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God, Sabrina is going to love all this drama.
FOUR | NATHAN
The entire hockeyteam pours through the front door and immediately heads toward the liquor cabinet.
I wait until Russ is about to walk past then grip his arm, stopping him in his tracks. “My room. Three-nine-nine-three.”
His face drops and he forces a nervous laugh. “You’re not my type, Cap.”
I tighten my grip when he attempts to walk off toward the rest of our team members, who are passing around beers in the living room. “It’s been a long fucking day. Don’t make me do this in front of the whole team.”
His shoulders drop in defeat, and he trudges up each step like a naughty school kid, his head hung low. I mean, technically right now he is a naughty school kid.
Sharing a rink right before the start of the season is a logistic fucking nightmare—not to mention when we have home games.Fuck. I feel like I have a migraine coming on already and we haven’t even attempted to work out a schedule yet.
The brown-haired figure skater was seething earlier. I’m surprised a vein didn’t pop out of her forehead when her coach told her to not worry about it. I was trying to discreetly listen in, which wasn’t hard since she was yelling.
I feel like doing the same when I think about “not worrying about it,” so at least she and I have something in common. Her boyfriend looked totally unfazed, so maybe he’ll help her calm down, or maybe not, judging by the way she shrugged him off.
She’s a funny little thing. Immediately sassing me, holding her head high, but Ithinkshe might have been warming to me. Minutes earlier, she was clearly on the brink of tears. I’m hoping she takes up my offer and we can have a drink, form a friendship of some sorts. It’ll make this whole situation easier.
I decide to let Russ wait for twenty minutes, hoping the guilt will be eating away at him, and it won’t be hard to find out what’s happened. He’ll be upstairs listening to people laugh and joke without him, but he won’t realize people are laughing about how fucking awful this season is going to be.
I feel sorry for them.
So much so, I’m not even kicking the rookies out as they drown their sorrows in their beer bottles. I feel like I need to make a motivational speech or something, cheer everyone up, but first I need to work out exactly why we’re in this mess.
Russ is sitting on my desk chair, spinning in circles, when I finally join him. I expect him to make a snide remark, moan about waiting so long—something I would have done when I was a cocky little shit—but he doesn’t say anything. He sits silently, waiting for me to make the first move.
“What did you do?” He rubs his hands together, leaning forward to rest his elbows against his knees. He’s uncomfortable. His face is pale, and he looks ill more than anything. “Buddy, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what I’ve gotta help with.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
I run my hand across my face, trying not to lose my patience. “I know you’ve done something, and I can’t fix it if you lie to me.”
When I first started playing hockey at Maple Hills, our captain was a dick, and everyone hated him for it. I never expected to become captain, but I knew if I did, I wouldn’t be like him. Russ has a shitty home life, and I know he didn’t work his ass off to get himself out of that situation to come here and be treated the same way by me.
Maybe I wouldn’t be this patient with some of the other guys on the team but being a good leader means knowing how to get through to your men.
Taking a seat on my bed across from him, I slowly watch about ten different emotions hit him all at once. “It wasn’t a prank, I promise.”
“Right, keep talking.”
“There’s this girl at UCLA. I met her at a party a couple of weeks ago. We started screwing around, and then every party I was at she’d be there. I thought she was single but…” he looks at his hands, picking at the calluses on his palms.
“But?”
“But she has a boyfriend. He found out somehow and sent me a message saying I was gonna fucking regret even looking at her. Then this happened so it must be that, right?”
“You still talking to this girl?”
He shakes his head. “I blocked her on everything as soon as I found out she had a boyfriend.”
“You don’t tell anyone this, okay? You’ll get kicked off the team,” I say seriously. “I mean it, kid. When they ask why you’ve been up here, tell them you got shit going on at home or something, and you wanted to talk to me.”
“Okay, Cap.”
I nod toward my door. “Get yourself a beer.”
