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Like we were just a bunch of guys catching up.
But then he went and immediately ruined the effect by saying, “You must know your announcement created quite the media circus for us—and only an hour before you were supposed to take to the ice, too. Such a shame, really”
“Supposed to?” Robert asked with a raised brow, his tone deadly. “Surely you don’t mean to imply they’re being punished for coming out. Because if you are implying the team is retaliating in any way, that’s something my lawyer would be extremely keen to hear.”
He scooped up his phone, his finger swiping over its face as if he was pulling up said lawyer’s contact information.
I’d had exactly two conversations with this man—both of them extremely brief—and nothing about either of them had prepared me for this version of him.
As unobtrusive as possible, I slid my hand into my right pocket and fished my phone out, making sure to keep it out of sight. With my thumb, I punched in the passcode and launched my messages app.
Me
wtfff go9mg ob//??//
Shit. That didn’t work. I tried again.
Me
WTFGoingon????
Across the table, Cally’s phone chimed in his pocket. He shifted, but didn’t move to retrieve it.
I cleared my throat, and his gaze bounced my way. I widened my eyes and tipped my chin, silently urging him to check it.
He jerked his head, dragging eyes in the direction of his father.
“Yes, exactly. Your dad,” I thought, trying to make my expression match my dismay. “What is all that?”
Voss cleared his throat. “Jim, do you have anything to add?
Add to what? I thought, wondering just how much I’d missed while trying to get Cally’s attention. And who the fuck is Jim?
Jim, I learned, was Coach Hendricks when he let loose the most put-upon sigh I’d ever heard him deliver—and that was saying something since that man sighed a lot.
“I was going to say that I’m shocked, but thinking back on it, I’m really not. You two were hardly subtle.”
He angled himself toward Cally. “I should have known something was going on that first day you asked for extra ice time to work on Porter’s conditioning.”
“Nothing was going on then,” Cally told him.
Coach gave him a skeptical once over paired with a low snort.
“Seriously. That was purely for the benefit of the team,” Cally insisted. “I told you back then Mikey’s better than Tremblay would ever be, and I was right.”
He glared at Coach, as if daring him to argue.
We all knew he couldn’t or wouldn’t—Tremblay had been objectively terrible, and everyone in this city knew it.
Coach stared back then, all at once, he sank down in his seat with a loud groan, bringing his hand up to cradle his face. “It was fucking Minnesota, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, no. We were—”
Robert coughed, and speared me with a “shut your fucking mouth” look that was so much like Cally’s that my Pavlovian response was to automatically obey.
“Never mind.”
“Look,” Robert said, taking control of the conversation. “It doesn’t matter when these two idiots got together or why. What’s done is done, and now we have to manage the situation so everyone comes off smelling like goddamn roses.”
