We were in the middle of a fucking dumpster fire.
There were only five minutes left on the clock and we were down two goals to the enemy team. Yes, the enemy, not the opponent. The rivalry between Wellsfield and Maple Park University had been going on for decades. It might have been a pre-season game but losing to them, especially in a complete shutout, was like my worst nightmare.
Tonight everything had gone wrong that could have gone wrong. From sloppy passes and hellish plays to fucking newbies almost colliding with each other. We were dying. And it was not an easy death.
I could already imagine Coach digging our graves and burying us alive after this nightmare ended. He had stopped yelling and cursing half an hour ago which was never a good sign. His silence meant something worse was coming our way.
But I didn't have time to worry about that right now. I would rather die than get a shutout and walk back home with my tail between my legs. I needed to salvage the game somehow. The time was ticking and I was running out of options.
"What's wrong Griffin? Finding yourself in a spot?" Everett Miller, the captain of the Maple Park Tigers, said, a shit-eating grin on his annoying face. His blue eyes twinkled with mirth and I wanted to punch his teeth in.
I gritted my teeth, my hands tightening on my stick. "Fuck off Miller!"
He laughed and skated backward, stopping a few feet away from me. "I'll send a care package later. You're going to need it. Maybe some ice packs too to treat your bruised egos."
Before I could say anything, he skated off, leaving me to stew in rage. "Ethan!" I yelled, gaining Ethan's attention who had the puck, and signaled him to pass it over.
With a flick of his wrist, he sent it my way, and for the first time throughout the game, it was a clean pass. As soon as I got the puck, I charged toward the goal. The Tigers' defensemen were hot on my tail, but I was faster than them. I saw Ethan on the other side and quickly passed it to him.
I followed him from the other side as the defensemen shifted their focus on him, waiting for an opening when he would send the puck over to me again. For the briefest second, my gaze moved from Ethan to the bench behind him and my brain stopped working.
Evelyn was standing beside Coach. She was wearing the Eagles' jersey, her reddish hair a stark contrast against the white shirt. But what caught my attention wasn't the fact that it was adorably loose on her or that she looked beautiful in it. It was the number printed at the top left corner, right above her breast.
My number.
She looked amazing wearing my jersey. And if that wasn't enough, she turned around to talk with the girl from her team and my last name printed in big, bold letters on her back flashed before my eyes.
Fuck.
"Griffin!" I blinked at the sound of my name and noticed the puck stopping near the end of my stick. But it was too late.
Before I knew it, I got slammed into the board and the puck was stolen from me. "Griffin! What the fuck are you doing?" Coach yelled, making Evelyn turn back to look at me, her hazel eyes wide with worry as I straightened myself.
Shaking my head, I tried to grasp the situation, but the buzzer was already going off, announcing another goal for the Tigers. And then it was the end of the game. The Tigers had won with a score of 3-0. A complete shutout for the Eagles in a home game. Something that had never happened in our decades-long rivalry with the Maple Park Tigers.
And all of it was my fault.
"Dammit!" Dylan cursed, hitting the ice as we watched the Tigers celebrate.
Miller skated past me again as I was making my way to the bench. "What's wrong, Griffin? Distracted much?"
I shoved him away and he flashed me a grin before skating past me, doing his obnoxious victory...whatever the hell that was. Calling it a dance would be an insult to all the dance forms in this world.
I gritted my teeth and swallowed the few choice words hanging from the tip of my tongue. The Tigers had won fair and square. And even though I wanted to throw a tantrum I knew I couldn't. It was our failure. My failure as a captain.
I could say nothing back because I was in fact distracted. We could have at least avoided the shutout if I hadn't been so damn distracted by a girl wearing my jersey.
A girl that hated me about as much as I hated her.
The silence among us as we all gathered around the bench spoke loads about the despair each one of us was feeling. The freshmen looked like they were on the verge of tears. I met Coach's gaze, but he said nothing. And that made me feel even worse. I'd much rather have him chew my ear off with his curses than have him stare at me with that look in his eyes.
