Page 5 of Delay of Game
He’d worked off the sadness fat, he’d worked himself into top beginning-of-the-season shape, he’d grown a beard, and he knew he looked good. The last few weeks in Montreal he’d looked and smelled like a hobo, which was the natural result of the amount of alcohol he’d drunk and the kind of food he’d been eating.
Now he was getting checked out at the gym again, and the grocery store, and when he walked down the street. Normally this would have cheered him up, but even the satisfaction of knowing that total strangers wanted to fuck him couldn’t penetrate the fog.
Sowhatif he was sad.
So what if he missed Jammer and Greenie and Legs and even Safy, the untouchable, responsible, self-sacrificing captain.
He was here to play hockey and he couldcertainlyfucking do that. He showed up for the first training camp early, and it was the first time he’d ever been early for anything in his entire life. This was a year of firsts.
He waited on the bench while he watched Group 1 skating. Hewasn’tnervous. The Cons were the worst team in the league, and he was definitely better than even their best player, probably. They were a mess on the ice; so what if he was a mess off of it?
He wasn’t nervous, even though the Morin twins’ little sister would be there, and he wasn’t nervous, even though he was going to have to deal with that condescending fuckhead Singer without being a Problem. He wasn’t nervous evenifprobably half of these guys he’d never met before had already seen embarrassing pictures of him on the internet.
The younger Morin had shown up early too. She was a big girl, taller than him even though she was a few years younger. Her brothers were big too. She was striking, in the sense that she looked like she’d punch you in the face. If he hadn’t been in such a bad mood, that thought would have amused him. Striking and punching, you know?
“Morin, right?” he asked, glancing sideways at her. Her face was carefully blank, like she didn’t want anyone to know a damn thing about what was going on in her head. “Tell your brothers I said bonjour. If you talk to them. I mean...of course you talk to them, but. You know, right?”
“Ouais,” she said, and looked very steadily directly into his eyes. “I will...pass your regards.” Her eyes flicked downward. She had the same heavy Quebecois accent as her brothers. On them, it sounded pretentious. On her, it just sounded a little awkward.
He sighed. She’d definitely seen pictures of his dick. “You googled me, didn’t you?”
Morin’s face looked like she was having an aneurysm, but she said, level as anything, “I prescout all potential teammates.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
So if Morin had seen it, they’d probably all seen it. He hadn’t googled recently because he hadn’t wanted to see what had come out of his posttrade mess, but he knew the third result pretrade had been an extremely ill-advised nude he’d sent to the girl he was seeing at the time. She’d promptly sold it to TMZ.
“Well, at least the team is so bad that you, ah, won’t be the story for very long.”
He knew. He looked back out at the ice, at the team of guys who hadn’t made the playoffs in fuckingyears. His team. “All I wanna do is play hockey, Morin.”
“Then we are on the same page, Reed.”
“I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m not going to fuck it up here too.”
“You are here early.”
“I’m going to do a lot more than that.”
Thankfully she stopped talking to him after that. Knowing the Morin brothers, he didn’t think she’d feel sorry for him, which was fine. He didn’t want pity. But he also didn’t want to talk. In their own ways they were both gimmicks, except she was still on her entry-level contract, and they’d paid a lot more for him. That wouldn’t stop them from trading him again, of course, if anyone would even want him after this.
Maybe it wasn’t pity after all—maybe they were just in exactly the same boat.
Maybe she was nervous too?
“Hey,” someone said, and Zach’s head snapped up and his heart stopped.
Okay. So he’d caved. He’d looked Nate Singer up, so he knew about him vaguely, knew what he looked like in headshots. But Singer, it turned out, was one of those people whose photos didn’t really look anything like them in motion. He was a tall, burly guy, but it was his face that caught Zach’s attention. He was just kind of bland looking in pictures, like a caricature of a guy who spent all his time working on a farm, but there was something about him in person, something in his blue eyes and the way he held himself, about the firmness of his jaw and the almost nervous smile, that made him—
Jesus, he had to get it together. Singer was an overly friendly, condescendingproblemand also Zach definitely didnotshit where he ate anymore.
He’d learned that lesson the hard way too.
“Hey, Singer,” Morin said so casually that Zach almost rolled his eyes. If she was anything like her brothers, she was more than a little mercenary no matter her nerves.
The corner of Singer’s mouth tipped up and Zach, even though he felt like puking all over his skates, almost felt the urge to smile back.
Singer was talking, in a voice that did have a distinct accent, one Zach couldn’t place. Weirda’s, a little nasal. It was a good voice, though. A steady baritone. “I just wanted to check in with you both. I’m skating with your group, but if you’ve got some time I’d like to talk to both of you separately. Morin, I’ll catch you after it’s done, yeah?”