Chapter 1
Conner
Istare at my empty locker, take a deep breath, and slam it shut. Someone clears their throat behind me. I turn and see Barry Owens, one of the alternate captains on the team, standing in the doorway. “Garrison, are you sure this is the way you want to handle this?”
I shrug into my coat and grab the bag with all my personal effects. As a last-minute spite move, I yank on my nameplate until it snaps off. Owens rubs the back of his neck and stares at me with big, sad brown eyes. "Maybe talk to your dad. Get his advice on this before?—"
"Bye, Owens. Thanks for being a great teammate," I say and toss the nameplate across the room. It hits the wall and drops into the garbage below it. Maybe I should take up basketball since this hockey thing isn't panning out. "Sorry, I couldn't lead you guys better. Take care."
“Garrison…” Owens calls after me as I head out of the locker room. He follows me a few feet into the hall and then stops. “Conner! Man, I don’t think this will help anything.”
I don’t argue with him because he’s right. Walking out on my team isn’t going to make my situation any better. It might, infact, make it worse. But how the fuck do I keep playing for a team that’s already dumped me? I can’t. I won’t.
Owens stops calling after me and I don’t see another person until I’m pulling out of the private parking tucked below the Brooklyn Barons arena. I stop at the security booth and roll down my window. Maurice smiles at me, completely oblivious to what is happening within the team he’s worked for for the last twenty years. I hand him my security pass and parking pass. “Can you return these for me please?”
“Are they faulty?” Maurice asks. “If you give me a minute, I can replace the magnetic strip on the back. Sometimes they crap out.”
“No. I don’t need them anymore, Maurice,” I say.
He blinks, looks at the pass, and back at me. "Oh no. They traded you? The captain? Where to?"
“Take care Maurice and thank you for everything,” is all I reply and then, with a smile and a nod, I roll up my window and drive away.
The drive back to Silver Bay, Maine, is almost six hours. And I spend every single second of it reliving the last, hellish, twenty-four hours of my life. God, how did this all go so wrong? I’m only twenty-five. My career shouldn’t be on the brink of ending.
Hockey Royalty. That’s what every media outlet in the country has called me sincebeforeI was drafted. Hell, since I first strapped on skates at three and teetered around the arena with my dad for his team’s family skate. I’m the eldest son of the eldest Garrison brother. I was drafted second overall at eighteen. My father Devin, and my uncle Jordan were also both drafted at eighteen. My uncle Cole was actually even better than Uncle Jordan and Dad but he had a career-ending injury before he could be drafted and never got his shot. My uncle Luc—who isn’t an uncle by blood but was essentially raised by mygrandparents alongside my father and blood uncles—had also been a professional hockey player.
I'm destined to do great things with a black rubber puck a stick and some skates. It's in my bones, blood, DNA. And honestly, I've always believed that hype. I sailed through my junior hockey career. I scored the tough goals, I skated the fastest and was a born leader. It wasn't even hard. And I loved every minute of it. I wasn't just trying to follow in my dad's footsteps because hockey was our family business and I felt like I had to. I was trying to be better, stronger, and earn more achievements than my dad and uncles combined because I fuckinglovethis sport. I do. More than anything.
Yet here I am, driving home for Christmas because I don’t play for an NHL team anymore. This morning after practice the coach hauled me into his office, after yet another loss the night before, sat me down, and announced that he’d told management I had to go. I was shocked, to say the least. I’ve been with the Barons since I was drafted and have been the captain of the team for the last two and a half years. No, we hadn’t won a Cup yet. Yes, last season we’d failed to make playoffs, but that wasn’tjuston me. Did they think it was?
They fired most of the management, and the coaches, at the end of last season, but when we started this season by losing the first three games in a row, the new coach—Coach Landry—decided to start pointing fingers at the team. At me. We did not get along, but I tried my fucking best to eat my feelings and just work even harder. But no matter what I did, it wasn't good enough for Landry. He, like the new General Manager Chance Echolls, seemed to have it out for me. Echolls, I get. He was from my hometown and his family and ours did not get along. But Landry? He had no reason to hate me, but he did. "You gonna live up to your hype one day kid or what?" he'd barked on just his second game behind our bench. He was an out-and-outasshole and a bully. And he pulled the biggest asshole bully move when he pulled me into his office today to tell me I wasn't even being traded, I was beingwaived. Coaches and management didn’t tell players these types of things. They told agents and managers who then told players. That’s how this terrible shit was supposed to work. But Landry was too petty for that. He wanted to see the shock and pain on my face.
Landry smirked smugly at me and leaned back in his chair in his office. “We’re waiving you. Management, like me, thinks it’s the quickest, easiest way. We don’t want to waste time trying to sell you to another team. We doubt there’ll be any interest.”
And that’s when he got what he wanted. A reaction. My face dropped and drained of color and his smug smirk deepened. I’ll always hate that I gave him that, but I was too fucking shocked to hold it in. Being traded by the team that your father played for, was captain of, that retired his jersey, that was a slap to the face. But beingwaivedby them, that wasn’t a slap that was a knife. And not to the back. Right through the heart while they stared you in the eye.
“I’m worth something.” I hate that I said that, but I did. It was weak and vulnerable and all the things I’ve never had to be and didn’t want to be in front of this asshole.
He folded his arms over his barrel chest and exhaled sharply like he was dealing with a particularly delusional child. But I was delusional. I couldn't comprehend beingwaived. Waivers are when the team gives up the player and his contract to whoever wants it. They don't bother negotiating something, or someone, in return like they do with a trade. Waivers mean that they think the player isn't valuable and they just want to be rid of him. Like offloading a lease on a car they no longer like. Or putting an old piece of furniture on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign that says 'Free'.
“You know you’re breaking rules by even having thisconversation with me,” I reminded him, finally finding a way to rein in my humiliation and turn it into anger. “Also, you can’t waive or trade a player until December twenty-seventh, so why the fuck are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re a fucking nepo-baby player and I fucking hate all you entitled little shits,” Coach Landry snarled, his true nature finally unleashed. He uncrossed his arms and leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “You nepo-babies who coast into the league thinking you’re better than everyone else because your daddy played. You always want an easier ride than everyone else and I’m not the one to give it to you. You haven’t scored a goal in nine games. Your assists have been shrinking every year for the past three years, just like your face-off percentage. No one is motivated by you as captain. If they were, we wouldn’t be last in the division.”
“I’m contacting my union rep,” I said while yanking open the door to his office. “Do not speak to me again about any of this.”
“See you at the game tomorrow,” he said, stopping me from the grand exit I was hoping to make.
“Excuse me?”
He shrugged. “You said it yourself, we can’t waive you until the week after Christmas so you’re still playing. Well, I mean, I fully intend to bench you, but you still have to be here.”
“Really?” Now it was my turn to sneer. “Let’s see how that works out for you.”
I headed straight to the locker room. Most of the team had showered and gone home already, but Owens was still there because his wrist was acting up and he’d met with the trainer. He’s the only other person who knows about this. They haven’t even told my fucking agent yet or else he would have called me. And I really do need to call the union, but… I just want to get home first.
I don’t know why. I don’t know how I’ll face my family right now, but staying in Brooklyn felt… well it made me want to puke. I am the first Garrison to ever be placed on waivers. Yeah, I still want to puke, even as I drive down the turnpike to the little town on the big lake, where every single member of my family grew up.