“Thanks for pulling me off him,” I mutter as I walk over to the honor bar. I reach in and grab a Perrier, taking a moment to drop the towel onto my shoulder while I crack it open.

Alex’s eyes slide to the cut on my face. “It’s bleeding again. You probably need some butterflies on it.”

I shrug and press the towel back on the cut. “If it doesn’t stop in a bit I’ll call Terry.”

Our head trainer. He’ll be able to patch it up in no time and he won’t ask questions.

“Want to tell me what that was down there?” Alex asks quietly.

While I’m not as close to him as I am to Zack, he and Garrett have become good friends over the months. Alex is also our team’s captain, so I know this is of concern to him. This is his first year with the “C” on his uniform, but he earned it and was the logical vote by the team once Luca Bressard, our former captain, retired.

“Lost my temper. Let that little fucker get the better of me,” I reply guardedly as I lumber over and sink down into an armchair that sits in the corner.

“You overreacted,” Alex observes. “Players talk shit about GMs and coaches all the time.”

I suck in a deep breath through my nose, let it slide out slowly through my lips. I pull the towel away, gingerly touching the wound. Just a tiny bit of blood comes away, so I press it back on. “I agree we express our frustrations about management, but Christ, Alex…you heard him. He was talking about rape.”

“He never said those words,” Alex says with a hard edge to his voice.

“That’s what he meant,” I grumble.

“You don’t know that. What he said was crude and way out of line, but he was drunk. You should have let me as the captain handle it or gone to Coach Pretore.”

“Fine, whatever,” I growl. I know he’s right, but damn it all to hell…I feel fucking fantastic for clocking the shit out of him.

“If Claude reports this, you could be in trouble. Technically, he could bring criminal charges against you.”

“Yeah…don’t really care, Alex,” I say as I push up from my chair. “Thanks for your concern, but I think it’s time for you to go.”

I walk over to the door and pull it open. Alex stares at me a moment, and with a sigh stands from his perch on the mattress. He scrubs one hand through his hair and scratches at the back of his head as he walks toward me. Just before he steps past me into the hallway, he turns and says, “Listen…sorry I came down hard on you. I just don’t want to see you get off track. You’re killing it in the net and this team needs you to stay focused.”

“I get it,” I say tersely.

“Do you?” he asks seriously. “Because I get what you were doing. You’re defending a new set of principles that management has put into play, and those principles are not popular with the team as a whole. You’re going to alienate yourself from everyone.”

“Are you telling me you’re aligned with Claude’s way of thinking?” I ask with narrowed eyes. Because if that’s the case, I’ve just lost every bit of respect for him as a captain.

“Of course not, you douche,” Alex snarls at me. “Claude can’t see past the fact that Gray is a woman. That’s his only problem with her, and it’s not a problem that I have at all. She’s got the qualifications. I am not, however, convinced about her making contract-signing decisions based on some mathematical formulas. You have to look at more than that.”

“It’s more than just a mathematical formula,” I defend.

“We’ll see,” Alex says quietly. “But I am willing to give her a fair shot to prove this works.”

I nod at Alex in understanding and I really can’t hold fault with his thinking. That’s fair and I get his point about Claude. That guy is a sexist, chauvinistic asshole who isn’t smart enough to comprehend what Gray is trying to accomplish.

Still, I know I’ll have to keep my eye on him. Alex is right. He was drunk and spouting off.

But I also know that the things that Claude said about Gray came from a very dark place inside of him, and there was a layer of truth and deep-seated belief. I don’t trust that son of a bitch and I would not put it past him to do something crazy.

Chapter 8

Gray

I don’t wait for Ryker outside of the studio this time because I don’t want to appear anxious. In fact, I’m not anxious. I’ve spent the last day and a half telling myself over and over again that this is just a general manager having coffee with her starting goalie. We can talk about hockey¸ and I even brought a little folder that has some charts I printed out that shows a progression of his save percentages by month and how they compare to the other goalies in the league. While I can’t figure out why, for some reason his save percentage always peaks in March of every year. Fascinating—probably irrelevant—but at least it gives us something to talk about.

When Ryker walks into the studio, the first thing I notice is that he’s without a gym bag this time. He’s wearing a pair of black track pants with a silver stripe down each powerful leg and a black nylon pullover with the Cold Fury logo. As my eyes travel upward, I can’t help the tiny little gasp that comes out of my mouth when I look at his face.

He has two butterfly bandages over his right temple and a massive bruise surrounding it. The bruise then travels downward and curls around his cheekbone to come to rest halfway underneath his right eye. I take an involuntary step toward him, but he gives me a tiny shake of his head.