“I want to play.” His grip finally loosened and I was able to skate back over to the rest of my teammates.
“Gentlemen, settle down.” Coach Hayes cleared his throat for the hundredth time, adjusting his tie, fidgeting, and sweating.
“What’s going on with Coach? He looks like he’s about to start shitting bricks.” Donaldson leaned over, muttering low enough that only I could hear him.
I shook my head, sitting in the rumbling locker room, hair still dripping from my post-practice shower. “I don’t know, man.”
Gavin Hayes stood up and went over to his father. “Shut the fuck up, guys. This is serious.”
“Coach’s son to the fucking rescue.”
Donaldson was really starting to get on my nerves. Just because I was a rookie didn’t mean I was someone he could bitch and moan to about the team. To me, we were all brothers—end of fucking story. Him acting like a teenage mean girl was going to eventually get him knocked the fuck out.
Ignore him.I had to keep reminding myself of the advice Myla force-fed me every night over dinner when I would come home and unleash all my pent up rage from the day.
“Men, we have to name a new captain. You all know Nikolaev isn’t returning this season. Since my son is on the team, I have decided it’s unfair for me to appoint our next one. Instead, we’re going to put it to a vote. Everyone is eligible. Think of leadership. Who do you want to be your voice on the ice? Who do you trust enough to let them wear that C on their chest? Write his name down and put it in the locked box I have on my desk. This is the only fair way to do it.”
We all took slips of paper and a bunch of the guys started chatting in the corner. It wasn’t unheard of for a team to put selecting a new captain to a vote. It was respectable that Coach wanted to remain unbiased, particularly because it was clear that his son Gavin was the right man for the job. Personally, I thought he was a fucktard, but most of the guys respected the shit out of him and he was damn good at pep talks on the ice.
Staring at the blank piece of paper, I tried to come up with anyone else’s name to write down. Nothing. Gavin was the going to be our next captain. He was going to make my life hell, but maybe I would become a better player because of it.
Gavin
“Cheers, to Gavin being named captain of the Otters. Who would have thought a fuck-up like you would ever become a leader of the team?”
I rolled my eyes, clanking my goblet against my brother’s, my mother’s, and finally my father’s crystal glasses. “Thanks, Pop.”
I cut into my rare steak, watching the juices pool on my mother’s fine china—the crap she only brought out for special occasions. It meant a lot that she thought of this as a celebration, but who the fuck were we kidding? The team had only picked me because there was no better option, and the fact that Gideon Hayes was my father; they probably all thought that was what they were supposed to do.
Griffin gave me a quick eye roll followed by his reassuring wink, trying his best to laugh off my father’s rude display of persistent disappointment in me. “Dad, don’t be so hard on Gavin. He’s the right man for the job—his teammates think so at least. It’s good they trust him.”
“Bunch of idiots if you ask me, but the majority had its say.” Dad slurped his cabernet like a heathen, wiping the driblets from his brassily chin with the back of his hand. You can take the hick out of the backwoods and move him up to New York, dress him up in his Sunday best, but you can never take the backwoods out of the hick when booze and disappointment start to soak his blood.
“Gideon, you’re drunk. Don’t be mean.” Mom always tried to just chalk the nasty shit Dad said up to being drunk. Usually, she was right, but I knew the crap currently spilling out of his wine-soaked mouth was his true feelings.
I knew the moment I was drafted to The Otters that my father was not going to be happy about it. He wanted me to go to any other team—then he could just be proud of his son and I would be some other coach’s problem.
“Griffin, don’t you have a fight coming up?” Anything to get the conversation away from me.
Griff sucked on his teeth while he nodded. “Yeah, I got challenged by Chuck Williams. I’m going to have to go up a weight class to meet him, but I’ll never back down from a fight.”
Griffin was my little brother by five years. He was fresh out of college and already making a huge name for himself as an up-and-coming boxer.Sports Newshad named him ‘Fighter to Watch’ this year, and I knew my dad was way more excited about that than anything I had done since the fifth grade.
“Griff is going to make this family proud, that’s for damn sure.”
Way to rub salt in the wound, Pop.
“How about that lovely girl, what was her name, Griffin? With the long dark hair?”
I started to laugh. “Which one?” I teased, and Griffin kicked me under the table.
“Things aren’t really working out. I have been pretty busy training, too much to have time for a high-maintenance chick like Marissa.”
“Marissa, that was it. She was lovely. You should still try, son. You don’t find nice girls with such good breeding every day.”
Breeding.My mother was all about the status of our relationships—if we were living up to our legacy with the women who were sucking us off at night.Who the fuck cares?
“We’ll see what happens, Ma.”