Game Breaker (Portland Storm Book 14)

by Catherine Gayle

  “It wouldn’t be hiding,” Bergy said. “You did get banged up in the third blocking that shot.”

  I took a seat on the bench and tore through the laces on my skates, pulling them free. “I’m fine, so unless you’re planning to force me to go to the trainers’ room—”

  “No one’s forcing you to do anything. That’s just it. If you don’t want to talk to the press yet, you don’t have to.”

  If I wasn’t so hot already, I knew I’d have no problem seeing the truth in what Bergy was saying. The guy was a hard-ass, but he was as fair as they came. He just wanted to give me options.

  I took a breath and willed myself to calm the fuck down. “I’m fine. I appreciate what you’re doing, but I’m fine. Send them in.”

  He gave me a tight nod, crossing his arms. Then he gestured toward Kurt Yarbrough, the head of the Storm’s communications department, before returning his attention to me. “Fine. But Kurt’s going to be right by your side the whole time they’re in here. If anyone asks you something you don’t want to answer, or if you’re ready to be done, you just nod at him, and he’ll take care of it.”

  I had no intention of fighting Bergy on that one, but I also didn’t plan to send out an SOS in front of all those cameras. I could fight my own battles, something I’d been striving to prove to Bergy, my teammates, and the rest of the damned league all season long. This was just one more battle in the war. One more mountain to climb.

  I’d be damned if I’d let anything or anyone get in my way.

  Bergy headed off to talk with the other coaches, and Kurt took up position near me but not all the way in my grill. The security guard outside the locker room opened the doors, and a flood of reporters swarmed inside—far more of them than was normal during the regular season. I caught a glimpse of Anne Dennison among them, but she walked over to one of her camera guys and whispered something in his ear as the crowd converged on me, and I lost track of her.

  Too bad. She was probably the only one out of the lot of them who’d be completely safe from me losing my temper. Granted, she wasn’t a reporter anymore, now that she’d taken over the production of this web series.

  In no time, a few dozen mics and other recording devices were shoved in my direction. I couldn’t see anything beyond the glare of lights shining in my face.

  Mike Polanski, the Storm beat writer for the Portland Tribune and the absolute bane of my existence, stood directly in front of me. “Nate, what’s your reaction to the banana peel incident?” he demanded.

  “Have we already whittled it down to that?” I groused. “The banana peel incident? Sounds like a case to put Sherlock Holmes on. Someone get Cumberbatch on the line.”

  A few of the media guys chuckled, but Polanski wasn’t one of them. “So you’re just going to laugh it off?”

  “I’d rather laugh than react in a way that would land me in jail,” I bit off, and everyone sobered. “And I’d rather be talking about the game than the fact that three buffoons in the crowd decided to let the world see just how ignorant they are. Why aren’t you asking me about scoring my first ever hat trick in the NHL? Why aren’t you asking me about the fact that the Storm just soundly beat a team we might be facing again in only a couple of weeks in the playoffs? Why aren’t you asking me if we’re ready to take on the Sharks in a few days and how we think we’ll handle the way they throw their weight around, or if our skill can outperform their skill?”

  “Sorry to say it, Ghost, but that isn’t the story. Considering what happened this afternoon with Marcus Jameson and after what happened tonight—”

  “Hold up. Who is Marcus Jameson?” I wasn’t following. At all.

  “You haven’t heard about that?” Polanski asked. “This afternoon, a man named Marcus Jameson was pulled over by Chicago PD for a routine traffic stop. They shot and killed him. Everyone’s saying it’s racially motivated, and then this…”

  “I’m sorry to hear that about Marcus Jameson, but I don’t know what he has to do with the game tonight. As far as I’m concerned, the story you should be asking me about is the game. That’s what I know about. And if you ask the other nineteen guys in this room right now, I think they’d all agree with me that it’s the story that we think is important.”

  “So Marcus Jameson’s death isn’t important, Nate?” one of the other reporters asked, and I wanted to kick myself.

  “That’s not what I’m saying at all. His death is very important. But I didn’t have anything to do with it, and he didn’t have anything to do with this game. Frankly, this game is the only thing any of us is focused on, so if you want some other story, you’re going to have to get it from another source. Because here’s some truth for you. The guys who were behind the banana peel incident aren’t worth my time.”

  At that point, half a dozen of the other reporters tried to jump in with questions at once, but the only thing that registered with me was the sight of Anne pushing her way forward—the only woman in a mob of men, the only flash of color in an ocean of white faces much like I was the only minority among my teammates—with her cameraman at her side.

  Kurt held up his hand and tried to regain control of the session, getting them to stop talking over each other. Once they shut up, I nodded at Anne, giving her the floor. I’d rather talk to her any day than the rest of these guys, and not just because she was hot as hell and we’d been flirting outrageously with each other for the last couple of seasons, either.

  Her cameraman shoved his boom mic forward and she smiled, putting me at ease.

  “How are you going to make sure this doesn’t become a distraction for you and your teammates heading into the playoffs, especially if you do end up playing against the Blackhawks in the second round?” she asked, and I felt a hell of a lot less at ease.

