Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 656(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 656(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“Yeah. She’s funny as fuck. Making cakes that look like dicks and her commentary about hockey bros is on point.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Malik nods, raising his eyebrows. “You’ve been featured.”
“What?”
He turns his phone to show me, and I snatch it out of his hands, turning the volume up so I can hear what’s being said over the footage of me. It’s not exactly flattering. Shawn almost inhales a chunk of bread and washes it down awkwardly with gulps of lukewarm coffee. “Shit, dude. She called you out.”
I swipe to the next episode, and we all listen. It’s about hockey players using underhand tactics in their dating lives. She’s clever, I’ll give her that. Then a picture of my brothers and me pops up, and I grimace. “Sounds personal,” I say. “Like some hockey bro pissed her off, and now she’s railing against all of us.”
“Yeah.” Malik’s attention drifts over Hayes’ hunched form. “Did you check out the comments? So many women with stories to tell.”
I flick through, reading some and shaking my head. “Dude’s need to improve their off-ice game,” I say. “Who the fuck needs to tell lies to get girls into bed? I’d never do that shit.”
“Not everyone’s as pretty as you.” Malik rests back on the chair, cupping the back of his neck with his palms.
“Only most of the people in this room.” I raise my eyebrows, and he laughs. If anything, Malik has an attractive edge on us with his smooth brown skin, angelic smile, and ultra-white teeth. He’s like a young Tyson Beckford.
He places his hand over his heart. “You wound me, Jay.”
“Fuck off.”
I hand back his phone, still smarting over the comments about my on-ice performance. Is it so transparent that I’m struggling with Skarsgard? If it is, I need to improve my poker face. And hope that Skarsgard isn’t tuning into the commentary of random women online.
“What the fuck is up with you?” Malik shoves Hayes’ shoulder, earning himself a furious look. “That girl you were with last night didn’t put out?”
“I was right!” Shawn yells, making me jump.
“What girl?”
Hayes turns into a statue of himself, spoon hovering between the bowl and his mouth.
“A blonde.” Malik holds up his phone to an Instagram post of a woman sandwiched between two football players. Snatching the phone back, I squint at the picture, finding the clear outline of my brother in the background, curved over a blonde. I can’t make out anything other than her hair color because Hayes’ big head and huge body obscure everything else.
“Who’s the girl?”
As the words leave my lips, Hayes stands, shoving the chair back so hard it skitters across the tiled floor. In three strides, he’s out of the room and stomping up the stairs.
“Who the fuck pissed in his Cheerios this morning?” Malik asks. We all focus on the space Hayes has left empty. The half-eaten bowl of Cheerios stares back.
“The dude took his spoon with him.” Shawn pulls the bowl towards him and tips the remaining milk and cereal into his mouth with zero finesse.
Buttons wastes no time in taking a seat, slurping his coffee like a toddler.
“Who turned this place into a zoo overnight?” I scowl, but my attention drifts back to the door and the image of Hayes’ retreating form. My brother is keeping secrets. Secrets that are making him miserable, and I need to get to the bottom of what’s going on.
***
Practice is grueling. Hayes is like a stranger, skating as though his body’s present but his soul is absent. Coach Thornton is determined to extract blood, and the team grinds through drills without any flare. It’s brutal.
In the locker room, Hayes slumps next to me, unfastening his skates viciously. His face is set in an unfamiliar scowl, and for the first time, I don’t know how to approach my own brother. In the end, I go with the direct approach because the pain in my head has constricted like a wire wrapped across my temples, tightening, tightening, tightening.
“Secrets, Hayes. You seriously going to let that shit between us?”
Hayes shoves his skate into his bag, muttering something under his breath. When he looks at me again, his jaw is tight. “It’s none of your business, Jacob.”
“You’re my brother. Everything is my business.”
Hayes stands up now, towering over me like he thinks it’s going to make me back down. I don’t bother standing to remind him that I’m six-two and the inches he has on me are negligible.
He doesn’t respond, and when Lindsey calls my name, reminding me that I have physio time, the issue is left unresolved.
The tension follows me to the physio. By the time I sit on the treatment table, I’m wound so tightly I can barely sit still. The therapist, Lindsay, gives me her usual once-over, clipboard in hand, scanning my almost naked body. This part of hockey life has always made my body feel like a machine that needs oiling, less a part of me and more like a functional implement Coach wields every game.