Page 1 of Elite Player
CHAPTER 1
NICO
My dick’sgotten me in trouble before—but never called-to-the-principal’s-office kind of trouble. Yet as I sit here under the narrowed glares of the Philadelphia Iron’s general manager, my agent, and apparent babysitter, I have to answer for it.
“Why can’t you keep your dick in your pants, son?”
I open my mouth and then close it. Because I’m not sure if it’s a rhetorical question or not.
Why can’t I keep it in my pants?
Well, for starters, it feels good when I take it out, and I’ve never had a shortage of volunteers willing to become its playmate.
I am but a lowly man. With the self-control of a gorilla.
Once, at the San Diego Zoo, I saw a male gorilla wanking it in front of a huge crowd of people. Totally nonchalant. Simply trying to have some fun in his godforsaken cage.
Some visitors gasped. Parents covered their children’s eyes. But I didn’t see the problem. He was doing what he was meant to do.
And I’m doing what I was meant to do.
“We haven’t even finished preseason, and already, we’re dealing with your fucking bullshit,” the GM says, crossing hisarms over his chest. Tom Fitzgerald, with his thick Minnesota accent and benign features, seems like he should be passing the plates in church on Sundays. But his church is the ice, and I’ve blasphemed in his house.
I lift my hands to plead my case. “You can’t blame what happened on me. I didn’t know she was going to do that.”
“Break in to the training facility in order to find you,” Malcolm supplies unhelpfully. As if we don’t all know the story.
A few nights ago, I hooked up with this random woman. I know I’m good at sex, but I think it’s seriously impressive that I’m good enough to track down while at practice and beg me to fuck her.
It was a whole thing.
Clearly.
Since I’m being called on the carpet for it.
“I don’t know what the fuck goes through your head sometimes,” Fitzgerald growls. “Honest to Christ, I could kill you. And I just might if I weren’t already being pressured from the top to get rid of you.”
I jerk upright in my seat. “What?”
My agent finally pipes up. “You think I flew here from Chicago to tell you what a wonderful job you’ve been doing?”
I shrug. “Might be nice.”
He rolls his eyes. Jameson Probst has been with me for nearly a decade, since I was in the Juniors. While I’m not his star client, I think he has a soft spot for me underneath the blank face and even blanker eyes. Before this little meeting today, he’d given me a stern warning, informing me that if I wanted to stay out of trouble, I should simply nod along to anything they told me.
“You know the standards we have here,” Fitzgerald says. “We’re trying to change the culture of hockey, and you’ve earned your last strike.”
I blink at him and then at my agent. “You’re kidding.”
They both shake their heads.
“But that’s why we called this meeting of the minds,”Jameson says then points to Malcolm, the man they’d introduced me to when I walked in the room. The guy sent from the public relations firm Rosenstein & Hill to keep me in line. I was ready to accept my punishment, but not if I’m being fucking traded.
I thought I was making a home here—fitting in. I’ve learned all the systems and get along with my teammates. But they want to trade me?
“We made that play-off run last year because of you,” Fitzgerald explains. “You came in with a fire lit under your ass, and I like it. Love it. But I’m not the only one making the decisions.”
“So I stepped in with an offer to try to smooth the waters,” Jameson continues. “You have the next few months to shape up, or you’re shipped out.”
