Chapter 47
Grayson
I was sitting on the bench, feeling useless.
Worse than useless. I was a fucking liability for my team.
They were a better team without me on the ice.
I closed my eyes and let the despair wash over me. I wallowed in it, welcomed in the pain, because it was better than feeling nothing.
I thought about the teammates I had let down. They had worked so hard to get to this point, and just when they needed their captain the most, I crumbled.
It could have been worse. I was paid a lot of money to lace up every game, regardless of my performance. I had financial stability, a concept I had only dreamed of when I was younger. Despite my failures, I should have felt incredibly lucky to be here.
Then I thought about Josie.
Being back here in Edmonton reminded me of her.
I imagined I could smell her perfume when I walked through the hotel lobby.
I thought about our first kiss—first real kiss, not in front of a camera—by the bathroom in the bar.
All the screaming Oilers fans dimmed when I pictured myself in the hotel room, and all the filthy, beautiful things Josie and I had done there.
God, it was so good. That was the first time I’d felt alive, truly alive, in years.
Just the memory of that trip filled me with energy.
And it wasn’t only about the sex, although that was fantastic.
The way Josie gazed into my eyes, truly seeing me the way nobody else ever had…
that gaze haunted me. That’s what I thought about when I closed my eyes.
How Josie didn’t care that I was rich and famous.
Hell, she hated my fame. When we were alone together, just the two of us underneath the sheets, she was the only person I had ever allowed to truly know me.
And I had fucked it up.
When they put the statement in front of me, defeat had made me too numb to understand or care about the hurt I was throwing at Josie.
But as I sat on the bench, listening to the game unfold before me, there was a growing certainty in the back of my head.
Memories of Josie reigniting the fire I felt when I was around her, a fire that was beginning to rage just behind my ribs.
I had given up, lost my confidence like never before. I’d become someone I didn’t even recognize.
But not anymore. I needed to fight—not just for Josie, not just for this game, but for my team.
My eyes flashed open and I launched myself off the bench, striding to the other end where our coach was watching. “Put me in,” I demanded.
Without taking his eyes off the ice, he replied, “I like the matchup, with Jarvinen against Markson.”
I stepped in front of him and put my face inches from his. “Coach. I’m not asking. Put. Me. In.”
He wasn’t the kind of coach who caved to player demands on a whim. When he made a decision, he stuck with it. But the look in my eyes must have convinced him, because he turned to his assistant and said, “Steele is in for Jarviven.”
The assistant whipped his head around in surprise, saw me, then thought better of arguing. “LINE JARVINEN!”
Miko Jarviven skated over to the bench and held up a fist for me to bump as I hit the ice.
It was time to take over the game.
The crowd was abuzz at my entrance, and soon began chanting. “GRAY-SON. GRAY-SON. GRAY-SON!” The chant rolled back and forth across the packed arena, growing in strength.
But rather than intimidate me, I allowed it to fuel me.
I took my position at center ice as the timeout ended.
The chants were still thundering down from the fans, but I was completely focused on the puck.
My teammates were passing it around, pretending like they were killing time before the period ended.
That’s what we wanted the Oilers to think, at least.
Mason gave me a wink from the other side of the ice, the only warning I had.
I juked an opponent and took off at a sprint.
Mason got the puck and immediately fired a laser pass to me. As I approached the opponent’s goal, time seemed to slow down. The Oilers goaltender turned to face me, blocking as much of the goal as possible with his body. But there were gaps, and I’d been training my entire life on how to hit them.
I barely registered the puck leaving my stick. As soon as it was airborne, I was whirling my skates in a U-turn and pumping my fist. I knew it was a goal without needing to wait for the horn.
I savored the silence that came after. It wasn’t often a man had a chance to make twenty thousand people all shut up at the same time.
They had to review the goal, but I never had a doubt. My teammates piled onto me, shouting and pummeling me with smacks.
All the post-game events were a daze. Showering and changing in the locker room. Doing interviews with the media. Boarding the team bus and getting on the plane back to San Antonio.
But I still felt tense as I took my seat. I may have won the game, but there was still some unfinished business.
There was only one thing to do, which made the decision easier.
“Hey,” I asked Mason in the seat next to me. “Can you install TikTok for me?”
He stared at my phone. “You don’t know how to install an App? On your phone?”
I sighed and turned to look over my seat. “Callahan, I have a favor to ask.”
“No! I’ve got it!” Mason insisted. He grabbed my phone, tapped on the screen, then handed it back to me. “The icon is on your second page. You still need to make an account, though.”
I quickly created an account, held my phone out at arm’s-length, and hit record. I didn’t need to rehearse.
I knew exactly what I wanted to say.
“My name is Grayson Steele,” I began. “We just held on to win game five, and are sitting on the team plane ready to head home. But I don’t want to talk about hockey tonight. I’m here to talk about Josie Harper.”
A few teammates were looking sideways at me. Mason was staring at me like I was a velociraptor who had suddenly appeared on the plane. But I was focused, so I ignored them.
“Last week, I made a public statement after we lost game two to the Oilers. That statement was written by the team’s marketing department as a way of doing damage control.
