“How do you feel about playing that rat today?” Big Ed tucks his gloves under his armpits and assesses me with an unnerving stare.
“Great,” I lie.
Tonight, I plan on unleashing all my pent-up frustration over the situation on Alex; it will be glorious. It’s his fault I had months of rehab and had to spend a summer holed up with a woman who lights every fiber of my being like a fall bonfire, licking my skin, blood, and bones alive.
Okay, so the last part was my fault. I’m a masochist. But still.
Alex Piotrowski will feel the extra five pounds of muscle I put on in the off-season.
Big Ed’s stare rests heavily on me. Which is fair. He’s been in the league long enough that when someone like me spills a bunch of bullshit, he’s not going to buy it. “You’re on thin ice with the league. It will not end well if you retaliate.”
“I’ll be fine. I have it all under control,” I say, pulling my socks over my shin pads.
Big Ed’s firm hand encompasses my shoulder. “We need you to be a team player tonight.”
I shake his hand off my shoulder, standing to grab my practice sweater. “I’m always a team player.”
A smattering of laughs and snickers undulates through the room from the rest of my teammates. They don’t have the decency to hide their amusement as they did with our Captain. Apparently, I don’t inspire the same level of fear as him.
I’ll have to work on that.
“What?” I sigh, growing weary of interacting with people as much as I love these guys most of the time.
“You turn into a different player when we play Alex.” Coop shrugs. “No offense, but would he have had the chance to lay into you like he did last year if you had passed the puck instead of trying to take him on your own?”
What the fuck? Does he think the hit wasmyfault?
“Do you all think this?” I ask, glancing around the room.
Wes doesn’t meet my eye but bobs his head in slight affirmation.
Grady isn’t as bashful and mouths, “No shit, fucker” to me while Big Ed wraps me up in a sympathetic smile.
“What happened between you two, anyway? I know he’s a rat, but he’s always worse when he plays you,” Coop asks leaning against his locker.
The only advantage of getting to the practice stadium late is the usual peace and quiet in the locker room before Coach inevitably chews me out for my tardiness.
God, I could use some peace and quiet.
Instead, guilt bubbles in my gut. Images of my fists pummeling into Alex’s face during our senior year of high school flash through my mind. Okay, so I at least have some blame regarding the beginning of our feud. But that fucker deserved it.
I had just read an online article about my dad having terminal cancer, a fact I didn’t know personally, but it was plastered across a local sports site. Alex laughed and said my dad probably didn’t tell me because he was disappointed with how emotional I could get.
And then. Well, I proved him right by driving my fists into his face.
It was the last time I remember emoting.
“Look.” Big Ed’s voice booms through the locker room and calls me back to the present, where I’m being annoyingly and aggressively tag-teamed by a bunch of assholes. “Whatever you need to play out of your mind tonight, I don’t care. But we need youon the ice.”
A shiver wraps its icy grip around my spine. Again, I am thankful I play with Big Ed and not against him.
“I’ll behave, Dad.” I roll my eyes like the bitter seventeen-year-old being chastised that I’ve suddenly become.
“I’ll take the job if it keeps you in check. Someone has to now, yeah?”
I swallow, unable to meet the Captain’s gaze again. I don’t talk about my history for a reason, and opening day isn’t the day to start. So instead of getting emotional. Instead of hyper-focusing on the fact that I haven’t processed a damn thing in the past ten years. Instead of fixing my mind on the fact that my family kept my dad’s cancer a secret from me because, “It was your senior year, half-pint. He just wanted to protect you, and we had to respect that.”
I shrug off a million things threatening to crack the ice around me and plunge me deep into frigid waters. “Only if you cut the crusts off my PB&J like you do for Lexi,” I say, referencing his youngest daughter who has the right idea—the crust on the bread is the worst.
