Page 39 of Edging Coach
WE CAN’T.
He didn’t respond. My pounding heart switched to a more panicked cadence. He was backing off, which was exactly what I needed him to do. At the same time, I wasn’t ready to let this go, no matter how much I should. Especially not when he was laying down cards I desperately needed to see.
Damn it, Ineededto pull at this thread. Find out how deep this went—this submission and masochism and praise kink. Couldn’t we, like, steal away for a night and see this through? Explore it? Let me really get my head around what I was and what he did to me?
No. Of course we couldn’t. I was stupid for even thinking it.
The smart thing to do would be to take the information he’d given me and find someone else. He couldn’t possibly be the only Dom or sadist out there, and I didn’t imagine every single one of them was affiliated with a hockey team.
But God help me…
I wanted to kneel for Devon.
CHAPTER 12
DEVON
“What part ofdo not pinch with this teamare you not getting?” Coach didn’t look pissed exactly. But he had a furrow in his brow and he appeared…stressed.
Leaps shrugged. “I had a chance?—”
“Bullshit.” Hairs. Coughing into his sleeve.
“Hey!” Yanni, Leaps’s D partner snapped.
“You let him do it.” Hairs raised an eyebrow.
“You think I can control what he does?” Yanni appeared ready to pull his hair out. Between Leaps not doing what he was told and Hairs totally flaking both offensivelyanddefensively, they’d been responsible for allowing three goals against.
Hairs was trying to blame Saffron, but Vadim, the goaltending coach, wasn’t putting up with that shit.
Coach sighed. “We have one period left—we’re only down by three.”
“We can do it, Coach. I swear.” Anty, who centered Hairs’s line, clearly didn’t want to be pulled into the drama.
To my frustration, my shifts hadn’t gone much better. At least we’d avoided pinching. But I also hadn’t had the chance torun the puck down the ice and score. I really fucking wanted to score. If only to show Coach how focused I was.
Coach eyed each one of us. Then he nodded. “We’ve got one period left to turn this around. They’re getting pissed, and they’re going to get chippy if we start scoring, but what are we going to do?”
“Playourgame!” the team replied in enthusiastic unison.
“And when they try to goad us into fighting?”
“Don’t take the bait!”
“When they play dirty?”
“Punish them on the scoreboard!”
He swept his hand toward the door, “Let’s get out there and do it!”
We lumbered out. He’d said those exact words to us when we’d won our last game. So, he must’ve had faith we could somehow pull off an epic comeback.
Lous nudged my shoulder. “You got this.”
But we didn’tgot this. Laval scored on us two more times, and Deca—the bastard who’d come down from Montreal—clocked a shutout.
Fucking Montreal. They were so goddamn stupid. Send down a talent like Deca and that guaranteed their team would keep losing.
