Page 24 of Breaking Point
My hackles rise. Logan Johnson and Asher O’Connor are the only two men on this team that could truly intimidate me, even with Asher and I both standing at six foot four.
“Captain,” O’Connor reiterates, his forest green eyes still staring into my soul. “Doesn’t matter who he appoints. They won’t accept the title and we won’t either.”
My team rises around me, dipping their heads in agreement.
“Don’t piss Coach off any more than he already is. I’ve put him through hell?—”
“Because you’ve been put through hell,” Logan interjects.
I point at him. “We’re not talking about that.”
“That’s why we’re in this mess in the first place,” Kieran whispers under his breath beside me.
Shooting him a scathing glare, I spin back toward my team. “I don’t want to hear it. I fucked up, I stopped showing up, he revoked my title, and he has every right to make that decision.”
“I don’t think you’re hearing us, Cap.” Hudson steps forward.
“I am, it’s you lot that aren’t hearing me. It’s Grayson or Crawford. If you call me by anything else, I’ll ignore you.” Turning my back on my team, I lace up, for once not hungover for practice. “This is the way it has to be from now on.”
I put my headphones on as everyone speaks around me,aboutme…and Drew.
I appreciate the support, more than they would ever know, but Coach Anderson had every right to revoke my title. I haven’tbeen a team player, and when I’ve showed up, it’s been me just puking from the previous night’s shenanigans.
A clap on my shoulder has me turning to Kieran. There’s such worry in his gaze I shrug off his touch. “I’m fine.”
And with those parting words, I ignore my team’s stares, their whispered words of the mistake I made that led to me not only ruining my life but killing my brother. As I step onto the ice, I hope that I’ll feel something other than guilt over his death, but like the night I begged my brother to live, my prayers are ignored.
Sweat drips down every crevice of my body. My hair sticks to my face, my feet ache, and my lungs burn because I haven’t been training outside the ice.
I have fallen so far from where I used to be as an athlete it stuns me speechless. I truly didn’t realize how unfit, sloppy, and tired I had been playing until I was sober enough to listen to my body.
No wonder Coach has been pulling me into his office as often as he has. Drew would be pissed at me, so unequivocally pissed that if he was still here he’d killme.
Everyone left practice an hour ago but I couldn’t in good conscience step off the ice. The best thing I’ve done for myself since Drew died nearly sixteen months ago was stay on this ice and run through drills to assess just how far I’ve fallen down the ladder. The new season starts in two weeks and the last thing I want to deal with on top of what’s happening in my heart and mind is the press hounding me on my horrendous playing.
Hell, Coach can’t even put me in my usual first forward line when I’m in this condition.
Three months after Drew died in the summer of 2023, I forced Coach Anderson to keep me playing, forced him to allow me to try and go on as usual. It was the wrong choice. And it onlytook Coach two games to realize I shouldn’t have ever stepped back on the ice. He ordered me to take a year off to grieve, but I still haven’t stopped.
I don’t think you ever do. No one can put a time on grieving. I don’t even think the pain ends; you just get used to it.
Needless to say, when he told me to grieve, I think he had something else in mind than my drinking. I’m shocked how I’ve handled everything. Who I was before Drew died and who I am now is so irrevocably different, I don’t recognize myself in the mirror anymore.
I hate who I’ve become.
I hate what my life looks like.
And I hate that all of it is my fault.
“Crawford.”
The female voice cuts across the ice, halting my skating.
Ice sprays the air as I come to a screeching halt at the board before Olivia Foster, the assistant forward coach and the woman that’s a pain in my ass. Not because she’s a bad coach—she’s anything but. I can see her quickly moving up the ranks to head coach one day. Because unfortunately for me, she won’t let me bury my feelings.
“Hey, Coach.”
Her brow quirks. “You sober for once?”
