Page 62 of Tempting the Teammate
“Griffin?” She moved over to me with interest. “Everything alright?”
“Got anyone up in the booth controlling the visuals?” I asked.
“’Course,” Jen said. “Our cameras are tracking the game together with the rink’s crew.”
I tightened my hands around the stick, knowing that I was about to break several of the sacred rules they taught you on your first day before you even stepped onto the ice. “Right,” I said. “Wanna have a show people talk about?”
Her eyes grew a little bigger. Greedy, just like me, but for a different thing altogether. “What do you have in mind?”
Not much, but it was a start. So I told her.
TWENTY-TWO
Andrei
I lookedover my shoulder as we formed a line, ready to step onto the ice. Griffin wasn’t here. My fingers trembled, and I squeezed my stick harder. He wasn’t with me. He was somewhere behind, all alone, splitting at the seams.
I could feel my heart tearing, too, because I knew that he wasn’t okay. Not with all the pressure mounting. Not with so many people so deeply invested in him, with so many expectations, even from me.
However hard I’d tried to disguise it, Griffin read me like an open book, and he knew that I needed more from him. Needed it, yet never dared ask for it.
The marching band finished their performance on the ice. The lights flickered dramatically in the rink, music cueing into the speakers from the control booth and the massive jumbotron displaying the close-ups of eager players from both teams as we restlessly moved from one foot to the other, waiting for the doors to open so we could skate out before the crowd.
The rink was full, its capacity filled with more than half the crowd still outside. The hockey phenomenon was happening before the live crowd, and the crowd was ferocious.
The doors opened, and we got our cue, stepping onto the ice one after another, following Phoenix and riding the high of the swelling cheers and screams and calls from the audience.
The dramatic music and flashing lights didn’t help at all. My unease was only growing, its wiry coils twisting around my guts. Where was he? I shouldn’t even be here. If the pressure had reached the critical point, he needed me, even if it meant admitting defeat. Even if it meant hurting and crying and agreeing that we had done the right thing at the wrong time. Admitting that we had blown our one chance.
“Where the hell is Griff?” Damon asked.
I shook my head. “Dunno. I’m looking for him.”
“You should go,” Damon said, his voice loud enough for me, uncaring about the fact that he had a hot mic taped to his chest, as did I. “Game’s not worth it, Andrei.”
Yet I was stuck, ice reaching up my skates, freezing me in the spot.
The crowd lit up. It was a few of them at first, then more, as the cheers quieted awkwardly, artificially, and the screens glowed. For a moment, I thought something had happened on the ice, something people felt the need to film, but then I realized nobody was pointing their cameras at us. Instead, people were looking at their phones.
So was Coach Neilsen just off the ice, a frown deepening on his face, which turned more red with each second.
The jumbotron flickered, the image switching from the views the cameras caught live in the rink into a vertical video, taken with the front camera, phone held in a shaky hand, and the wild curls flying around his gorgeous face as his hazel eyes glimmered under the neon lights of the locker room. “…little delay, but I’ll make it worth your while, even if it costs me my future.”
The encouraging calls from the crowd swelled to an unbearable level, and my heart sank into my stomach. Griffinmust have heard the noise, too, because his head turned away from the screen of his phone, live-streamed on Instagram straight into the jumbotron, and his lips dragged into an uncertain smile.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Phoenix demanded.
“Hush,” Damon said firmly. “This is gonna be good.”
“Right, that means I’m in front of all your faces,” Griffin said. “Make some noise if you can see me.”
Shoes stomped the floor behind the boards, and cheers grew deafening.
Griffin’s playful voice crackled with excitement as he glowed in the locker room.
“I was asked to thank you for a quarter million followers on Instagram,” Griffin boomed, giving the crowd a moment to cheer again.
“Now?” Phoenix demanded, while Damon boomed with laughter. “He’s doing it now? We’re starting the game in a minute.”
