Page 64 of Two for Roughing

“Unlikely,” Kilian admitted. “But I’ll try.”

“Unlikely, he says,” Damir scoffed. “You scored a perfect goal, and your skating was amazing. If you’d started the season with us, you would have gotten the scoring record for the team.”

Sitting down in his stall with a heavy thunk, Kilian rolled his eyes. “Okay, Coach Denisov. I know my own strengths, thanks.” He pulled his jersey over his head and got to work on the buckles of his chest protector. Down to his base layer, he paused. Getting out of the rest of his gear meant bending over to unlace his skates and standing up again, and his quads were fucking killing him. He could take a minute.

He grabbed his phone from his bag. There was another missed call from Starling. He swiped it away aggressively. When would the woman understand he didn’t want to talk to her?

Beneath that came notifications from the chat with his sisters, nothing but fireworks and trophy emojis. He grinned, dropping a quick heart in the chat. Maybe tonight he would finally take one of his dad’s calls. He’d been avoiding it ever since the trade, unwilling to hear the disappointment in his voice or worse, the words, “Let me hand the phone to your grandfather. He has some tips.” Surely tonight, they would both be proud.

He had three new messages from Breezy too: a picture of Luca scowling as he taped a box of Kilian’s things shut, followed by one of a UPS guy giving the camera a thumbs-up as the boxes were loaded into his van, followed by a final image of Luca with one of Kilian’s ugliest ties tied around his forehead, both arms raised as he cheered for tiny Kilian on TV.

Kilian reacted to the pictures with a heart as well. He hadn’t heard from Luca directly since he’d been traded. He would have been shocked if he had. Luca barely texted when they saw each other daily. But Breezy had texted him back as soon as he could to tell Kilian that of course he would clean out Kilian’s apartment, and how sorry he was they couldn’t say goodbye, and asking how Kilian was doing in Chicago. Ever since, they’d been messaging each other—nothing big, no more huge revelations, but enough to keep Kilian in the loop on Sea Lions gossip. It was too early to say, but maybe Kilian could keep a few friends. The intensity of his meltdown over Halloween felt stupider and stupider the further he put it in the rearview mirror. If he’d just gotten over himself a little earlier, he could have— But he couldn’t anymore, now, so he didn’t bother thinking about it.

“Howie, media!” Lissy called.

Kilian looked up from his phone. Ugh, of course he had media, and thanks to his own procrastination, he’d have to do it gross, sweaty, and covered in beer. His hair must look awful.

With a groan, he got to his feet and headed for the cordoned-off media section of the locker room, where he took a seat behind a sea of microphones.

“Kilian, can you walk us through the goal? Were you planning to go on a breakaway?”

Kilian ran a hand across the back of his neck. “Um, I wouldn’t call it a plan, no. I saw Rocky needed someone to pass to, and I tried to get into a good position for him. And then I had the puck, and there was no one in front of me, so I just went for it.”

“Worked out well for you, huh?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

He turned to the next reporter, a man in a butt-ugly brown polo shirt.

“Kilian, what do you have to say about Olivia Starling’s allegations the Sea Lions traded you due to your sexuality?”

“What?” Kilian’s lips felt numb as the word stumbled across them.

“The article posted just five minutes ago shows pictures of you dancing with a man at a club in San Francisco. Any comment?”

Kilian’s ears buzzed. His hands traced absently across the shape of his pads beneath his shorts, but he couldn’t feel the rasp of the material. “I don’t know about an article.”

“Kilian, are you—”

“Out.” Where had Damir come from? And why was he pushing his way between the microphones and Kilian? He’d ruin the sound quality of the interview. There would be a gross fuzzy crackle over the end of every video, or they’d have to cut it down to the ten seconds of speaking Kilian had done.

Damir turned on the reporters, shielding Kilian with his body. “Everybody out. Interview’s over.”

“But—”

“No buts. Out.”

“Gentlemen, if you’ll follow me, I’ve been told we have refreshments waiting in the visitor’s lounge upstairs, and Tyson Fuller is giving an update on his injury. This way!” Brianna from PR smiled brightly as she shepherded a dozen confused journalists toward the exit, her Firecracker-red shirt a beacon for a herd of gullible bulls.

“Damir?” Kilian asked. “What’s going on?”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Damir impressed on him. He stood between Kilian and the rest of the room, eyeing the last journalists as they left, before he leaned down and grasped Kilian by the shoulders, their faces close enough to kiss.

“I—” Kilian said, but his brain was empty, and his body wasn’t his. “I don’t understand. I can’t— I’m.”

Damir took a breath. He nodded, the sweat-damp tendrils of his hair brushing Kilian’s cheek. “Ketchup!”

Ketchup appeared beside them, half-undressed and concerned. “What do we do, boss?”