Page 42 of Tough Guy and the Show Off

“Why would I lie about that?”

“Show.” Klaus’s voice comes from right behind me, and a second later his hand lands on my shoulder. “You’ve gotta chill, man.”

I shrug his hand off and let go of Harlson. “I don’t need to chill, I need to fix this.”

I shove past Harlson and storm out of the gym.

He’s wrong. He has to be wrong. They can’t trade Beau. We just… We haven’t even had time… I can’t let this happen.

I reach Coach Hall’s office and throw the door open without knocking. Beau’s sitting in the chair directly across from his desk, and his agent, Spencer, is seated next to him. Fuck, that’s a bad sign.

Coach’s bushy eyebrows go up and Beau swivels in his seat to see what’s going on. As soon as our eyes meet, I can see it written all over his face. Harlson wasn’t lying.

“Showalter, what the fuck do you think you’re⁠—”

“You can’t do this.” I cut Coach off. “Trade Basilio.”

“Basilio’s contract is half what Beau’s is,” he says flatly.

“That’s because Beau’s the best defenseman we have. It’s fucking idiotic to trade him when our chemistry on the ice has been off the charts this season.”

“Look, kid, this comes from way above my head. I’m just the bearer of bad news, not the suit making the financial decisions,” Coach says gruffly.

“But you can say something. You can tell them that you can’t work like this if they’re going to be shipping your best players off to other teams. Threaten to quit if they won’t keep Beau. Tell them we’ll all fucking strike if they trade him.”

He frowns and Beau stands up, blocking my view of Coach, my view of everything in the room except for him as he moves towards me. He grabs my bicep in a gentle but firm grip and drags me out of the office, letting the door swing closed behind us.

“Trav, take a deep breath,” he says calmly.

“What? No. I don’t need to fucking breathe, I need to go back in there and make him see reason. They can’t do this.” I make a move to go back into the office. I can fix this. I have to. Beau tightens his hold on my arm and shakes his head.

It’s not his grip that stops me from barging back in there though, it’s the look in his eyes, resigned and pleading with me to listen to him. All of the anger and panic that spurred me into action wheezes out of me, leaving my chest feeling hollow and that pit in my stomach deeper than ever.

“It’s already done, Trav,” he says softly. “I’m out tonight and then they’ve got me on a flight at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“No,” I rasp. “They can’t.”

“They did. It’s above Coach’s paygrade and it’s sure as hell way above ours. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

I grab a fistful of the front of his shirt and move an inch closer, too aware that we’re standing in the stadium where any of the guys could walk past at any minute or Coach could come out of his office.

“Beau.” My voice cracks, and I’m not even sure what I want to say other than more pointless pleas to make this somehow not true.

“I know.” He cups my face and drags his thumb back and forth along the edge of my jaw.

We stare at each other for a long second until it’s painfully obvious that I’m not going to wake up in bed, still spooned against Beau, and realize that this was just a horrible nightmare.

“Where?” I finally ask.

“Chicago.”

I wrinkle my nose and scoff. “Chicago sucks big fat fucking donkey dicks.”

He chuckles. “Why?”

“Because it’s not here.”

Beau sighs. “Yeah.”