by Elise Faber
But the team was also a business.
So even though he got to know players’ kids, their wives, and there were meal trains and team barbeques and holiday get-togethers, if the team wasn’t winning, changes had to be made.
Warm hands on his face, tugging him down for another kiss. “It’ll get better, baby,” she murmured, her eyes still closed. “The team is young. They’ll get their shit together.”
Another reason why he’d been dragging his heels before making any changes.
They were young.
Most of the guys he’d won the Cup with were gone. Hell, most of the guys on the roster now were under thirty, and only two were married.
A different team.
And it was his job to figure out how to move the pieces around in order to get them to fit properly.
A puzzle.
But one that formed an actual picture of a winning team.
“Luc?”
Her voice was a little more alert now, and he didn’t want her to wake up fully. He wanted her relaxed and settled. “Sleep, honey.” He kissed her forehead.
She propped an elbow beneath her. “The team—”
He tugged the blankets up and over her, tucked them tightly around her, giving up on her going back to sleep when she opened her eyes and squirmed out from beneath the comforter, tucking it loosely around her breasts.
Shame that.
She could at least be topless if she was going to interrogate him at zero-dark-thirty.
“The team will be fine,” he said.
Her brows lifted. “Will you?”
He laughed. “I’m not the one getting battered on the ice every night.”
“Just up in the box every game,” she said. “And wishing you were down there on the ice.”
Truth, sometimes at least, but it sounded ridiculous to admit it, especially considering how old he was. Even without the wrecked knee, he was long past his playing days at this point. “I’m frustrated because the team is playing bad, honey, frustrated because I didn’t put the tools together in the right way for them to be successful. But I’m not spending all my time being morose up in the box, dreaming about my playing days.”
“Just some of your time.”
He chuckled, despite himself. “Only when they’re really playing like shit.”
“You think you could do it better,” she said. “If you hadn’t gotten hurt, you think you could be down there.”
A shrug. “I wouldn’t be down there, regardless. Even if they were playing great.” He sighed. “Look, this is just a storm to weather. God knows, I’ve been through plenty of them. This, too, will pass.”
“And you think it will pass when you figure out the roster?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“You take too much on your shoulders,” she murmured. “The team isn’t just one person. It’s not only your responsibility.”
“Maybe not,” he agreed.
“Why do I hear a but?”
“Because there is one.” Smiling gently, he stroked a finger down her cheek. “But it does begin and end with me.”
She sighed, rolled her eyes. “Broad shoulders you’ve got there.”
“Subtle you are.”
Laughter tinkled across the room, drifting to his ears, filling his soul with music. “Okay, Yoda,” he muttered, tugging her toward him, slanting his lips across hers. He yanked the blankets back, loving the way she squealed as he lifted her up and tossed her over his shoulder like a fireman’s carry. “Since you’re up, let’s go conserve some water.”
More laughter, and although his work situation was shit, and he was going to have to make some really tough decisions, and probably make them soon, the sound of Lexi’s happiness, the feel of her body was enough.
For the first time in a long time, his personal life was perfect.
He’d hated morning skates, even as a player.
He still hated them as a GM, especially after an early morning flight.
But it was his head coach’s decision, and Tommy Franklin was an old school, by-the-books kind of coach, a head down, hard work, keep-pushing-forward coach.
And since that was normally Luc’s modus operandi, they usually got along.
The shitshow on the ice, however, was telling him that something else was up, and he didn’t think it was just feeling down because the losses were piling up. There was a feeling wafting up from the rink below, and it was in the way the players looked at each other, the way they looked at Tommy.
Something was wrong.
Something big.
And perhaps, he’d been too distracted by Lexi to realize exactly what was going on.
A bolt of guilt shot through him, but he pushed it away.
He was allowed to have a personal life, and he’d like to think that if this problem had been going on since the start of the season, he wouldn’t just be clueing into it now. Would like to think.
“Fuck,” he whispered, closing his laptop and standing up.
Well, even if he was an idiot and this had been going on for weeks, he wasn’t going to let it go on any longer.
He made his way through the back offices, down the stairs, and past the guest locker room at the arena. It would have been better if they were at home, able to deal with the players on his own terms.
But they were on the road.
They were here, and things had to be done.
He waited by the edge of the rink, watching the practice wind down and nodding to the players as they moved by him when they got off the ice. Once the last player had gone by—Martin Robinson, their goalie—he waved off Tommy, the equipment guys, and trainers.
He then moved into the locker room behind Martin, shutting the door and throwing the lock.
He waited, arms crossed, as he leaned against the door.
It didn’t take long. The guys weren’t stupid. They’d had more than their fair share of coaching, of management. As soon as one player, Raphael Gomez, noticed it was him and not Tommy by the door, he nudged the guy next to him, who then nudged another, and pretty soon the room fell quiet, twenty-plus eyes coming to Luc and holding, understanding that the dynamic was about to change.
