The 25 Men of Christmas

by Cassie James

  “You get everything?”

  “I don’t need help. Thanks, though.”

  It’s meant as a brush off, but Oliver doesn’t take it that way. He’s a great dude, definitely the first person by your side—right after Gemma—if you need him, but that’s just it… I don’t need him right now. He pushes after me into her office, and I glare at him as I head toward her desk.

  “Seriously, I got this. You can go report back to Cyrus that irresponsible little Lee didn’t fuck it up.”

  “Man,” Oliver breathes out as he runs a hand through his hair, “that’s not what this is. You know we’re all on edge. You cope by being an asshole, I cope by worrying.”

  “Go worry somewhere else,” I mutter under my breath as I drop the brand new medical bag on her rolling chair.

  Did she need a new medical bag? No, probably not, but we all chipped in, and got her the nicest fucking one we could find. Because yeah, we wanted to do something nice for her. But at the end of the day, we know our girl’s not the type to want ridiculous, flashy gifts. Something to help make her job easier, though? Yeah—right up her alley.

  And I wish these fuckers would remember that the bag was my idea.

  I turn away from the bag, a secret smile on my face at the tubes of sensitizing balm I’d snuck in the bottom, to drop the vase of roses on the corner of her messy as hell desk. I glance up to see Oliver still hovering in the doorway, and I heave a sigh in his direction.

  “Listen, make yourself useful and bring me the trash can if you’re insisting on staying.”

  Her big first aid kit is sitting in the middle of the desk, empty boxes and plastic packaging spread around it from where she was refilling it before the break. It’s not like her to be so messy, but she’s been a little more scattered lately. I smirk.

  I would be, too, if I’d agreed to try twenty-five partners on for size.

  The smirk falls from my face, though, when I start straightening the stack of papers that were sitting underneath the first aid kit. The words National Hockey League catch my eye first, followed almost directly by New Amsterdam Vikings. My stomach bottoms out as I glance over it quickly.

  “Oliver.” He glances up at the sharp edge in my tone, eyebrows knitting together as my hands shake around the contract. “Get the guys. Meet me on the indoor field.”

  “What’s going—”

  “Just fucking do it.”

  “What the fuck do you mean?” Cyrus bellows, and I wave the contract in his face again.

  “Fucking think about it!” I take a step in his direction but back up when he literally growls at me. None of us are happy, but he’s the only one that looks like he’s ready to burn the facility to the fucking ground in his rage. “She up and takes a last-minute trip to the east coast, she misses the first day back to practice even though she never misses practice, and I find a contract for a goddamn east coast hockey team lying on her desk. I think it’s pretty clear.”

  Cyrus’ chest heaves, and his eyes are wild. We’re standing in the middle of the pitch, and the rest of the guys circle around us, shifting from foot to foot and muttering amongst one another. He laces his fingers together behind his neck, arms jutting out in sharp angles, and paces away from me as he heaves and huffs and sighs.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Declan says quietly, and I can see Milo nodding along from the corner of my eye.

  He’s right. It doesn’t make a lick of goddamn sense, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. She gave us a taste, made all of our wildest fantasies come true, and promised she’d think about actually making it real. And then she disappeared for four days. To interview for a position with another team thousands of miles away?

  What the fuck went wrong?

  Is she really giving all of this—all of us—up for some hockey job all the way across the country? My heart literally fucking aches in my chest, and I realize that my breaths are catching on a hard lump in my throat.

  There are twenty-five of us. How are we not enough for her?

  “I can’t fucking believe this. Hockey.” The muttering turns a little more volatile as the word falls with a harsh exhale from Raf’s lips. “How the hell did they even find her in the first place?”

  “Do you think she’s been applying for jobs this entire time?”

  I jerk around in Anthony’s direction as my stomach knots. It’s a good question, and even though my gut instinct is to tell him no, that he has to be wrong, I can’t make myself say it.

  I can’t be sure if I’m even breathing at all anymore.

  Because if she’s been applying for jobs this entire time, that means she never took the arrangement seriously. That she fucking played us from day one when we were busy giving her the best parts of ourselves. Nausea slams into me, and I think there’s a distinct possibility that I might lose my lunch right here on the astroturf.

  How the fuck did we get this so wrong?

  I thought she was the best thing to ever happen to us. Now I don’t know if we ever really even had her.

  Forty-Four

  Gemma

  Even though I’m bone tired, I’m on cloud freaking nine when I get back from my trip with Cara to New York. And yeah, I know the guys aren’t going to actually give a shit that I got a behind-the-scenes tour of the Garden while Cara worked out the finer details of her potential new job, but I can’t wait to tell them anyway.

  I mean, yeah, I’m lucky enough to actually work in professional sports and maybe shouldn’t have been as impressed as I was. But how many freaking times in your life do you get a behind the scenes peek into a franchise that’s almost a hundred years old? Here’s a hint, you don’t.

  The only thing better than being in New York and having that once in a lifetime experience was knowing that I got to come home to my guys. Because, yeah, somewhere along the line they became my guys, and I don’t ever want to let them go.

