This time, Jordan knew it wasn't just talk. After the way Charlotte acted at dinner, after the way she dodged his questions about Declan Reed before trying to change the subject, he just knew.
It started in the first period when he lined up beside Declan for a face off.
"So you're banging Charlotte Stone?"
Jordan didn't care. Let that idiot talk. But as the game got more physical, Declan kept running his mouth.
"You know, I got to taste her cherry."
"Her pussy isn't worth your time, King."
"You must be really desperate to fuck my scraps."
He didn't know why that was the insult that set him off. Declan had already said some extremely inappropriate things about Charlotte that had caused Jordan to ball his fist up. But it was the insult about him taking Declan's scraps that caused him to finally drop the gloves.
The fight was quick, but for Jordan it seemed to take forever. Lots of punches thrown by him, probably lots of punches landed on him as well. His rage was so intense he just let the adrenaline take over as he threw a right hook while trying to yank Declan's jersey with his left hand balled up in the fabric. It finally ended when Declan jerked Jordan's jersey hard, causing him to lose his balance and fall to his knees on the ice.
Jordan could hear the New York crowd in the arena go wild. Their new player, their pest, had taken down the captain of the Detroit Pirates.
He got up as fast as he could, the ref's hand quickly finding his arm as he led Jordan back to the team's bench. It was already too late in the game for Jordan to serve his penalty in the box so it was directly off to the locker room for him. Probably a good idea anyway since he could feel the blood dripping down his face from somewhere above his eye, and he could taste the drops as they made their way into his mouth.
And yet despite all that, despite the noise and the blood and that stupid ass who punched him, his eyes were looking up into the crowd, past the jeering drunks and obnoxious fans, just searching for her. He had seen her in the crowd when he warmed up before the game. He knew exactly where she would be.
Charlotte stared down at him from her seat in the section just behind the visitors' bench with concern on her face as if she actually cared about what had happened to him. He gave her a scathing look in exchange, the adrenaline in his veins replaced with anger. If she had told him the truth, he could've at least been prepared for whatever nonsense Declan would throw at him. But instead, she had kept him in the dark, and he had reacted accordingly.
He pulled his eyes away from her and made the long walk down the hall to the locker room, too lost in his thoughts to understand what was going on around him as Andy, the team's trainer, pulled him into a room to get him fixed up.
All he knew was he got in a fight because of a woman, but she wasn't just any woman. She was Declan Reed's ex-girlfriend. And that fight on the ice? As far as Jordan was concerned, it was as much her fault as it was his.
The team made their way into the locker room, nursing their wounds and a nasty defeat to the New York Admirals. Jordan couldn't look any of them in the eye.
They all started to take off their gear and throw their stuff in the lockers. Jordan could see them staring at him in his peripheral vision. But his eyes were focused on the concrete column in the middle of the room. He was too angry to look at any of them, or maybe too embarrassed after losing his cool in such a public and humiliating way.
"You alright?" Logan finally asked him in a worried tone.
Jordan just stared ahead. He couldn't talk about it. He couldn't form any words. His mind was racing too fast to expend any energy on coherent thought.
"King?"
"I heard you," he growled.
"You need to get out of your uniform, man," Logan said. "Let the equipment guys get started on it."
Jordan looked down at the white away jersey, which was now spattered with his blood. His hand instinctively reached up to trace the gauze on his forehead. He barely remembered the team trainer patching him up after the fight. Since Andy hadn't called the doctor to get him stitches, he figured the trainer had probably just pulled the cut together with some bandages and let him go. It could've been worse.
Jordan finally began to move. He could tell Declan got a few good shots under his chest pads during the fight, which was just going to lead to more pain later on. He tossed his jersey in the laundry cart before peeling off the rest of his gear and heading for the shower. The water at his feet turned red at first as it washed away the extra blood that lingered on his face. Then it was just steamy and hot and not strong enough to get rid of the real pain he had suffered on the ice, both physical and emotional.
He had trusted her.
"King?" Logan's voice echoed against the shower tiles. "The media want to talk to you."
Jordan looked around. The other players had their backs to him. You never make eye contact with a player in the shower anyway, but they were very pointedly avoiding any reaction to Jordan. "Come get me after they leave."
"Sure thing, captain."
And with that, the guys around him started to turn their showers off as an unspoken rule among them had been activated. When a player had a particularly bad night, the rest of the team would help him out and pick up media duties. Most of the time that job fell on the shoulders of the team's captain. Tonight, it was his players taking one for him.
When the journalists had finally cleared out, Jordan dried off and quickly dressed, his progress slowed by his wrinkled fingers fumbling with the buttons of his dress shirt and the bruises that had started to blossom on his torso. He grabbed his ear buds from his locker and shoved them in his ears, thankful for the ability to distract himself and wordlessly tell everyone else to leave him alone as he got on the team bus.