The silence was taut, rippling with tension.
But still, Luc didn’t speak.
Tommy should probably be the one doing this, but as he’d told Lexi that morning, the responsibility for this team—for whether they succeeded or failed—began and ended with him.
Someone sighed, a sharp, short sound that pierced the silence.
Glares were exchanged, wet hockey gear remained on.
Luc continued to stand by the door.
For many, long minutes.
Until he was starting to think that this might not work. But then, they broke. Or he should say, one of them did. The source of the sigh, Marcel Aubert, began tearing tape from his socks, balling it up in quick, angry movements.
No one else moved.
And frankly, Luc was surprised.
Not by the rest of the team remaining still and silent, but by Marcel’s actions. He was a quiet player. Not showy or egotistical. A hard worker who was a solid second liner.
Never had he given Luc one bit of attitude.
Until today.
He ripped off his jersey and tossed it into the center of the room, missing the bin that the equipment guys used to collect the dirties. Not that he got up and retrieved it, putting it where it belonged.
Instead, he continued, tearing off his shoulder and elbow pads then bent and went to work on his skates, yanking the laces, toeing them off. His hockey socks came after, uncovering his shin guards, which were next to hit the mat, his hockey pants a moment after that.
Then he sat back down on the bench, wearing a jock, his skintight undershirt, and the black socks he wore beneath his skates.
And glaring.
Couldn’t forget the glaring.
That was angled in Luc’s direction for a moment, then in the team’s direction, then in
the direction of one player in particular. In fact, many glares were pointed in that same direction.
Hmm.
Still, Luc waited.
Marcel sighed again, slumped back on the bench and crossed his arms.
Luc opened his mouth, thinking a demand to, “Talk,” was overdue, but then he saw something cross Mark Shelby’s face. He was the player on the receiving end of the glares, and the amusement in Mark’s expression had Luc clamping his lips closed as he scoured his brain, trying to piece through every bit of information he knew about both players.
Mark was more talented. Their highest-scoring forward last season, in fact. A great skater with good hands, he was a definite force on the ice. Outside of hockey, he was single, no kids, family up in Canada.
Marcel was a rookie, a winger on the same side. Not as flashy, but a solid player. More likely to set up a goal than to actually score it. He had a girlfriend, and they were serious. In fact, last Luc had heard, they’d moved in together, and he was ring shopping.
So, more hmm.
“Anyone want to clue me in?” Luc finally asked.
Mark smirked, and it seemed like Marcel was going to launch himself across the room.
Suddenly, twenty-plus pairs of eyes were turned away from him.
Luc waited a few more moments, and when no one spoke, not even his captain, Oliver James, he slid his back down along the door, plunking his ass on the black skate mat and going back to waiting.
Eyes, once again on him, went wide.
He held each gaze in turn, waiting until last for Oliver.
Who stared right back at him, a muscle in his jaw twitching. He wouldn’t be the one to speak, and everyone else was going to follow his lead.
Fucking hell.
Not like he didn’t have work to do, a shit-ton of emails to catch up, meetings to get to, reports to review. Though, truthfully, nothing was more important than the team, than figuring this out.
So, back to sitting.
Back to waiting.
Though, this time, he added, “My ass is here until we figure out the bullshit that has you guys playing like fucking peewees. So until someone talks, until we sort this out, I’m not moving.” A beat. “And neither are you.”
Raised eyebrows all around.
Luc shrugged, settled in and opened his laptop. “I can do this all day.”
And, finally, it was enough.
Mark broke. “That fucking pussy can’t just get over it.” He made a face. “Just crying about it all the time.”
Luc closed his laptop, followed Mark’s gaze—no surprise—to Marcel, who had gone from looking like he was going to throttle Mark to looking like he was going to stab him with his skate.
“You fucked my girlfriend!” Marcel snapped.
“Couldn’t have been much of a boyfriend if she came looking for me,” Mark said, snide in every letter.
“Fuck you!” Marcel was on his feet and across the room in a heartbeat, slamming his fist into Mark’s face. It didn’t miss Luc’s notice that more than a few of the other players, including Oliver, could have stopped Marcel.
That none of them did, told him enough about where the rest of the team stood.
What else had Mark done? And how soon did he need to unload him?
The crunch of Mark’s nose propelled Luc up, setting his laptop on the bench. But before he could reach the now-brawling, rolling-on-the-floor, fists-flying pair, Oliver and Ben, a second-line defenseman, were on them, each grabbing one of the men and hauling them away from each other.
Blood dripped down Mark’s face. Marcel looked ready to explode all over again, despite knuckles that were split and abraded. Both of their chests heaved.
“What else?” Luc asked.
Silence, and fucking hell, were they going to go through this again?
Oliver glanced up, met Luc’s gaze. “Plenty of else.”