  I dial Luis first. Because of all of them, I know he’s the least likely to give me shit about my excitement, but the call goes to voicemail almost immediately. Odd. I try Lars and Edric next, just because they’re two of the last guys I spent time with before the unexpected trip out east. But just like with Luis, my calls go unanswered.

  A heavy feeling settles in the pit of my stomach as I pace around my house, dialing number after number with the same results. The calls either ring and ring, going unanswered before going to voicemail, or they go straight to the inboxes. Either way, it turns my stomach to knots.

  My finger hovers over the contact button for Coach as I pace around my living room. My gaze pauses on the ice cream stain near the couch, and my breath catches in my throat as I remember Isaac’s disgusted reaction to it.

  Why the hell aren’t they answering me?

  It’s almost midnight, and I really know I shouldn’t bother Marty, but the part of me that’s really fucking concerned about the guys is bigger than the part of me that thinks it’s inappropriate to call my boss this late at night.

  “Somebody better be dead, Gemma.”

  I never thought I’d be so damn relieved to hear Marty Kringle grouse at me in the middle of the night. But the vice that’s been wrapped around my heart gives way a little, and I can’t help the relieved sigh that brushes through my lips at his ugly words.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Why the hell are you asking me that?” he asks, voice scratchy and low with the evidence of his sleep. My palms start to sweat, and I begin to wonder whether he can write me up for needlessly bothering him in the middle of the night. “You’re the one who called me at midnight.”

  “I can’t get ahold of any of the guys…”

  Dammit. Now that I’m saying it out loud, I realize how contrite it sounds. It’s midnight. We have an early practice. If they’re doing what they should be, they’re all in bed, resting up for the friendlies Coach has scheduled for the morning.

  “Yeah, well, after this month, maybe they’re just finally fucking exhausted.”

 
Silence hangs heavily in the air between us. My mouth sags open on a response, but I can’t find my words.

  Does…

  Does Marty know about me and the guys?

  “See you at six.”

  “Wait, what? My schedule’s for eight.”

  “Gemma, you called me and woke me up in the middle of the night for no reason,” he grumbles out, and man am I glad I’m by myself right now because I’m pretty sure my entire body is flushing beet red in embarrassment.

  “We have a six o’clock practice. The guys are probably sleeping, just like I should be. Just like you should be. You know, since you’re going to show up bright eyed and bushy tailed at six on the fucking dot with a steaming cup of coffee for me.”

  I clench my jaw around the smartass remark that I want to make. Marty’s pissed at me right now. In our two years working together, he’s never treated me as anything other than a serious member of his staff. He’s never asked me to do something like get him coffee.

  “Yes, sir,” I mumble into the phone just to be rewarded with the silence of a hastily ended phone call a second later.

  Fuck, tomorrow’s gonna be a long one.

  If I thought the worst part of my day was going to be getting up at the ass crack of dawn to report to practice with a scalding cup of coffee in my hand, I was wrong. Because nothing could ever be worse than twenty-five men refusing to make eye contact with me and pointedly making an effort to not get any closer to me than necessary.

  Ben shakes his head in a sharp no at me when I ask if he needs help with his stretches before his lighter warm-up, and Isaac snaps that his leg’s fine before brushing past me. When I try to approach Cyrus, he crosses his arms over his chest and glares at me like I’m the shit on the bottom of his shoe as his jaw ticks.

  I don’t know what the hell’s gotten into them, but by the time lunch rolls around, I’m done. I spent an entire month with them, giving them every part of me imaginable, making deeper, more meaningful connections than I thought was possible with so fucking many of them, and this is how they treat me on my first day back to practice?

  Hell no.

  I try to corner Anthony on his way off the field, but he hangs his head low and darts by me before I can get a straight fucking answer from him. Declan, Milo, and Raf rise from their table and scamper off when I approach them in the small cafeteria on the far side of the complex.

  There’s a stinging pressure building behind my eyes, and it’s hard to swallow around the hard lump in my throat. I close my eyes and focus on my breathing, refusing to cry when I don’t know what the fuck is actually going on. Surely there’s a reasonable explanation for what’s happening with all of them.

  But then I remember the way Mateo’s shoulders stiffened when I passed him in the hall and the way Ryan scoffed when I tried to say hi to him in the hall outside of my office. And just like that, I’m pissed off.

  My head snaps up at the sound of footsteps echoing through the cafeteria, and my eyes lock with Lee’s. He glances down and turns like he’s going to leave, but I’m across the cafeteria in record time, wrapping my fingers around his arm and dragging him to a stop.

  “Lee, you better stop trying to run from me right now,” I grit out when he tries to pull his arm from my grasp. He huffs, but I tighten my grip on his arm. “Seriously. Stop.”

  Lee rips his arm from my grasp, but he at least stops trying to get away from me. I go on the defensive almost immediately, though, because there’s something dark behind his eyes that’s lingering somewhere between upset and dislike. I don’t know what the hell I did to garner that response.

  “What the hell is going on with everyone today?”

  Lee crosses his arms over his chest, eyes narrowing as he clenches his jaw defiantly. The silent treatment. Real mature. I throw my arms in the air and pace a few steps away before swinging back around to glare at him, my own jaw clenching around the tension that sparks in the air between us.

