Chapter 2 #2
Huh. That was strange. It wasn’t unusual for me to accompany Austin to his meetings with Gus, but he’d never specifically asked me to be there before. Gus never did or said anything without a plan, so what did he want from me?
I should ask Austin. Perhaps he’d know.
“If someone isn’t dead yet, they might be soon,” I growled into the phone, peering at the screen in the dark. “It isn’t even six yet.”
“You wouldn’t hurt your favorite brother.” A pause. “Sorry for waking you. I thought you’d already be up, considering that your team is being turned upside down.”
“What?” I rubbed my tired eyes. He was making no sense. “What are you talking about?”
“Have you seen the Chicago Sports News Online?” He made an irritated sound. “Wait. Of course you haven’t. You just woke up, and it only went live late last night. Look now. There’s an article about the Chaos.”
With a groan, I levered myself upright and smoothed my hair back, off my face. Clearly, Alec wasn’t about to hang up, which meant the fastest way to deal with this and move on with the day was to do as he asked.
I switched the speakerphone on, opened Google, and searched for the Chicago Sports News. I clicked into their website, opened the hockey tab, and immediately saw what Alec was referring to.
TRENT TURNS THE CHICAGO CHAOS ON THEIR HEAD.
The headline was loud and in-your-face, smack bang in the center of the sports news page. I scrolled through the first few paragraphs, stunned by exactly how much information the reporter had managed to unearth.
Almost everything was there. The new ownership, the new coach and management, the many trades. All that was missing were the specific names of the players who’d joined and left the team.
I glanced at the byline, and my stomach did this weird, complicated thing where it sank and knotted at the same time.
The article had been written by Rebecca Jansen. Connor Taggert’s ex. A woman who hated him, hated every single player in the Chicago Chaos, and hated everyone affiliated with them, for good measure.
To be fair, Rebecca had reasons to feel the way she did, but sometimes let her personal feelings seep into her work. She’d published more than one snarky headline about the Chaos since she’d discovered that Taggert was sleeping around and pretty much everyone had known and kept quiet.
I reread the last line of the article and a chill rippled through me.
It didn’t seem like she had any intention of letting go of her grudge.
According to her, she’d be watching the team closely to report back on whether the changes would actually impact the toxic culture of the “worst team in the NHL.”
“Jane?” Alec’s voice broke into my thoughts. “Have I lost you?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m still here. Just wondering how she found out all this stuff.”
“It’s true?”
I bit my lip. “Yes, but please don’t repeat that.”
“No one will hear it from me,” he promised. “Not that it’ll make much difference. Someone will confirm it soon enough. How are you holding up?”
“Fine.” I was hardly about to admit my anxiety over the changes to him. He’d try to fix everything for me, and after years of being babied by my family, I needed to stand on my own two legs. “I’d better get started on breakfast, though.”
“Okay. Look after yourself, you hear me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sir, yes, sir.”
He laughed. “Silly girl.”
I was grinning as the call cut off. Most people found my brother to be serious, perhaps even a little grumpy, so I always loved it when he teased me because it proved he trusted me enough to be himself.
I got out of bed, showered, and dressed in a pair of jeans and a cute pink cashmere sweater. It would be colder in the house, so I added a warm pair of socks. Austin liked to keep the temperature slightly lower than what I was comfortable with.
The lights were on, indicating that Austin was already up, no doubt in the gym.
I made my way to the kitchen and started a pot of oatmeal, adding flaxseed and cinnamon as the milk heated.
I cracked several eggs onto a hot pan, and while they sizzled, I added ingredients to a blender for Austin’s usual green protein smoothie and blitzed it.
There was a clang across the house, which I ignored, serving the eggs onto a small plate and positioning it beside the smoothie before pouring the oatmeal into a bowl and sliding it onto the breakfast bar as well.
That done, I fixed myself a bowl of granola and took it farther down the breakfast bar. I’d just seated myself on a stool when Austin appeared from the stairs, a towel slung over his shoulder and his white tank top damp with sweat.
His face was flushed from exercise, and I struggled not to think about how he’d look in bed, covered in a sheen of sweat, his cheeks rosy for other, more interesting, reasons.
In need of a distraction, I opened the article on my phone and passed it to him as he approached. He scanned the text and the slight tightening at the corner of his mouth was the only hint of emotion he showed before passing the phone back without a word.
I took the phone and navigated to this week’s assigned reading for my class on motor speech disorders. Austin pulled out the other stool and dug into his meal.
“Do you need me to hang around the stadium today?” I asked, hoping he’d say no. I had a couple of classes that morning, and while I could watch the recordings later, I always preferred to attend them in person.
“No.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and looked over at me, his electric blue eyes giving the impression they could see into my soul. “Just drop me off and pick me up. I’ll send you a message when I’m off the ice to let you know I’ll be ready. Oh, and don’t forget the meeting with Gus.”
“I won’t.”
He nodded and returned to ignoring me. I turned my attention back to the digital textbook on my phone. I knew better than to take his dismissal personally. Nothing existed in Austin’s world except for hockey.
After a while, I heard him get up and head to his room to get ready for training. I highlighted a particularly interesting factoid, finished the page I was reading, and started cleaning up.
A short time later, I met Austin in the garage. We didn’t speak as I drove. Austin listened to his usual training morning playlist, which consisted of songs such as “Hall of Fame” by The Script and “Believer” by Imagine Dragons.
I parked outside the stadium and waited while he got out and retrieved his bag from the back. As soon as he shut the trunk and started walking toward the building, I reversed out of the space and cruised toward campus.
I had a student parking permit, so I left the Range Rover in one of the campus’s several lots and started the brisk walk to my first class.
My program wasn’t one of the more popular ones, so classes were housed in a small room out the back of the Arts building. It had off-white walls and the kind of depressing gray carpet that made the place feel institutional.
Long, rectangular tables stretched the length of the room, facing a whiteboard with projection screens set up on either side of it. I maneuvered around the desks and dropped onto a chair in the third row from the front beside my friend Clara.
The overhead lights gleamed on her coppery hair as she turned toward me and grinned, the small hoop through her nose catching my eye. She’d only gotten the piercing a week ago, and I wasn’t used to seeing it yet.
“Need caffeine?” she asked, pushing a takeout mug toward me.
I took it and breathed in the deliciously rich and bitter scent of well-brewed coffee. “You’re a terrible influence.”
She smirked. “I know. Did you get the reading done?”
“Most of it. I—”
“Hey, Jane.”
Clara’s eyes narrowed as Joel Hannigan, one of our classmates, hovered on the other side of our desk.