Chapter 12 #3
He cleared his throat. “I wear the C. I don’t put up with that shit. Never have. Not on any team I’ve ever been on.”
“Good. Because if it’s not, Coach Grigor should know.”
“You know Coach Grigor?”
“Yeah. He’s Ewen’s brother.”
His eyebrows shot up, coming dangerously close to joining his hairline. “You telling me not one but two of my coaches at The U…”
“I’m not telling you shit, kid.”
He laughed. “Looks like I have some digging to do at our next captain’s meeting.”
“You’re a fucking brat, you know that?”
“So you said. Anyway, I’m happy Aiden and Storm landed here. Aiden’s a fucking phenom on the ice. Especially for someone who got such a late start in the sport. And Storm has had it hard enough, what with the shot he took to the head.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, dragging the last of my toast around the plate to mop up the remaining yolk.
He shoved his last sausage in his mouth. “Storm took a puck—”
“No, I meant about Aiden.”
“Oh, most of us who make it to even just the NCAA level, much less the NHL, start skating before we can run”
“That I knew, but you mentioned Aiden.”
“Yeah. He didn’t start hockey until later. Much later. Bad home life or some shit. All I know is he wasn’t on the ice as a player until after he got adopted by the Rustavs.”
I nodded, unable to formulate any sort of response to what Trey said.
The kid who walked into EDGE last fall looking scared of his own fucking shadow made it to the NHL in a quarter of the time most other kids did.
And yes, they were fucking kids. Even if hockey wasn’t where my knowledge base sat, I knew the major league drafts—NHL and MLB especially—were only open to kids.
Some of them so young they couldn’t sign their contracts because they hadn’t hit legal maturity yet.
Standing, I motioned for Trey to hand me his plate. He rolled his eyes and stood.
Quietly, we padded into the kitchen, and the Marine in me scoffed as the kid opened the dishwasher.
“What?” he asked, looking at me.
“Just no.”
He shut the door and asked, “Is it broken or something?”
“No,” I said, “but there’s no need to run that when we have so little…”
His eyes stretched wide. “You want to do them by hand because—yeah, no. There’s no logical explanation for that.
There’s a perfectly good, working dishwasher right here,” he said, opening the door again, this time with a flourish and gesturing inside it with his whole arm.
“Besides, if you don’t run it they stink. ”
“Not if you leave them cracked open so they dry out.”
“Holy shit, bruh, is this some old guy, dinosaur shit or something?”
“No, it’s a Marine thing,” I muttered. The kid calling me old and a dinosaur rankled. Fucking baby.
“A Marine? Like the Army?”
“No. Not like the Army. Never the Army.”
His brow actually furrowed. “What’s wrong with the Army?”
“Well, for one, I’m a Marine, and for two, the Corps has been cleaning up the Army’s messes since 1775.”
“But aren’t they all the same?”
“Oh, my fucking God. No, kid. They aren’t the fucking same. Nowhere near it.”
“But it’s all just the military.”
“No. It’s not. It’s definitely not. How don’t you know this?”
His face fell, and he said, “Because all I know is hockey. Well, hockey and how to schmooze at galas with expensive, shitty, rubber chicken dinners. Those are the only two things that matter to my family. It’s all I’ve ever known. All my fancy homeschooling governess taught me.”
I stared at him, fucking mind blown. That…was…weird. The kid talked like he was…a fucking dunce or some shit. And I felt like an asshole for triggering his fucking reaction.
But…
There was no fucking way.
Trey was captain of his college hockey team at one of the toughest schools in the country to get into.
And yeah, the culture around collegiate sports, especially at this level, was that players played and the school made sure of it, but I knew Will Grigor.
Had known him since he himself played hockey.
And I knew Alex. Maybe not as well, but neither of them was the grade-fixing type.
Hell, Alex held study groups for the boys at his house after Aiden’s accident, and I remember him talking about the boys on the team and how he expected the legacy kids to be entitled brats. How they very much weren’t.
Besides, I witnessed the work Trey put in. On the flight down, he did homework while his buddies poked fun at him and goofed off. A kid didn’t do that shit or put up with the heckling if they weren’t committed.
Pulling open the dishwasher, I loaded it quickly, ignoring all his blubbering about doing it wrong, and slammed the door shut before dragging him back to the living room.
I dropped my ass on the corner of the sectional, legs spread wide to make room for him between them—one leg stretched out along the back cushions, the other hanging off over the edge, foot planted firmly on the floor.
With him tucked into the V of my thighs, his back to my chest, my arms banded around him, I asked, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll explain all the differences if you do something for me.”