it—and it was confirmed by Gen and by our teammates—that after the breakup with Gen, Mack had spent the summer changing girls more often than I change my underwear. And with two practices a day, I go through a lot of fucking underpants.

If he decided to stop with the casual hookups and made things with Talia social media official, this isn’t a fling. It must be serious.

My crush for Gen was a silly teenage infatuation, and I can’t say I felt anything meaningful for anyone since I went to Canada for the hockey high school program.

I barely know Talia beyond spending time with her on the night we met, but I felt something. A spark.

She’s beautiful, and I’ve never had so much fun talking to a woman before.

It doesn’t matter now, though. Having a thing for my brother’s girl might have been cute at fourteen, but I can’t go there now. Talia is Mack’s girlfriend, and I have to move on.

Maybe everything happens for a reason. This year is too important for my career. It’s the last year I’m eligible to enter the draft. The decision to do that or to try to get an NHL contract as a free agent could decide my career. Mack has so many offers that for him it was a no brainer. I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I have to make up my mind soon. And if the draft isn’t my choice, I need to have an outstanding season and become the hottest commodity in NCAA D-1 hockey.

To do that, I need to focus. I don’t have time for a girlfriend. So maybe I should be grateful to my brother for taking a major distraction off my plate.

Hockey is going to be my number one priority this season.

That’s my space of mind as I enter Professor Cantucci’s classroom.

I find a seat in the back, like last time. It’s better not to sit with my teammates—and Talia—if I want to focus.

The sight of my brother walking hand in hand with Talia confirms I made the right choice. Especially when he stops to usher her into the same seats they occupied since the class started and drops a brief kiss on her lips when she walks past him.

Fuck. This is going to be a long year. Tucker and Colsen are right behind them. This time Tucker doesn’t seem to have a problem with Mack and Talia sitting together. And he looks more than ok with the sudden news of Mack dating his littlesister. He looks relaxed and even happy as he sits near my brother.

A complete three sixty from the speech he gave me about staying away from his sister.

At first, that change of attitude surprises me, but on second thought, it’s how it always goes with Mack.

My brother wins everyone over, even the most jealous big brother.

Someone else who looks surprisingly calm is Gen. After the way she reacted when Mack and Talia kissed at the Zeta party, I expected her to cause trouble at every opportunity.

Instead, she slips into class mere moments before the professor and her T.A. arrive and takes a seat directly behind Talia. She must have come in earlier to reserve her seat because she lifts the pink leather purse on the chair and sets her down by her feet. Gen doesn’t talk to anyone, sipping on one of those green smoothies she practically lives on.

“Good morning,” Professor Cantucci looks upbeat in a gray cashmere blouse and black skinny jeans. She’s a rail thin, small woman who likes to wear sky-high stiletto shoes to add some inches to her short stature.