I gulped and lowered my eyes to stare at the ice beneath my skates. My one mistake put a black spot in the Wellsfield Eagles' history.
"Go home. We'll have a meeting tomorrow at 10," Coach announced before walking away.
"Captain?" Holden, one of our freshmen players, called. I looked up to see everyone looking at me, hoping for me to say something as their captain. But what was I supposed to say? That I let all of them down?
I cleared my throat. "Let's go home. We can discuss things later."
They nodded and one by one started shuffling towards the locker room. Before I followed them, I caught sight of a familiar figure sitting in the front rows and my blood ran cold. There, with his signature ball cap on was my agent, Henry Rodriquez.
He shook his head when our eyes met, and my heart sunk lower in my stomach. But what hit me like a sucker punch to the gut was the expression on Evelyn's face as she stood up from her spot on the bench nearby. She offered me a strained smile, putting the last nail in the coffin.
I had never felt worse than what I was feeling at that moment.
***
What the fuck?
My grip tightened on the phone, fingers almost crushing the device as the letters on the screen blurred into an unrecognizable blob. As if last night's game wasn't enough, the article written by our so-called promotional team was like rubbing red chili peppers on open wounds.
Maybe the Eagles need a complete makeover if they want to go to the Frozen Four this year. Maybe Griffin isn't the best with the title of Captain.
Something similar to a half scoff and half snort left me and I unceremoniously slammed my coffee mug on the counter, making a loud thud echo through the kitchen. The guys turned their heads to look at me but then quickly went back to whatever they were doing. There were a few more comments about the game and my performance which I decided to skip.
I scrolled down to the very bottom of the article and to no one's surprise, Evelyn Hayes was typed under the heading writer and editor.
"Of course," I scoffed. I'd thought Rosy and I were on friendly terms after the start of the promotional project and our little encounter at the cafe but nope. Leave it to Rosy to stir up drama with such below-the-belt tactics just to irk me.
I ran my eyes over the entire article again complete with a photo of me when I had failed to score and the scoreboard at the very end of the game before snorting and pressing the back button as if pressing it hard enough would delete the events of last night as well. "I'm leaving," I grumbled and threw my backpack on, heading for the door.
Since the start of my day was bad, I was cranky for most of the day. But then everything became worse. Why? Because today everyone had collectively decided to fuck me over.
First, someone took my parking spot and parked their car wrong so I couldn't take the spot next to it and had to drive all the way to the back. Then there was a quiz in class which I was sure the professor made with the sole purpose of making the students weep. Needless to say, I tanked it with flying colors.
Then there were the "cool dudes" whose only accomplishment was playing the PS5 for five hours straight discussing last night's game in its finer details and giving their expert opinions in the cafeteria.
However, the last straw was when I spotted Rosy in the social sciences building, laughing and merrily chattering away with someone as if she hadn't just ruined my day. Maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe I will regret it later. But at that moment, it was as if a kind of haze had come over me and I found myself marching toward her.
While she was oblivious to me, her friend noticed my presence and her eyes widened a little. Sensing her friend's change in demeanor, Rosy looked over her shoulder and her face stiffened. She said something to her friend who immediately left and then she turned to face me, lifting her face defiantly and looking at me in her signature condescending way.
"What the fuck Rosy?" I seethed as soon as I was only a few steps away from her.
"I was wondering when you would come to complain. You took longer than I had expected. I'm impressed," she said.
"Cut the crap," I snapped. "What the fuck was that article?"
A few heads turned in our direction at my words and Rosy looked around, visibly uncomfortable. Wow. Now she wanted to act self-conscious after publicly shattering my image and raising questions about my skills and competency for the sake of pettiness.
"Come with me." She grabbed my hand and started pulling me down the hall. I scowled but let her drag me to an empty classroom. Her hand was so tiny and soft in front of my large and calloused ones. My scowl deepened when the thought of curling my fingers around hers and entwining our hands together crossed my mind.
I was angry damn it!
We entered the classroom and she whirled around, letting go of my hand as soon as the door shut. "What do you want?"
