Page 7 of Game Misconduct

Garcia had changed all of the rules and everything was all fucking mixed up in his head now. Pain and pleasure; crossed wires. Or maybe it had been mixed up before but he didn’t have to look at it. Somehow Garcia had seen something in him, figured it out, even if he’d done it inadvertently. And Mike had never had to deal with any of this on the ice before. Had always kept hockey and sex pretty firmly separate, except for clandestine teenaged fumbling in juniors, and even then, it hadn’t been an issue. It was with teammates and he hadn’t felt strongly about any of it, or any of them.

That was the problem.

He felt really fucking strongly about Garcia.

He hated him and he shouldn’t have let him go down on his knees like that. Shouldn’t have thought sex wouldn’t change things. That’s what had fucked everything up. Well, it didn’t matter, it wasn’t going to happen again, and he wasn’t going to even chirp anymore, even if he did want to throw Garcia off his game. Everything from now on was gonna be strictly hockey.

“Sato, what the hell? You’ve been in the shower like fifteen minutes, comeon,” Sean Elliott said. He was one of the fourth-line grinders, with a shock of ginger hair and a face like an overexcited poodle.

“Jesus Christ,” Mike said, because he hadn’t realized he’d been standing under the water that long. “Gimme a second.”

“He thinking about his fight,” Andrey Kuznetzov told Elliott, grinning as he walked out of the other stall toward them. He was, of course, completely naked, because Netty didn’t give a shit about anything, let alone modesty. He didn’t really need to: a big man with sleek black hair and a gray shine like a seal’s, coal-dark eyes, and a strong jaw, always in on some joke you were too stupid to figure out. “You gonna fight tonight, Misha? We play Hornets, course you gonna fight.”

Mike could feel his mouth twisting down. Exactly what he’d wanted to avoid, especially when he was naked too. Not that it was embarrassing, exactly, but it felt vulnerable and exposed. Especially when the only parts of him that weren’t covered in black ink were his dick and balls, and a little bit of spare real estate in the crease where his leg met his torso; the back of one hand.

“I dunno, Netty. Coach told me I had to keep it clean tonight.”

“Never stopped you before.” Netty was always smiling, the gap in his teeth on display. He stuck his tongue into it, mocking. Not malicious, but definitely mocking. The pink tip wriggled obscenely.

“Yeah, well, I’m not trying to ride the bench this whole season,” Mike muttered, as he pulled on his pants and shirt and beat a hasty retreat. You weren’t going to win fighting with someone who never got offended and was pathologically determined to have fun no matter the cost. He’d learned that a long time ago. If you couldn’t fight and couldn’t win, you had to leave.

He was going to fight Garcia tonight, in the last game of the preseason, but he had to keep his shit together.

He had to keep it aboveboard.

Danny stood in front of his stall in the visitors’ locker room and took a breath. His only pregame ritual was silence. Silence where he gathered his thoughts, assessed the parts of his body that would be giving him the most trouble and how to avoid putting more stress on them, silence where he thought about the guy he’d have to fight and the best way to fight him. It usually worked. Calmed him down. Helped him get through the game with his usual tunnel vision. But today he found himself unable to focus and scrubbed his hand over his face.

“Dude, you good?” Landry asked.

“Fine,” Danny said, without thinking.Fine. Fine. I’m fine. Fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.Strangely, today, it wasn’t even his hip that was giving him trouble. Wasn’t his hands. Wasn’t his knees.

“You look like you’re miles away, man.”

Danny shrugged, turned away from the stall to face Matthew Landry. He was still a kid; constantly fighting to prove otherwise. Sato’s age, twenty-three or twenty-four. He reminded Danny of a leashed junkyard dog. Vicious to outsiders and almost desperate for approval from the team. Not that it made Danny feel any better about some of the shit that came out of his mouth on the ice. Just something to keep in the back of his head: that Landry couldn’t be trusted. Teammates came and went, and so did he. It wasn’t worth getting into it if it wasn’t aimed at him directly.

No one had ever been able to say that Danny Garcia was a problem in the locker room.

“Happens when you get old.”

Landry laughed and slapped him on the back. “Well, kick his ass out there tonight anyway, old man.”

“Yeah,” Danny agreed, without rancor and without warmth.

It would be the first time he’d seen Sato in person since the last time he’d been in Philadelphia. Where he usually felt tired, now he felt uneasy, mulling over how this was going to work on the ice. He knew Sato would go for him, because Sato always did, no matter if Danny’d been instigating the game before or not. It had been that way since their first game. Danny had embarrassed Sato badly, knocked him to the ice and put him out of commission for three games. He thought about Sato messaging himguess you’ve got other teeth you don’t needand half smiled to himself, hearing it in Sato’s low-pitched drawl.

Christ, that kid was a grade-A asshole.

A grade-A asshole who liked to run his mouth but made helpless noises Danny couldn’t get out of his head months later.

Danny considered various other ways he could get Sato to shut the fuck up and shook his head. Not the thoughts to have before the game. He squared his shoulders and tried to get himself back into the right state of mind, thoughts void, emotions erased. And he followed the rest of his team out into the tunnel and onto the ice.

Playing the Cons this season was like playing a different team. They’d had the trappings the season before, but it hadn’t been enough to get over the hump. Their GM had made a bit of a stir when he’d traded Kyle Hill, a former second overall pick, who’d had a disappointing rookie season but definitely still had time to grow. They’d shed deadweight like Jonathan Bouchard, who’d needed Player Assistance and an early LTIR-ment more than he’d needed a contract extension. They’d made the playoffs for the first time in half a decade and it was obvious they wanted more. He’d watched some of their preseason games, particularly keeping his eye on Sato.

It was funny: for someone who clearly had the potential to play a decent two-way game, who had the speed and strength, Sato certainly seemed afraid to play the way he could have. And Danny, who felt the loss of that kind of ability every time his hip ached when a storm rolled in, every time he pushed himself too hard on the ice and paid for it later, could appreciate the humor in the situation. They were both at the bottom of the lineup, although for very different reasons. And it didn’t matter at all. Their coaches deployed them for the same thing.

As the lines changed and Danny swung himself over the boards onto the ice, he tensed for a confrontation he knew was inevitable.

Mike knew that what he was doing was stupid. He was playing farther into the o-zone than he usually ever played, and more often, and it was solely because Danny Garcia moved too slowly and never came too far over the blue line. There was no other way for a confrontation. He knew, as he was doing it, skating literal circles around Garcia, chirping him, poking at him with his stick. Not close enough for a slashing or hooking penalty but close enough to be a pest. He knew it was obnoxious. He knew, worse than that, that it was obvious.