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“Okay.” Colton stretched his arms over his head. “Can you make it to the helipad on your own?”
To prove a point, I stood, fighting the vertigo that swirled the sea of green pine trees and blue lake water together. “I’m fine. Now leave me alone and go wake up your fiancée.” I gave him a wink, and it wasn’t the sun beating down on him that turned his cheeks pink.
The helicopter bladeschopping through the air above felt like they were thwapping my brain with every rotation.
“Are you alright, Miss King?” I winced as the pilot’s voice cracked through the headset.
“I’m fine, Jason.” I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped that I wouldn’t throw up in front of Jason.
The feeling passed, and after the short chopper ride back to the city, I almost felt like I could go to a yoga class – maybe not a hot one, but I could at least move without fear of falling over. In the sanctuary of my New York brownstone, I leaned against the door and whispered, “I’m never drinking like that again.”
I tossed the keys onto the console table in my entryway and picked up the newspaper. My maid always left the sports section on top for me. It wasn’t a photo of a model orgy, but it was almost as bad. The headline read: Preseason training? In the photo, one of my players was passed out face down beside a pool; another was doing a keg stand, each of his legs attended to by a topless bunny, the nipples blacked out with a censor bar – only their very large, very fake breasts were too much for the standard-sized black strip. I squinted at the photo. There he was – the Gunnar who swore he didn’t dance, dipping a bikini-clad bunny.
Heat flushed through my body as jealousy churned my guts. “Maybe I’ll trade the fucker.” It was vindictive, and not a good move for the team, but Gunnar Lockwood, number eleven, had done something to me. The feelings I was experiencing scared me, and I felt out of control – something I wasn’t used to. And I didn’t like it – at all.
FOUR
GUNNAR
The only trainingthat really gets you in shape for hockey season is actually playing hockey. I was reminded of this fact as I wiped the sweat from the back of my neck. I was drenched in sweat and my legs were still shaking from the drills. The shower was going to feel good.
“He sure didn’t ease us into things, did he?” Corey Hambleton, one of the new players, said under his breath.
The captain, Colton King, seemed to escape most of Coach’s wrath. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that the rest of the team had undergone punishment levels of suicide drills. Tanner had even puked over the boards. “When did you become the golden boy?” Smitty grunted to Colton as he pulled off his skates. “I think my feet are steaming.”
“I think it had something to do with your recent spread in the newspaper.” Colton shrugged.
The article about the New York Thunder’s summer partying had come out four days earlier. Jamie leaned in to me. “But that stuff, the partying – it’s nothing new.”
“What was that?” Colton was across the loud dressing room. Did the guy have supersonic hearing?
“Come on, Captain,” Jamie paused with his skate in his hand, “It was the off-season. There’s nothing wrong with having a little fun.”
Colton took a breath. “I get it, guys. But management has been trying to clean up our image for a while now.”
I glanced at Smitty and he raised his eyebrows. Neither of us had to say it – the entire room was already thinking it. Management had been trying to clean up Colton’s image, not the team’s. Now that he was squeaky clean, was Everleigh coming after the rest of us?
Smitty was one of the few guys who would stand up to Colton. “We didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not like we were breaking the law, or drinking and driving; or snorting coke off hookers’ asses.”
Colton inhaled. “I know, guys. And, it was the off-season. I don’t give a shit what any of you do. Except don’t snort coke off a hooker’s ass. That shit will show up in a drug test.”
The tone in the room lightened and a few guys laughed.
Colton continued, “Management is feeling a lot of pressure after last year.”
“Last year?” I was normally the strong silent type. I’d learned my lesson about chirping when I played for the Laketown Otters. Now I was the guy who came in, gave his all on the ice, did what he was told, and then went home. “You mean when we won the cup?” I was genuinely confused. The New York Thunder had had the best Cinderella story the year before.
Colton leaned his elbows on his knees. “Yeah. But how do you follow that up?”
The metal door clanged as Coach walked in.
“Great work, guys.” He clapped using the clipboard as a hand. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, though. A few of you have been spending a little too much time on the golf course and not enough time in the weight room.”
Not me. I was getting lumped in with the rest of the players, just because of a stupid photo taken at the wrong time.
“I’m going to be spending the week evaluating our position, and your positions.”
I glanced at Smitty. He must have been thinking the same thing as me. We were on the first line, and a bad week of pre-season training was going to set the tone for the rest of the season. Unlike Colton King, whose Daddy owned the team, the rest of us were all at risk of being traded or not having our contracts renewed. Mine was up at the end of the season, and unlike most of the rich guys on the team, I couldn’t afford to lose it.
