Chapter 14 Zhuri
fourteen
Zhuri
“Holy fucking chaos, Batman!” I yell, narrowly avoiding Asher and Lev wrestling in front of the door, as I step into Cameron’s penthouse.
“Wolfe! Morozov!” Cameron shouts after they knock over a lamp. “Do I have to separate you two? Goddamn.”
“Sorry, Cap,” Lev laughs, Asher standing up beside him and dusting himself off.
“Co-captain,” I chime, carrying my tray with me to where I see Bet and Sid in the kitchen. I lay the tray down and let out a breath. “Holy shit, it’s crazy in here.”
Sidney chuckles. “Team dinners are always a shitshow.”
“Is it too late for the girls to decide we want no part of this?”
“Far too late.” Sid claps a hand to my shoulder. “You’re already here. Besides, Blake and Addie are at basically every dinner. Reggie’s wife, too. It’s for the team, but it’s not exclusive to the team necessarily.”
“What did you bring, Z?” Bet asks, pointing to the tray I haven’t taken the foil off of yet.
“Oh, I went with dessert. Made some chocolate chip cookies earlier.”
Nico walks into the kitchen excitedly now, watching as I finally pull the foil from my tray. “Cap, please tell me those are nut-free.”
“Co-captain,” I sigh, on the verge of giving up correcting everyone. “They don’t have any nuts in them, though.”
“What about the ingredients?” Sidney asks.
“I didn’t check,” I admit. “I didn’t think about potential food allergies. Shit.”
“It’s fine, Zhuri,” Nico shrugs. “Not the first dessert I have to skip, and sure as hell won’t be the last.”
“Do you have a nut allergy?”
“Tree nuts,” he nods. “I have an Epi-Pen, but I prefer not to use it.”
That pulls a laugh out of me. “Noted. Sorry about that, though. I’ll make sure everything is good next time.” I look over at Sidney again. “Any other allergies or dietary restrictions I should know about?”
“Addie is vegan, so she usually ends up bringing her own food just to be safe. Lev won’t eat anything that has so much as been in the same room as a mushroom.”
“So what you’re saying is next time I should make stuffed mushroom caps specifically for Lev?”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I hear Lev yell across the living room, apparently overhearing our conversation.
I’ve never really spoken to Lev before, and I’m surprised by what I hear.
“Lev is Russian, isn’t he?” I ask. “He doesn’t have an accent.”
“He’s lived in the US since he was five,” Sid answers. “He was born in Moscow, but grew up in Chicago.”
“Bruno!” I hear Lina yell across the room.
“Sorry, Bradford,” Bruno chuckles. “Wasn’t trying to spill my beer.”
I close my eyes and groan. “We’re not making it through the night without at least one teammate casualty.”
“And you call me dramatic,” Cameron scoffs, walking into the kitchen with Nico and Wes.
“You are dramatic,” I challenge. “Me being dramatic doesn’t negate you being the biggest drama queen I know.”
Cameron pretends to toss his hair over his shoulder. “That’s right. I am a fucking queen.”
My laughter starts small before overtaking me completely. “I fucking can’t. You’re insane.”
“Makes life more fun,” he winks, pulling a strawberry from the fruit tray Clara brought and popping it into his mouth.
My sinful mind wanders to the last time I saw him eat a strawberry, and I have to push the thought away.
“How are you feeling after our first team practice this morning, co-captain?”
I can’t help but smile. “I’m optimistic. We’ll still need to find our groove, but overall, we looked really damn good today.”
“Agreed. Isla’s backhand when we were taking shots at Lev? Fucking unbelievable.”
“Icy is one of the best women I’ve ever played with. Her and Bet. Always made my job as a left winger easier.”
Cameron cocks his eyebrow at me. “Yeah, I’m sure you needed your job to be easier, Hart. You’re going to be our starting left winger because you’re really goddamn good.”
Nico smacks Cameron’s arm. “What the fuck? I could be our starting left wing.”
“May the best person earn the spot, Bieri,” I bow.
Nico sighs. “He’s right. Even I know that.”
Isla struts into the kitchen and jumps into the conversation. “Join me on the second line then, Nico. No way I’m first-line center when we have fucking Cameron.”
Cameron and I share a knowing smile with each other. This here isn’t just our teammates talking us up.
This is our team showing us their respect. Two former first-line players are accepting and understanding that in this new league, things are changing and adjustments will be made.
And they aren’t even upset about it.
“We technically don’t know yet who is going to be on what line,” Cameron interjects, even though he knows as well as I do that we have a good idea already.
Nico and Isla ignore him.
“You think we’ll have Wes on our line?” Isla asks him.
“Doubtful,” he shrugs. “I think he’s still first-line material.”
“What about Asher? He looked great today at practice. He could be first line.”
“He’s a couple of years younger, though. I do think he’ll earn second line with us, though.”
“Okay,” Cameron cuts in. “We’re here to bond as a team, and that means no work talk from this point forward.” He shouts out to the rest of our teammates. “Come fill your plates, you fucking heathens.”
The rush toward the kitchen is mad, but I miraculously manage to fill a plate and escape unscathed.
Rather than join my rowdy teammates to eat, though, I slip through the glass doors onto Cameron’s balcony, already needing a few moments of peace.
I’m not out there for more than two minutes when I hear the doors slide open behind me. “Seems like we had the same idea, ljepota.”
I really need to figure out how to spell that so I can see what it means. Knowing Cameron, it’s probably some insult that he loves me not understanding.
“My first team dinner, and I already need a break,” I laugh as he comes to sit beside me on his patio bench, setting his plate down on the table in front of us.
“I’d tell you they aren’t all like this, but I don’t like to lie,” he chuckles.
“Seems like it’s really good for team bonding.”
“It is,” he says. “I swear nothing brings people together more than gluttonous amounts of food.”
“On the topic of food,” I chide, “you could have warned me about Nico’s allergy. Or that Addison is vegan, and Lev has an extreme aversion to mushrooms.”
Cameron rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sorry about that. I honestly didn’t think about it.”
“At least I know for the future.”
“Speaking of the future.” Cameron turns to face me. “Would you rather be able to read minds or see into the future?”
“Hmm,” I hum, giving it some serious thought. “I feel like they both have their downsides, but I’d probably pick seeing the future. Then I could try to stop bad things from happening because I’d know how to prevent them.”
“No,” he replies emphatically. “Have you seen Final Destination? If Death wants someone, they’ll get them.”
I throw my head back and laugh. “That’s a movie, Cameron. It’s not real.”
He throws his hands up in surrender. “You do whatever you want. Me? I’m not tempting fate.”
I shake my head. “Would you rather be an unknown superhero or a famous villain?”
“Unknown hero,” he answers immediately. “I’d never want to be known as a villain.”
Cameron is yet again giving me another glimpse at parts of him I’ve never seen. The man I thought I met at eighteen wanted everyone to know his name and didn’t care about what anyone thought of him.
I’m learning now that that’s not actually who he is, though. Below the surface, there is so much more to Cameron Kovacic than I think really anybody knows.
I like getting to see these parts of him, and I’m hoping he’ll keep sharing them with me.
I think I’d like him to be comfortable enough with me to do that.