Chapter 2 #2
The prospect of having a cocky little upstart like Jacob Gosling living in his apartment was not something that appealed. Far from it. Tane valued his privacy too much to be dealing with an over-hyped hockey boy and what would no doubt be wholly unacceptable behavior.
There was only one solution.
Tane knew he would have to ensure that he kept Jacob under control and shadowed him just as Antonio requested. Besides the prospect of having Jacob move in with him, the idea of upsetting Antonio – and the wider Cardini family – wasn’t something that Tane wanted to contemplate.
“So we are agreed?” Antonio said, holding his hand out to Tane.
“Of course,” Tane replied, taking Antonio’s hand and giving it a firm shake.
“Excellent,” Antonio laughed. “Tane Rivers is a man of his word, and a man of true substance. The family will not forget your loyalty.”
“Thank you,” Tane said, keeping eye contact with Antonio. “But if you’ll excuse me, I have a locker room I need to take back control of.
With that, Tane left Antonio’s office.
The drive from the stadium to the training complex wouldn’t take too long, but Tane knew that as he drove, he would need to start thinking of how exactly he was going to keep Jacob Gosling under control and out of harm’s way.
Things were never anything less than dramatic at the Enforcers – and while this might be Tane’s final season playing for them, it certainly wasn’t going to be his easiest…
* * *
After driving down to the training complex in Pine Rise, Tane jumped down from his SUV and made a beeline to the locker room.
Ever since his very first day as a professional player, Tane loved nothing more than the energy that a positive locker room brought to the players.
Whether you were a joker, a leader, a member of the pack, or even a rebel – the locker room was the place where bonds were formed, and men became brothers.
Of course, Tane would have liked to have had a partner outside of hockey too.
As good as the camaraderie was with his brothers on the Enforcers roster, it wasn’t quite the same thing as having a boy to call his own. Tane had long since put having a relationship on the backburner though.
Something about committing to a boy and making a relationship work always seemed too far out of reach as Tane’s career took off and saw him moving cities, travelling during the season, and generally having to deal with the day to day pressures of being an elite athlete.
And this had been fine for many years.
Tane was so consumed by his career and having fun with his teammates that settling down just didn’t come up on his radar very often. But as Tane had edged toward the latter years of his career, the idea of finding a boy to make his own had become far more prominent in his mind.
The only problem for Tane was that all he knew was ice hockey.
The thought of finding someone who he could connect with on a deep level just seemed difficult to imagine.
Tane had been on dates of course. But more often than not, the boy sitting opposite him at the dinner table was either too overawed to be himself or was only there to get his I was spanked by Tane Rivers story to tell his friends – or worse, the tabloid media.
“Maybe I’m destined to be alone,” Tane muttered as he put his finger on the fingerprint sensor at the front entrance of the training complex – an extra measure of security that the Cardini had added recently. “Fuck it. I’ve got the hockey guys for one more season at least.”
Tane stepped inside the building and felt a huge wave of relief come over him.
Tane felt truly at home at the training complex, arguably even more so than he did at the Enforcers stadium.
There was something about Pine Rise that allowed Tane to relax into himself more than almost anywhere else in the world. But relaxation wasn’t on Tane’s mind in that moment.
It was time to see the so-called wonder-boy of ice hockey and make it clear that things were about to change whether Jacob liked it or not…
* * *
“What’s this all about?” Jacob said, the nerves coming through in his voice as Tane shut the meeting room door behind him.
“Okay, you can drop the tough guy act,” Tane said, rolling his eyes. “I remember the first time my captain brought me in for a one on one too.”
Tane could see that behind his cocky bravado, Jacob was still a twenty-one year old boy. All the talent and ego in the world wouldn’t change the fact that Jacob had less life experience in his entire life than Tane had accumulated in the last year alone.
“I thought you were injured?” Jacob said, doubling down on his defensiveness.
“I was,” Tane replied, keeping a cool exterior. “But Captain Tane is back. And I’m going to give you some advice, Jacob.”
Tane could tell from the look on Jacob’s face that he wasn’t feeling like hearing advice from a twenty season veteran. But like it or not, Tane knew that he had to tell Jacob exactly how things were going to go down from here on in.
“Trust me when I say this,” Tane said, stepping forward and closing the space between him and Jacob.
“How you move outside of here is being noticed. You’re young, you like to let loose.
Whatever. But you’re a professional athlete.
You’re an asset to this organization. You need to be careful.
And I’m telling you here and now that you need to behave. Am I understood?”
Tane waited for Jacob to reply.
The boy’s got something about him.
He’s nervous, but he’s not crumbling.
There’s a defiance there… and I kind of like it.
“Sure, I hear you,” Jacob said, a note of petulance in his voice, but not enough for Tane to act on. “Can I go now? I’ve got fans to meet, autographs to sign. You know, what with me being the main corporate asset around here.”
Tane nodded and just about managed to keep his temper in check.
That was some Grade A sass from Jacob, and what Tane wanted more than anything in that moment was to pull the boy’s sweatpants and briefs down and roast his peachy ass right there and then.
But Tane knew that he needed to keep this professional.
Antonio Cardini wasn’t a man you fucked around with – and as he’d given Tane the task of keeping Jacob on the straight and narrow, that was exactly what he was going to do.
However Tane suspected that this wouldn’t be the last time he’d need to warn Jacob about his conduct, and next time there was no guarantee that Tane would be able to keep his instincts at bay…