  I’d thought Anne, at least, would be willing to focus on what really mattered right now. I’d expected her to realize that the press making this incident out to be a bigger deal than it was would only cause it to blow up and become a distraction. There’d been some part of me that had been counting on Anne to be on my side.

  At least now I knew she wasn’t. Flirtation or not, she was still part of the press. Maybe she worked for the team in some small way, but she was still out to get her story, trying to sell her angle on it, whatever that might be.

  I ground my jaw, apparently hesitating for so long that Kurt got nervous. He inched closer to my side and nudged my elbow, but I wasn’t going to let anyone rush to my aid and rescue me from a situation I didn’t need rescuing from.

  I looked straight in Anne’s eyes, hoping she got a full sense of the betrayal roiling through my gaze, and said, “The only people making it a distraction are all of you. My teammates and I have bigger things to worry about. Like San Jose, since we’ve got Game One to prepare for, and it’s coming up in a few days. If no one has any questions about hockey, I think we’re finished here.”

  Without checking to see if Kurt was satisfied with my response or not, I grabbed a towel from my stall and pushed my way through the throng.

  FOR THE LAST two days, I hadn’t been able to escape the fucking banana peel incident other than in the middle of the night, once I finally managed to shut off my brain and get some sleep. By the time we’d gotten back to Portland after that game, it had blown up all over Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and every other social media platform in existence, including a few I’d never heard of before. The media kept flogging it, and not just the sports media, either. This story was hitting the mainstream news. I’d even seen it on CNN last night while flipping channels.

  More racial tensions in Chicago, the headlines blared. Black hockey player subjected to slurs. Discrimination is alive and well in the Midwest. Marcus Jameson murdered at the hands of white police officer. Everywhere I turned, I kept running into it. At bars. At the gym. On the radio every time I got in my car. On newspapers and magazines at the grocery store. I couldn’t escape it, no matter how hard I tried.

  And trust me—I was tr
ying. All I wanted was for the distraction to go away so I could get back to focusing on improving my game and being the kind of player Bergy was determined I could be. That was what I needed to have happen, especially with the playoffs starting tomorrow.

  He seemed to think I could be a game breaker, the kind of player who could get on a scoring streak and almost singlehandedly destroy another team in a seven-game series. I wanted to find out if he was right about that. Back in juniors, I’d been able to, but it hadn’t ever translated to my game in the pros. But with the way things had been clicking for me lately with my line mates, Blake Kozlow and Axel Johansson…

  “How you holding up?” Riley Jezek asked me after practice, getting in my way and preventing me from making my escape.

  I’d been trying to hurry up and get my ass out to my car before someone could stop me, and especially before Anne and one of the guys from her camera crew could try to tag along with me like they’d attempted to do yesterday. I’d managed to slip out while the coaching staff distracted them, but it had been a close call. Apparently RJ had other plans for me today.

  “How do you think?” I replied, glaring.

  “I think you’re about ready to blow, based on the way you’ve been griping at everything that moves just about every chance you get. You just about bit Coop’s head off out there for passing you a bouncing puck. Not the kid’s fault the ice was shit after we’d been on it for a solid hour.”

  Even as he spoke, I noticed one of the camera guys heading our direction. Jamie Babcock, the team captain, got in his way and held him up. I made a mental note to buy Babs a steak dinner as thanks the next time we were out together.

  I gave RJ a significant look, angling my head toward the jackass who wanted to capture my every movement to broadcast for the whole world to see. “Is it any wonder I’m about to snap?”

  “Nope. But that doesn’t mean you need to take it out on Coop. Or any of the rest of us, for that matter. It’s not our fault there are asswipes in the world. We had nothing to do with all the shit you’re having to deal with. And in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re all on your side.”

  He was right, and I knew it, but that didn’t make it any easier to stop myself from behaving like a son of a bitch. If my mother were here, she’d be giving me a serious earful about how she’d raised me and the way I should conduct myself around my colleagues. And she’d be right. I didn’t need her here to say the words—just like I didn’t need her here to hold my hand while I tried to get through this ordeal with the media. She’d threatened to fly in from Toronto, although I was sure she didn’t see it as a threat. Moral support, she’d called it. It had taken both me and Dad to convince her I was a grown man and could sort this out on my own.

  Hell of a job I was doing with that, though.

  “I’m sorry, man,” I said, wishing like hell I could get my head back under control.

  “Don’t apologize to me. Or at least not just to me.”

  “I’ll say something to the boys tomorrow.” Once I’d had a chance to figure out what the hell I wanted to say. Besides, half of them had already split today. It’d be better to do it when I knew they were all present and accounted for.

  The truth was, they’d all been standing by me through every bit of this—sticking up for me, trying to help me escape the media any time they could like the coaches had done a couple of days ago and Babs was doing now—and I’d been acting like a douchebag with a major case of PMS.

  “And I’ll take Coop aside to apologize to him personally,” I added. Austin Cooper was the youngest guy on the team, called up from our minor league affiliate as an injury replacement. The kid was just trying to fit in and find his role on the team. He didn’t need me ripping him a new one, especially when he hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “That’s good,” RJ said. “It’s a good start, at least. I think your mom would say you could do better.”

