Page 138 of Game Changer
Fighting in the playoffs wasbad. It was stupid and reckless and potentially costly. Scott wasn’t usually the kind of player to get into actual fights on the ice. He was much too valuable for that.
His opponent got up, slowly. Scott was relieved when he was standing. He would be fine.
Scott’s face hurt. He spat blood onto the ice and was hit with another wave of regret.
He let the officials take him to the penalty box. Huff skated over with Scott’s gloves, helmet, and stick, retrieved from the ice. He didn’t say anything. Scott nodded at him, and looked away.
Fuck.
They were down 4–1 in the third period. Scott hadn’t slept more than a few hours in days. He was a powder keg, and number fourteen on the Detroit team had been playing with matches all night.
The one that had finally ignited Scott’s rage was the word he’d been so good at blocking out since he was a teenager.
Faggot.
And Scott had just lost it. The word that got thrown around—on the ice and in the locker room—so often that it barely meant anything had suddenly meant a whole lot. And when Scott’s fists had been colliding with that asshole’s face, he’d wanted to tell him. He’d wanted him to knowexactlywho it was that was beating his face in. A cocksucker. A homo.A fucking faggot is about to break your fucking jaw.
But now that it was over, now that Scott had traded blows with the guy in front of the crowd and television cameras until he’d landed a punch that had dropped him to the ice, and then kept hitting him and hitting him...
Fuck. Goddammit.
Some fucking role model.
Scott picked up a water bottle and sprayed his face, cleaning away the blood and sweat. He squirted some into his mouth and spat it out. He looked at his hands. There were cuts, but nothing serious, though his knuckles would be swollen a bit for sure. He flexed his fingers. Nothing broken.
He felt sick. He felthumiliated, sitting in the penalty box for the next five minutes, the whole crowd having just witnessed him completely losing his mind.
Hewaslosing his mind. He was untethered. He needed to find an anchor.
For now, he could only sit in the damn penalty box and watch his team lose. Again.
* * *
In an attempt to make himself feel slightly less miserable, Kip dragged himself to the Union Square Barnes & Noble after work. He normally found bookstores soothing.
It wasn’t working this time.
It had been a week since he’d walked out of Scott’s apartment. A week since he’d had any contact with Scott. He’d seen that the Admirals had lost the first two games of the series against Detroit and couldn’t help but feel partly responsible, even if that was ridiculous.
Scott would be back in town today, if he wasn’t already.
Kip wanted to see him so badly it hurt. The train he had taken that morning had been full of Scott’s most recent Gillette ads. Kip had kept his eyes on the floor so he wouldn’t have to look at Scott’s rugged, chiseled jawline. Or his soft lips. Or his blue eyes.
Was it really over between them? Was that possible? Should he reach out to Scott?
A toddler shrieked somewhere in the store, and Kip realized he had been staring, eyes unfocused, at a shelf in the European history section for probably five minutes. He blinked, took a step backward, and collided with someone.
“Oh god. Sorry.” Kip turned to face his victim. It was a young man with blond hair and glasses and a light scarf wrapped around his neck.
It was Kyle. Kip had stepped on Kyle.
“Oh. Um, hi,” Kip stammered.
Jesus. What are the odds?
“Kip!” Kyle said, clearly shocked that he couldn’t even go to a fucking bookstore without having to deal with Kip’s messiness.
Kip took a breath.Might as well get this over with.“Listen, about the other night...”