  We’re silent for a beat more before I break and go off. I’m not typically the yelling type. I’m not into dramatics. But something’s changed over the past month. These guys have wormed their way in, laying roots in my heart that have spanned and grown and completely taken me over, and now they want to give me the cold shoulder?

  I’m scared, worried, and furious.

  I can’t keep the hysterical edge from my tone, even when heads pop up all over the cafeteria. “What the hell happened over the past four days to change everything?”

  “You left!”

  “I came back!”

  Seeing Raf, Milo, and Declan shuffling back into the cafeteria with curious looks on their faces sends me careening over the edge. They can run out on me when I need them but come back when it’s convenient?

  “Yeah, for how long?” Someone pipes up behind me, and I feel my shoulders tense. I whirl around to see Cyrus standing behind me, arms crossed over his chest again, jaw clenching hard as his muscles tick.

  “For how long?” I repeat his question, trying helplessly to understand it. “What does that even mean?”

  Hunter scoffs from the table nearest where I’m standing, but it’s Lee who finally answers me. “I don’t know why you’re so upset when you’re the one who decided to leave.”

  “I was gone for four days?” It comes out more defeated than I meant for it to, but I just don’t understand.

  “What about the Vikings?” Mateo counters as he pushes himself violently up from his table, chair careening out from under him and toppling over behind him.

  I don’t even have the chance to be confused about what exactly he means by that. Not when Lee slams his hands on the table nearest to him, the sound commanding everyone’s attention back on him again.

  “We know about the contract, Gemma.”

  “What contract?” I ask, a steely edge back in my tone. A suspicion is starting to form, and it’s not pretty. And yeah, I’m mad—maybe unreasonably so, but after two years, I really thought we were at a point where we could all trust one another.

  “I found it in your office—”

  “Snooping through my things, are you?” Freaking unbelievable. “I’m sorry, when did we decide we weren’t going to trust each other anymore?”

  “Probably around the time you started applying for jobs halfway across the country,” Andre butts in.

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell them that it’s Cara’s contract, but a deep twang of anger trills inside of me again. This whole thing is a testament to the lack of trust in me, even after everything we’ve shared.

  “So, you all decided to just get angry without ever bothering to talk to me first?”

  “What’s there to talk about?” Cyrus challenges, and I swear I think my heart cracks down the middle at the edge of hurt in his tight voice. “We gave you everything, and we weren’t enough. You’ve made that pretty fucking clear. Sorry we couldn’t give you what you needed.”

  Except he doesn’t sound sorry at all. He just sounds disappointed.

  And just like that, all the anger is zapped from my body, only to be replaced with a desolate type of sadness. I gave them everything, too, split and spread myself in twenty-five different directions to prove to them that I could love them all, and this is where we are?

  “Fine.” I say even though nothing feels fine. In fact, everything feels the exact opposite of fine. Like my heart is being ripped twenty-five different ways, the pieces fluttering to the ground around me like New Year’s confetti. “You all obviously think this is over—fine, it’s over.”

  It’s not fine. Nothing is fine. It will never be fine again.

  I square my shoulders as a low murmuring breaks out amongst the Storms. I stare straight into Cyrus’ eyes, my last act of brokenhearted defiance. “My dad did tell me that storms always pass. I just didn’t realize how right he was.”

  Somehow, I make it to my car before the tears come, but once they start, they don’t stop falling for a long, long time.

  Losing the S
torms really brought on the rain.

  Forty-Five

  Gemma

  The ice cubes in my glass clink together as I swirl my cup aimlessly, doing my best to tune out yet another round of Cara’s rambling theories about how things went so wrong so fast.

  I don’t want to hear any of it.

  It doesn’t matter what happened with the Storms or why. What matters is that they didn’t trust me and then when push came to shove, they let me walk away. I haven’t heard a peep out of any of them since I walked out of the complex a few days ago.

  Now I can’t help but to wonder if I even still have a job. As well as Marty and I get along, there’s no way any team would keep a trainer around that can’t get along with the players. And after what happened, I just don’t know how any of us are supposed to face each other.

  I need to start thinking of contingency plans. Surely my years with the Storms have earned me some kind of goodwill in the athletic realm that might make it easier for me now to get a job than when I was fresh out of college.

  I interrupt Cara’s monologue to ask, “Do you think you could sweet talk Donovan Cain into pushing the Vikings to hire another athletic trainer to their team?”

  “What? Where did that even come from?” Cara’s got a look of real alarm in her eyes as she sees the serious expression on my face. “Gemma, you’re not quitting your dream job over a bunch of dumb boys.”

  “Once upon a time my dream job was working in hockey,” I remind her. I’d spent all my time in college swearing up and down that hockey was where I would wind up. Maybe it’s time I try to make that dream a reality.

  The mere thought makes my stomach churn, but what other choice do I have?

  Cara pulls the drink out of my hands and sets it aside. “You’re insane if you think I’m going to let you run away to the other side of the country instead of working things out with the men you love.”