That answered his question from before. He needed to unload Mark as quickly as possible.
“Let them go,” he ordered.
After a pause, Oliver and Ben glanced at each other and Mark and Marcel were no longer restrained. “This bullshit ends here,” he said, holding Marcel’s eyes and then Mark’s, in some sort of stupid ass alpha male nonsense. But he needed them, needed the team to function until he could off-load Mark. “James,” he said to Oliver. “This is your team, and you need to find a way to fix this.”
Let Mark think of this what he would.
If it got the team to a place where the hemorrhaging stopped while he navigated trade deals, then good enough.
He turned, snagged his laptop from the bench, moved to the door.
“Shower. Change if you want, but none of your asses are leaving this room until this is worked out.”
With that, he strode into the hall and slammed the door shut.
Chapter Thirty-One
Lexi
She watched the Breakers win that night.
Adding a tally to one of the few they’d had that season.
Something had shifted, and it wasn’t even that the announcers kept talking about how the lines had been “changed up.” Instead, it was something deeper, something larger, as though the whole team was finally acting like an actual team.
They seemed like a completely different group of hockey players than she had watched previously.
Something had changed, and she’d bet more than her favorites from her collection of The Lord of the Rings memorabilia (which for the record and in proper order from least to most valuable—at least to her—were her replica ring, her signed script of The Two Towers, and a prop knife that one of the elves had actually used on set) that it was something deeper than a change in the team’s lines.
Swapping players around didn’t make that big of a shift.
Whatever it was, she was happy for Luc’s sake that it was an improvement, at least.
She flicked off the TV, settled in under the blanket at her apartment. They hadn’t had a chance to move any of her things over to his place, not with her just agreeing to live with him only the day before. And God, was it insanity to be moving in with someone after being together for a week? Who did that? Except . . . it didn’t feel like a week, not they’d been working toward this for two and a half years. Which was why although it had been tempting to just stay in Luc’s bed, she’d known she’d needed to take some time to wrap her head around everything.
Regret wasn’t lingering about agreeing to move in with Luc.
That she was more certain of than anything else she’d ever chosen. Her future lay with Luc. She knew that in the marrow of her bones, in the beat of her heart, in the blood flowing through her veins.
Perhaps her life had always been leading to Luc.
Certainly, their friendship had been the best part of it these last two and a half years.
So why then was she feeling a little unsettled?
Because her life had taken another sharp turn? Or because something else, something that didn’t involve her and Luc was on the horizon, another ax that was going to fall, to send her sprawling and reeling?
She didn’t know yet.
What she did know was that come tomorrow, she was going to return to this space, pack up her apartment, and cram as much of the stuff—including her plants—into her car and take it over to Luc’s place.
And then she would keep doing that until her apartment was empty.
Until Luc’s house was full—and God knew that it would be full, considering she was going to cram in an apartment’s worth of furniture into an already filled home.
So, maybe there was something waiting on the edges of her life, something that was going to throw her for another loop, but she couldn’t focus on that now. Maybe she was being dramatic and had watched too many murder documentaries, or maybe that sense of bleakness on the edges of her mind was real.
But at moment, the only thing she could focus on was the thought of her plants cluttering up his living room.
And that made
her smile.
After everything that had happened, she was just really happy to be smiling.
“So, this is what it’s like to be a hockey wife?” she asked into the phone, late the next evening.
Luc had called her after the game that evening, and it was the first time she’d heard his voice since he’d left.
They’d texted loads.
But he’d been busy—and she’d been moving. Still, his busy trumped hers, she realized as he told her all of what had transpired in that locker room. Sleeping with another player’s girlfriend and more, more that even Luc didn’t know, more that had festered and torn the team apart. But whatever, however the team had sorted it, they had sorted it.
They were a team again.
They’d won again.
The future looked a little bit brighter.
And the tension that had been in Luc’s voice, more tension than she had even been completely aware of, was gone.
Guilt trickled through her, knowing she should have pushed more, should have fought more to shoulder some of his burden, knowing that she had been so wrapped up in herself, in her drama, her loss that her best friend’s pain had been—partially, at least—hidden from her. He saw everything, and she’d missed precisely how much the losses were taking out of him. Oh, she’d understood that he was upset by the team’s records, knew that he’d taken on too much of that responsibility.
But she hadn’t understood until that moment how deep the wounds had been carved within him.
Deeper than she’d realized. Healing now.
And she wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Luc focused on her more than himself, and she could do no less than the same for him.
That would keep the fear away. Stifle the fear lurking on the edges of her mind that she would do something to fuck this up, miss something and Luc would be hurt, that Luc would leave.
She would pay attention.
She would prove she could care for him just as strongly as he did her.
“Hockey wife?” he asked, drawing her out of her own brain, from her own thoughts of how she could show this man how much he meant to her.
