Page 4 of Save Your Breath
Lucky for them, it was my specialty.
And I knew they were all giddy to post the photo of me — skin pale white from the flash of their cameras, blue liquid staining my shirt, my lip split and bloody, and a smirk on my face as I flipped them off proudly.
“If it wasjustthis, we’d be fine,” Kilman said, calling my attention up to him. “But after all the shit you caused in Seattle,the shit we took for signing you in the first place, and the hell you gave us during playoffs…”
He shrugged, holding up his hands again as if I’d see a zip tie around his wrists.
I wished I cared.
I wished I took their threat seriously, that I was scared straight and inspired to get my act together.
But the truth was that I hadn’t felt much since I was a kid.
Hockey was about the only thing in the world I gave a fuck about, but even that felt like a shallow love some days.
Like right now, staring at the two gentlemen I was supposed to respect and fear, I should have been begging for them to trust me to make things right. I should have been pleading for them not to cut me.
Instead, I was almost praying they would.
Maybe then, I’d lose what last little bit of life I was holding onto and just let myself slip away into a drunken numbness forever. Maybe I’d walk willingly into the open arms of an addiction, one of the many I fought daily to stay away from. Maybe I’d hole myself up in some shack on a beach somewhere and become a recluse.
They loved to bring up Seattle, as if I wasn’t already aware of the shit storm I left behind there. It was the first team I played for in the league, and though I’d helped take them from a nothing team, to one of the top contenders for the Cup each year, the last thing they were ever going to do was thank me.
Because on the ice, I was a blessing.
Off the ice, I was a curse.
I should have had regrets. I should have wished I could go back in time and get my act together. Maybe I should have gone to therapy or found a productive outlet for my rage. I could have taken up pottery or some shit like Vince Tanev.
But I knew the truth.
There was more of my parents in me than I wanted to admit, their addictions thrumming through my veins no matter how I tried to deny them. At least I’d stuck to alcohol and sex, and I kept a tight enough rein on both to skate by without causingtoomuch trouble.
I liked being wild.
I liked feelingnumb.
I didn’t care about anything enough to keep myself on the straight and narrow for long.
And nothing could keep me from that thrill of pushing the envelope just to see how far I could get before someone followed through on their threats.
“Message received loud and clear,” I finally grumbled. “I’ll be a good boy. Promise.”
I saluted with the snarky comment, ready to get the fuck out of this room and call my girl.
My girl.
I laughed at myself with that thought. Mia Love wasfarfrom mine, and yet she was the only person in the world I gave a single flying fuck about.
I cared more about calling her in this moment than I did about saving my career.
Especially because she’d said it was important.
Sometimes, I could close my eyes and see Mia as the shy girl hiding behind her large-framed glasses and scribbling lyrics in a notebook when I first showed up at her house. I had been exhausted from the flight from Switzerland, as scared as I was numb about the whole experience of being flown to America to billet with a family so I could play hockey.
She wasn’t Mia Love, world-renowned pop star, then.
She was just Mia Conaway.
