A red haze descended over Liam’s vision at Alex’s sneering insult. With an inarticulate roar, he whipped around and launched himself at the younger man, driving his shoulder into Alex’s gut with bone-crunching force. They went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs and sprayed ice shavings, sticks and gloves raining down amidst a chorus of hoots and jeers from their teammates.
“Get off me, you ancient fuck!” Alex wheezed, trying in vain to dislodge Liam’s vice-like grip on his jersey. Liam only snarled unintelligibly, blind with rage as long-standing resentments with his boorish teammate finally boiled over.
He drew back his gloved fist, fully intending to pummel Alex’s smug face into an unrecognizable ruin. But before he could land the first blow, multiple bodies were descending on them, yanking them apart.
“That’s enough!” Coach Hendricks bellowed as the ruckus slowly subsided, Liam and Alex still bristling and shooting venom at each other while in the grasp of their teammates.
“Jesus wept!” screamed Coach Hendricks. “Anderson, Pasternak, get your shit together before I have to start docking pay for this bullshit!”
Liam recoiled as if struck, the coach’s withering censure slicing through the haze of rage. Shame burned through him in a dizzying rush as he finally registered the terrified gasps and muffled sobs coming from just behind the rink’s metal gate.
Sunny had Maddie and Hailey crushed to her sides, her lips moving urgently to soothe their distress even as her own eyes were rounded with shock at the violence they’d all just witnessed.
Ice encased Liam’s gut at the devastated look on his girls’ sweet little faces. He’d wanted so badly for his daughters to see him in his “element”, as Sunny had put it. To finally understand the sporting legacy he was so desperately clinging to. To make them proud.
Instead he’d just given them a horrific display of his worst instincts, the very darkest corners of his persona he fought constantly to shield them from. This was his worst fear.
“Go hit the showers,” Coach Hendricks growled in disgust at him and Alex, jerking his grizzled chin toward the locker rooms
Liam barely heard the continued laughs from his teammates as he slunk away from the ice like a disgraced penitent. He’d just given his girls another memory involving their father’s emotional volatility, to add to the already tragic collection that no doubt haunted their tender psyches.
By the time Liam had showered and dressed in a fresh set of sweats, the locker room was heaving with bodies.
“What I wouldn’t give to have a taste of that sweet piece Anderson’s got on the payroll,” Alex snickered, not even trying to disguise his lecherous ogling in Sunny’s direction outside the doors. “Man’s got to be putting putting all his energy in the sack. No wonder he’s got nothing left for the ice.”
The raucous guffaws at his crude joke had Liam’s jaw reflexively clenching so hard his teeth squeaked from the strain. He finished packing his gear with jerky, aggressive motions, desperate to escape the toxic fug of the changing room before he did something he’d regret.
“She’s pretty hot, I’ll give you that much, Anderson,” Brock Labrone chimed in with a salacious smirk. “Think our boy here’s got enough left in the tank to keep a wildcat like that satisfied? Maybe some of our younger alumni need to step up this season.”
More lewd chortles as Liam slammed his locker door shut, the crash shocking them all into momentary quiet. For one protracted breath, their gazes all swung to him. Most of them registered his furious demeanor and remained silent, realizing they had taken the joke too far.
With an inarticulate growl of disgust, Liam turned and stormed from their midsts, nearly colliding with Sunny in his haste. She had brought the girls to the corridor just outside. Maddie and Hailey peered up at him from either side of her forest green skirt like solemn little sentries, their eyes tracking his thunderous exit with more astuteness than kids their age should possess.
Sunny’s own expression was stricken and pinched, discomfort and secondhand shame radiating from her tightly controlled features. She had no doubt heard the exchange just now. She opened her mouth to address him, perhaps to offer comfort. But Liam held up a brusque hand, silencing any overtures as he shouldered roughly past their little huddle.
“Not a word,” Liam spat out in a tone that brooked no argument.
He couldn’t bear to meet Sunny’s gaze, not when it would only reflect just how little respect he commanded from his teammates these days.
He should have gone with his gut this morning. He new this was aterrible idea. But the girls were so desperate to come. In his haste, Liam hadn’t even consider Sunny. That she would become the subject of taunts and jibes. He could have kicked himself. How dumb can you be?
The short walk to the parking lot was accomplished in an icy silence, Liam’s hand clenched in a white-knuckled grip around the strap of his gear bag as he took deep, measured breaths. He could almost feel Maddie and Hailey’s bewildered stares prickling his back, but didn’t dare look back at them until they reached the SUV’s safety.
Only then, as Liam stooped to open the trunk and throw in his bag, did he let some of the leaden tension bleed from his body in a ragged exhale.
Sunny chose that moment to break the strained quiet, her usually melodic voice subdued.
“I’m so sorry you had to hear those…things,” she began delicately, studiously avoiding looking at him as she gathered the girls close.
Liam’s jaw tightened as her silky hair obscured her expression, due to a sudden gust of wind.
“That was out of line, even for that rowdy bunch,” Sunny continued in a low murmur, so the girls wouldn’t hear. She brushed the hair away from her face. “You don’t deserve to be treated like that. Not by people who are supposed to be your teammates.”
Her unexpected defense of him made Liam stiffen anew, the burn of humiliation searing across his cheekbones as echoes of the team’s crude taunts clanged through his mind. Sunny’s charity made him feel even worse. This wasn’t who he was. He was a fighter. A warrior. A man. The protector of his family. Not someone to be pitied or consoled like a child.
“It’s a locker room,” he said, hoping to dampen some of her concern. “We all give as good as we get. It’s just how it is.”
“Even so,” said Sunny. “It’s still a place of work. It’s not right.”
