“It’s a team game, Hayes.” He pauses. “You must think you’re really important to assume you’re the only reason we lost.”
He hangs up, and while at surface level his words sound like an insult, I think … did Ezra Palaszczuk just reassure me?
There goes any chance of sleeping tonight.
We’re deep in the third with scores locked up at two apiece. I’d been right that O’Ryan would be on fire tonight, but Wagner is also playing the best game I’ve seen from him in a while.
If it wasn’t for our goalie saving our asses, there’s no way the score would look the way it does. My back is drenched with sweat, and the crowd is absolutely deafening. I’m not used to being on this side of the ice, playing with these guys, and having the home crowd here against me, but dammit if I’m going to let them get in my head.
We line up, ready for the faceoff with only a minute left on the clock.
Diedrich shoots to Larsen, who passes back to Ezra.
Ezra blows past everyone, skating circles around all of them like they’re mere cones and he’s running a drill instead of what they really are—two-hundred-pound men trying to hit him as hard as they can.
His eyes lock with mine across the ice, and they don’t leave me as he passes me the puck. I flick a wrist shot at the goal and hold my breath.
The lamp lights up, and relief sweeps through me. I’m hit from all sides as my teammates converge, and we end up in a tangle of strangling hugs and back pats before we get back to it and run out the few seconds remaining on the clock.
It’s one of the sweetest home-side upsets I’ve experienced yet, and when the buzzer finally sounds, the weight of all that expectation, of all the pressure I’ve piled on myself, finally shifts.
Thank fuck.
I can breathe again.
We line up to shake hands, and instead of the usual smug mask I wear in this situation, I take my time, wishing my old team a good game. Because it was. They had us right up until the end.
There’s already music pumping in the locker room when I walk in, the guys in various stages of undress.
Kosik snaps his towel against my thigh as he passes, heading for the showers. “Finally showed up to play, eh, Hayes?”
“Just giving the rest of you time to catch up to my awesome.”
“Awesome?” Ezra snickers. “That’s one word for it.”
Feeling better than I have all week, I steal the towel slung over his shoulder and snap it against his ass. Ezra jumps and throws a scowl at me. I loop the towel around my neck instead. “I need this more than you. After all, you only need to shower if you actually played.”
“Who got the assist on that last goal, jackass?”
“I was too busy scoring to see.” Normally I’m all about sharing the credit, team effort and all that, but the way Ezra’s glaring at me …
I like it a bit too much.
“Hayes, Palaszczuk, post-game conference,” Stewart Frankenhorn, the team’s PR rep, says from the door.
Of course. Because what’s some more attention on this bromance? We scored a goal together, so see, everyone? We really are friends.
I channel that line of thinking on the walk there.
We get the formalities out of the way, and then the questions start. They certainly don’t hold back.
“You two worked like a team out there. Is it safe to say the rumors are true? Your feud is put behind you?”
I predict we’ll be answering about ten different questions that are the exact same thing worded differently. We’ve already said repeatedly that we’re friends now.
“There’s no need to fight when we’re on the same side,” Ezra says.
“Your playing was fluid, though, like you’ve been playing together for years,” the same reporter says.
I lean in closer to my mic. “We have been playing together for years. Just on opposite sides. I know how to read Ezra like a book. It’s how I used to score on him so much.”
The reporters burst into a round of laughs while I smile over at Ezra.
He cocks an eyebrow at me, and it’s like I can read his mind.
You know exactly how to score on me.
Ugh, is it possible for someone to be so cocky that their replies manifest themselves in your brain?
Once the press circus is over with, and by the time we come back from that to hit the showers, we’re the last ones in the locker room.
The whole time we shower, I stay firmly turned away from him. There’s nothing more awkward than popping a boner in the showers, and I always get horny after a win. Seeing Ezra naked on top of that will be way too much to resist.
The best thing I can do is shower as fast as I can, dress, and get my ass home. Well, after the celebration that I better haul ass to tonight. I owe O’Ryan a drink after that.