  He knew he could talk to me like that and get away with it, especially since he actually knew my mother.

  RJ was my closest friend on the team. We’d grown up about three blocks away from each other in Toronto. My older sister had been in classes with his older brother for as long as either of us could remember. I’d been a year ahead of RJ in school. Didn’t matter much that he was a year younger than me, though. He’d always been a step or two ahead of me on the ice and at least a few inches taller than me. We’d played against each other just about our entire lives, right up until the moment when I’d been traded to the Storm a few seasons ago and we became teammates.

  “She would,” I admitted. “You’re right. I’m trying not to lose my shit, but right now I think that’s the best I can do.”

  He gave me a look that said he thought I was full of shit, but he let it drop. “Listen, Amanda and I were planning to take the dogs out for a walk this afternoon. She wants to take them to the Rose Test Gardens. I told her it’s probably too soon, they aren’t blooming much yet, but she’s insisting. Why don’t you come with us?”

  Amanda was RJ’s fiancée, and they had two enormous two-year-old mastiffs that seemed to think they were still puppies, along with all the exuberant energy to show for it. Amanda claimed they were her dogs, but she didn’t do a very good job of taking care of them without some muscle around to assist her. They were each almost twice her size, so there was no way she could walk them on her own. If they wanted to get away from her, it wouldn’t be very difficult at all.

  “So basically you want me to control one of the beasts, huh?”

  He grinned. “Something like that. But don’t call them beasts to their faces. You’ll hurt their feelings.”

  “They could stand to have their feelings hurt if they’re going to try to climb on my lap again. My balls still haven’t recovered.”

  “Doubt that’s solely due to my dogs. Might help if you got laid.”

  “How am I supposed to get laid if your dogs mash my balls?”

  “Lola is an angel. She can’t help it that she loves you. Or that she’s bigger than you. Not the dog’s fault you’re a shrimp.”

  “Well, try to teach her that she’s not a lap dog, then.”

  “You teach her.”

  “She’s your dog.”

  He shook his head. “Nah. They’re Amanda’s.”

  “Since when have you been agreeing with that load of shit?”

  “Since it suits my purposes. They’re Amanda’s dogs when they’re bad.”

  “Does that mean you’re giving me Lola?” I asked, hoping against hope I was right. Max, RJ’s other dog, easily had thirty pounds on Lola, and she weighed as much as I did.

  “Max loves you, too, even when you’re an ass.”

  “He might love me better when I’m an ass. He likes stinky things.”

  “Then you’re all set.”

  “This is quality cologne I’m wearing,” I shot back at him. “Not like your Axe body spray. When are you gonna realize you’re an adult?” It was better than the Old Spice he used to wear, but not by much.

  He sniffed his arm. “Smells fine to me. Amanda likes it well enough.”

  I rolled my eyes and glanced over to see Babs still had the cameraman distracted. “Maybe that’s why Max likes you as much as he does. Come on. Let’s get out of here before we have more company watching your dogs drag my ass through the gardens.”

  RJ laughed, but he didn’t argue. In no time, we were heading out of the practice facility on our way to the parking garage…only to run headfirst into Anne Dennison as we walked through the double doors.

  “Nate,” she said, looking up at me and smiling, her hand on her chest. Damn, but she had a gorgeous smile, and when she was this close, I could see the hints of green in her light brown eyes that always did a number on me.

  I didn’t smile in return. Couldn’t. The way she’d joined in with the other media guys that night still stung too much. The last thing I needed right now was to forget that she was on the other side of things. She wasn’t my friend, and defi
nitely not anything more than a friend, even though we’d been flirting way more than was good for either of us since she’d been around the team. She was part of my problem right now, no matter how hot she was.

  “I was hoping we could get some time with you sometime today,” she said, not taking the hint that I didn’t want to have anything to do with her right now. “I’ve got Dave all set up and ready—”

  “I’ve got plans,” I cut in. I jerked my head in RJ’s direction. “We have plans, actually.”

  She nodded. “It’s fine if we have some of the other guys from the team involved. Or even some of your friends outside of the team. Dave and I could come with you.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to work.” I took off again, and RJ came with me.

  “Going somewhere you can’t bring extra people with you?” She kept pace alongside me, her legs as long as mine. Not even her heels slowed her down. “You sure we couldn’t sneak in? We could stay in the background, just filming without interfering. We really want to get some footage of you doing whatever it is you do in your time off. Trying to get the bigger picture of who you are.”

  The woman didn’t let up. No wonder she’d been given such a big assignment already. There weren’t many women in sports broadcasting, in general. But she was young, and other than spending a few seasons working with the Storm’s broadcast team, she was relatively inexperienced. I hadn’t been able to figure out how she’d finagled such a prime gig, producing a web series about the team. Now it was starting to make sense. She’d probably hounded whomever was in charge until they’d given in just to get her off their back.

  It couldn’t be easy to be a woman in this industry—one more reason I’d wrongly assumed Anne would be on my side when it came to wanting to ignore everything that had happened a couple of nights ago.

  One more reason to never assume anything.

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” I finally bit off as we reached my car. “This isn’t something—”