A lot of it was true. Josie Harper won the contest, and we were contractually obligated to go out on a certain number of dates.
But that’s where the truths ended, and the lies began. ”
The cluster of coaching assistants a few rows ahead of me were all standing up and watching me, now. Most of the background chatter around me had ceased while everyone tried to eavesdrop on the recording.
“I hated Josie on our first date,” I explained.
“Turns out, she hated me, too. She didn’t want to be there.
In fact, she didn’t sign up for the contest. A friend signed her up as a joke.
The date went horribly. It ended with us shouting at each other.
And because we bailed early, we were contractually obligated to go on a second date.
We smiled and pretended to have a good time at the Spurs game, but we were still faking it.
We even faked a kiss for the kiss camera, thinking that would help put an end to things.
“But the truth is: I felt something real during that kiss. My entire attitude toward Josie changed, and she looked at me differently, too. We agreed to continue the dates because it was good for the team’s publicity.
We slowly got to know each other. The teasing comments quickly lost their bite, and became more playful the longer we spent together.
By the time we traveled to Edmonton for the first two games of the series, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. ”
I took a deep breath. Nobody around me moved; you could have heard a pin drop.
“Josie isn’t just a fan I was forced to go out with.
I now know that she’s so much more than that.
She’s stubborn. She’s determined. She’s unflinching when it comes to what she believes in.
She’s smart, and full of life, and so freaking beautiful that it stops me in my tracks sometimes.
She’s not a distraction. She’s a rock. My rock, a point of stability in my life that I desperately need. She’s the reason we won game one.”
“Why isn’t anyone—” Coach demanded while boarding the plane, but several teammates and members of the staff shushed him.
“And,” I said, “I’m falling madly in love with her.
I know I may have lost my chance. It’s probably too late for us, especially since I allowed her to take the blame for my poor performance on the ice.
But it was important to me to set the record straight.
I owe it to her, I owe it to myself, and I owe it to the fans to tell the truth.
“And oh by the way,” I added, “that TMZ photo was bullshit. I don’t know if I’m allowed to curse on here, but I don’t care.
I didn’t drink wine at the restaurant before game two.
I had water. In the photo, I was having a tiny taste of wine because it was extremely expensive.
My focus as the captain of this team is, and always will be, winning hockey games.
Nothing in the world can distract me from that. ”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to end a video like this, so… um, bye.”
As soon as I ended the video, Mason jumped out of his seat and clapped his hands together. “Holy shit, Captain. Are you seriously pouring your heart out on TikTok?”
“Don’t make a big deal out of this,” I muttered.
“Are you kidding? This is a big deal.”
My teammates behind me leaned over the seat and said, “Shit, Captain. We wouldn’t have teased you about your shit with that girl if we knew it was real.”
“I never thought she was a distraction,” our goaltender added a few rows back. “I’d be lost without my wife. She’s my rock, you know?”
While they bombarded me with questions and support, Bob Trent was angrily striding down the aisle toward me. “Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve ruined weeks of carefully-crafted marketing!”
“This is what I think of your carefully-crafted marketing bullshit.” I showed him my middle finger.
Bob’s eyes flared with rage as he pointed at me. “You’re fracturing the team dynamic with your selfish video. I’m going to talk to the owner and make sure you ride the bench for game six, and I don’t care if he disagrees.”
“You want to repeat that?” Mason said, rising to his feet to put himself between me and Bob. “Because our captain led us to a big win tonight.”
“He’s not fracturing the team,” Hunter Callahan said, prowling up the aisle like a panther. “But you’re driving a wedge between us by threatening the captain.”
My teammates rose to their feet in unison, shouting their agreement and slowly pushing into the aisle. Bob’s eyes went wide, and he took a few cautious steps back. Eventually, he bumped into the coach.
“You’ve done a good job marketing the Surge,” Coach said. “But Bob? Stay the fuck away from my players after a game.”
Bob mumbled something incoherent, then scurried to his seat at the front of the plane. My teammates all grunted their approval, but Coach only gave me a subtle little nod.
They had my back, just like I had theirs.
Relieved, I put my headphones on and closed my eyes. Was the video enough? Part of me wanted to watch it, review what I had said, and maybe make some changes. Josie had told me that it often took her five or six takes to get a video right.
But perfection wasn’t important to me. I didn’t make the video to win Josie back. I just wanted to set the record straight, to make sure she wasn’t treated like a punching bag for our losses. There was a weight off my chest as the plane took off and climbed to our cruising altitude.
I felt the soothing calm of someone who had done the right thing.
The plane landed at two in the morning. My teammates all looked like zombies, which I certainly sympathized with. All I wanted to do was go home and crawl into bed. I didn’t even check to see how many views I got on my TikTok video to Josie.
As always, there was a cluster of player girlfriends, wives, and children waiting on the tarmac. I had never cared about it, but now I felt a tiny little pang of jealousy. It would have been nice to have someone waiting for me, so I didn’t have to go home to an empty condo.
Maybe someday, I told myself. Maybe, with enough time, Josie will forgive me.
Then two women moved, and the woman I was falling in love with came into view.
Josie.