Chapter 40
Chapter forty
Felix Fornier
A Good Leader Delegates
My men may call me overbearing but it’s for their own good. It’s my duty as their captain to make sure their lives aren’t going to interfere with their performance on the ice.
I support them, I get involved, I make moves to protect them.
Coach nods in my direction and I nod back. He knows the room is tense tonight. Fuck, the bus we’re on from the hotel is silent with pent up aggression. He knows we’re fired up. I’ll speak with him in a minute.
He’s only focused on the primary issue. The obvious one.
Meanwhile I’m looking at the missed injury.
Duncan Paisley is out of sorts and has been this entire trip. My spidey senses were tickled when he took a rideshare the morning after his cooking lesson to the airport instead of letting me pick him up.
And the alarms have been blaring every night since.
He was lethargic on the ice our first two games out.
He’s getting in more fights than usual.
His head is down when he’s in the locker room.
The chirps he’s dishing out to the other team are actually mean.
I glance up and observe my teammates. They’re fired up on Crosby’s behalf tonight. Duncan is taking it just has hard as I am since he has made it his responsibility to protect his best friend too.
"Pay Day!" I bark and he sits up straight.
"Yeah Cap?"
"C’mere." Time for a pep talk.
"What’s up?" I can see him attempting to muster the strength to shove his feelings down.
Why do men do this?
Duncan moves from his seat up to the front of the bus and joins me.
"I’m about to talk to Coach about the mood in the room."
"Better you than me." He grumbles
"I’m happy to do it, but I need to know something first."
"What’s that?"
"Would getting physical help you tonight or hurt you more?" His chin tucks back in surprise. "Because I can go tell Coach we need to let you fucking loose, or that he needs to set fines for penalty minutes tonight."
"I want to fuck people up."
"On Croc’s behalf?"
He pauses just long enough to confirm he’s about to lie. "Obviously."
"Okay then. We can’t do anything about fines from the commissioner but you won’t get any from the Renegades tonight."
"Thanks Cap."
"Yeah." He stands and moves back to his seat. Time to delegate. "Young Gun!"
"You have one minute before I go into game-time mode." Our brick wall of a goalie says as he walks towards me.
"Sometime tonight you gotta get a read on Pay Day."
Aiden glances over his shoulder in Duncan’s direction. "Why?"
"Because Rhys moved back to Nashville and he hasn’t been good this entire road trip."
"Right. Umm, sure. What do you want to know?"
"Just that he’s okay. That we can focus on Crosby and the shower."
Aiden nods. "You thinking Big Guns?"
"Not yet."
"Okay. I’ll check in with him. He was slow earlier in this stretch but he’s picked it up. No one is beating him down the boards."
"I know, but is he pushing himself too hard?"
"Could be." Aiden shrugs.
"Go run through your routine and let’s close out this day with a W."
We shake hands and I clap his shoulder before letting him get back to his process.
Okay, time to talk Coach into letting them get rough tonight.
I only hope it helps.