She said it with so much annoyance like I was some nuisance she had to deal with and not the guy she publicly insulted, risking my career. The audacity!
I blinked at her, my mouth opening and closing, speechless. "I have a lot of work, Griffin. If you have nothing to say then get out of my way."
"You," I started, pointing my index finger at her before scoffing and running my hand through my hair to compose myself. "What did you write in that article?"
She folded her arms across her chest, making her breasts appear bigger. I fought the urge to look down and kept my gaze fixed on her hazel eyes that were definitely judging me. "What about it?" she asked instead.
"How could you write that? Weren't you supposed to do a promotional project for me?"
"First," she said. "The promotional project is for the University's hockey program, not you. Second, we are still a media outlet and have an obligation to present facts without bias."
"So you're saying the crap that you wrote in that article is all facts and not your way of acting out your grudge against me?"
She let out a heavy sigh. "Get your head out of your ass, your highness. I have a lot of work to do. Real work. I don't sit around and waste my time scheming ways to take you down."
I snorted. "Sure."
Rosy narrowed her eyes on me. "If you're so bothered about it, why don't you improve your performance? You can't deny the fact that last night's game was a shitshow."
I bit my tongue because for once she was right. Yesterday indeed was a shitshow. But I would be damned if I just took everything she had to say.
"And suddenly you know everything about the game to judge my performance?" I asked with a raised brow.
"I might not know the finer details of the game but I do know when someone sucks. Besides, we have people who actually know about the game and I'm not opposed to taking help. So yeah, everything you read was facts," she said and then pulled out her phone from the front pocket of her jeans. "And the people in the comments agree. Both under the article and the post on Instagram."
She shoved the phone in my face and I swatted it away. "You could have written it better. The drafts are around the corner and something like that coming from my own university will—"
She abruptly laughed but there was no humor in it. "So now you are going to mansplain to me on how to write a damn article?"
"I didn't mean—"
"Griffin, if you want to be praised do something praiseworthy," she said, taking a step closer. "Don't come to me whining like a toddler who didn't get a gold star for crayon scratches on a paper. Don't you fucking dare to teach me how to do my job!"
I involuntarily stepped back until I was pressed against the wall. Rosy was livid and looked about ready to murder me. And yet, my fucked up brain could only think about how hot she looked when she got mad.
"I'm not here to stroke your dick or your ego. Go to your puck bunnies for that," she seethed.
Now, here was the thing. As soon as those words left her mouth, my brain took a nosedive and focused only on a few choice words. Despite a part of me yelling at me to not say the words hanging at the tip of my tongue, my mouth seemed to have a mind of its own and blurted it out even before I realized it.
"You think about my dick?" I asked, a smirk playing on my lips despite everything.
"God, Griffin!" Rosy huffed exasperatedly as she took a step back. "You're impossible."
I shrugged. "Just curious."
She took another step back and closed her eyes, raising her hands as if to create a wall between us. "You know what, I don't have time for this. I'm leaving."
She didn't wait for me to respond and stormed out of the classroom leaving me standing there like a moron. As soon as she was out of my sight, it was like my senses had finally come back to me and now I could see how jarringly idiotic my behavior was. God knows what happens to me with that woman around me.
"What was the need?" I grumbled and ran a hand over my face, instant regret filling me to the brim.
At the same time, my phone dinged with an incoming message. I whipped it out of my pocket and cursed loudly when I saw the sender's name. This day couldn't get any worse.
Henry R (Agent): Saw the article posted by your Uni. Things are not looking good, kid.
Henry R (Agent): The agency is looking into recruiting Everett Miller instead after the last game. You need to switch things up. Fast. Let's meet and talk more.
Suddenly, it started to feel like the walls were caving in. I was going to lose the dream I'd been working on since I was ten. And there was no one else to blame for it other than me.
After spending a good five minutes in the classroom coming to terms with everything that transpired and calming myself down, I stepped out and headed toward the exit, ready to call it a day and go home.
I needed a drink. A stiff one.