Coaching wasn’t my thing. I didn’t have the patience, and let’s be real, not many people were lining up to have a delta coach their kids anyway. Not after everything.
“Still,” Kota said, nudging me lightly. “He’s good for us.”
I just grunted at the delta and tried to work up the energy to move again. I’d need to slip in to see our physio team.
Kota Mori was young, talented, and annoyingly charismatic. The brat was a fan favorite already. He could talk his way out of anything and was always trying to drag me into conversations I had zero interest in.
I was here to play hockey, not make friends.
Ignoring him completely, I finally stood and grabbed a towel before heading for the showers.
No way I was waiting until I got home after a game like that. The arena had hot water. My place? Not so much. The downfall of buying a fixer-upper was that it had good bones and shitty plumbing.
The heat of the shower worked through my muscles, easing the worst of the pain. By the time I finished, most of the team had cleared out.
Hayes was just stepping out of his office when I walked back through the locker room, still drying my hair.
“I’ll talk to the owner and the board to try and get you a dedicated physical therapist.”
“They’re not going to go out on a limb for an old guy like me,” I said.
“They will,” he replied, without hesitation.
I didn’t argue with him again. That didn’t mean I believed him, I just didn’t have it in me to fight over it with the new coach.
Despite everyone’s protests, I knew exactly where I stood on this team. I was good, but no longer starting-line good. This felt more like a courtesy placement. Last-season respect, maybe.
God, when had I turned into such a cynical asshole?
The answer came easy.
It started the day I walked away from my omega and wrote off anyone that wanted to get close to me.
Chapter
Three
Roxie
“Holy shit, you’ve got a lot of stuff,” Rylan grunted as he carried in the last box from my moving truck.
“Well, I planned to leave some of it at home, but—” My voice trailed off, and he didn’t question me further, just waved it off.
“We’ll find room for it. If not, there’s always storage units.”
“And donation centers,” I pointed out with a grimace.
Rylan and I had texted back and forth the entire last month. We talked nearly every day. We hadn’t gone deeper into our personal lives yet, just skirted around anything that required real vulnerability. He was guarded and I had a feeling it might take some work to figure out why.
I was quite skilled at getting the truth out of people.
So far, I’d learned that Rylan was a shameless flirt with everyone, he was a licensed physical therapist, and his boss was a complete and utter nightmare.
It felt like a turning point the day he called me to talk him down on a lunch break after a particularly bad day with her.
When we weren’t talking, I’d focused on making sureThe Gathering Placewas going to run smoothly in my absence. I’d hired on a few more team members and, thankfully, had a backup editor in place now.
Today was for moving in, then tomorrow, I’d go to the arena and meet with the new coach and team.
