Chapter 20 #3
I chuckled as I went for my drink.
Right then, Barns glanced toward the front of the bar, and his expression instantly darkened.
Somehow, I wasn’t surprised when I turned to see what had soured his mood.
Of course Jack Arlen was here. He really was like the stink of hockey gear—always present, nauseating as hell, and impossible to ignore.
If I was given the choice between an interview with Jack and taking a deep whiff of every single one of my teammates’ jocks after a game…
I wouldn’t even have to give that one any thought. Sniff, sniff.
He was apparently here for reasons that had nothing to do with us, though. He didn’t even look our direction, and instead he sidled up to a woman sitting at the bar. She smiled as they exchanged introductions.
A Tinder hookup, probably. That was about the only thing that would keep him away from us in a setting like this.
On a previous evening, a teammate had murmured, “Cheers to her for taking one for the team” as Jack left with his hookup.
There’d been a ripple of quiet but vaguely uncomfortable laughter among the guys.
As far as we knew, Jack didn’t have any reputation for being a dick to women he hooked up with.
He could be a subtle-enough-that-the-good-old-boys-couldn’t-see-it misogynist with his handful of female colleagues, but to my knowledge, he hadn’t done anything untoward with the women he slept with.
We’d seen him walk through hotel lobbies with them the morning after, and they were always upbeat and handsy with him.
We’d even seen him meet up with the same woman when we came through that city again.
So, I was cautiously optimistic that he was an insufferable asshole in general but not that flavor of scumbag. One could hope.
Predictably, Jack and his hookup left the bar about twenty minutes later, heading for the elevators.
Everyone at the table released their breath. We were all used to being around reporters, and there even came a point when cameras and microphones weren’t all that stressful.
Jack, though—he had everyone on edge every time.
“God, I hate that guy,” Craws muttered.
“Me too,” I said under my breath. “Think we’ll get lucky and he’ll miss the bus to the arena?”
He chuckled and raised his glass. “From your lips to the hockey gods’ ears.”
The hockey gods weren’t listening, because we did not in fact get so lucky.
As we got ready for our game the next day, Jack Arlen came strolling into the locker room along with Marcus, our team reporter.
From the big shit-eating grin on his smug fucking face, he’d had a great night.
Hopefully he’d earned the right to be that full of himself; only his hookup would know.
I just hoped she’d had a good night, too.
She was gone now, though, and we were all stuck with him. Great.
He wandered the locker room, asking various players questions I couldn’t hear. He was in his usual form, judging by the sour looks and head shakes my teammates gave him whenever he was finished.
“Can’t we have like a petition?” Temo asked from the stall next to mine. “Get enough signatures and they take away his press credentials?”
“Or launch him into the sun,” Chris growled from my other side.
I laughed. “God, I wish. I’d sign the shit out of that.”
“Right?” We chuckled and exchanged fist bumps.
And fuck me… Jack came strolling over to our side of the room. My hackles went up. I was pretty sure Chris and Temo’s did as well; it was a natural reaction around this douchecanoe.
With his stupid grin still firmly in place, Jack said, “Temo, hey, how’s it going?”
Temo regarded the dickhole reporter warily, which was the correct response. “Uh. Good?”
“Great. Listen, before you go out there, I wanted to ask you a few things. Do you mind a quick interview?”
Temo’s eyes flicked toward me, and I quickly recognized the “please stay close in case I need someone to run interference” look on his face. I gave him a subtle nod.
“Sure,” Temo said with an extra-fake media smile. “Why not?”
Jack grinned. “I wanted to ask about your last few games.”
Temo’s smile fell. My spine straightened. Temo hadn’t had a point in three games; he’d been playing well, but the hockey gods had been dicks to him.
Guard fully up, Temo said, “Okay.”
“You’ve been pointless in your last three games,” Jack said, sounding exaggeratedly concerned.
“And goalless in your last five. There are rumors you’re dealing with an injury—is that true?
” From his tone, he didn’t believe for a second that it was.
He just wanted Temo to self-flagellate and admit he hadn’t been playing well.
Temo straightened to his full height. Though he was only five-foot-eight, his skates brought him up nearly eye-to-eye with Jack. With a dismissive half-shrug, he said, “No injury. They haven’t been my best games.”
“If goals could have three assists on them,” I interjected, “he’d have several points in those games.”
Jack eyed me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean two of my secondary assists came from passes from Temo.” I gestured at Chris. “At least one of his did, too.” Inclining my head, I added, “If you want, we can review some film and see how many more there were.”
Jack’s lips thinned.
Temo suppressed a laugh. “Thanks, Captain. And yeah, I do want to get back on the scoreboard. It’s frustrating. All I can do is play the next game better than the last one.”
“Are you sure there isn’t anything holding you back, though?” Jack asked. “A lot of people are saying you’ve missed a step since you hurt your knee last season.”
My hackles went up yet again.
Temo glared at Jack. “A lot of people? What people?”
“You know.” Jack shrugged. “Other reporters. Other players in the League.”
“Yeah? Name them.”
“I’m not going to—”
“Mmhmm, that’s what I thought.” Temo started putting on one of his elbow pads. “Yeah, I haven’t lost a step. The injury slowed me down for a while, but my knee is good as new now.”
Jack smiled that innocent smile he always did when he knew he was about to push the envelope. “Is it possible it’s something other than physical, then? There are rumors that you’ve had some personal difficulties that—”
“Hey!” I stepped in between them and stabbed a finger at Jack. “How about you back off?”
“Whoa, hey!” He showed his palms. “I’m just asking questions about—”
“Yeah, well, maybe leave our personal lives out of it? Especially right before a game?”
“I’m just ask—”
“No. Absolutely not.” I stepped closer, looming over him in my skates.
“If a player’s got something personal going on, that’s none of your damn business.
And if he does have something personal going on that’s affecting his game, you don’t ask him about it before a game.
” I glared harder and lowered my voice to a growl.
“Not unless you want to sabotage the team.”
Before he could retort or I could rearrange his face, our team reporter stuck his arm between us and nudged Jack back a step.
“All right, all right. Let’s not.” Marcus inserted himself just like I’d gotten in between Jack and Temo. “Jack, let’s give the boys some room to get ready, all right?” Then he had his arm around Jack’s shoulders and was leading him away, rambling about plans for the postgame media scrum.
“Holy shit,” Chris whispered. “That guy has no shame, does he?”
“None at all,” I said through my teeth.
Temo touched my arm. “Thanks, man.”
“Don’t mention it.” I met his gaze. “You good?”
“Yeah.” He glared at Jack, then rolled his eyes and yanked his chest protector off its hanger. Then he muttered something in Nahuatl, and while I didn’t understand a word of his native language, I could tell by his tone that it wasn’t anything kind.
Couldn’t say I disagreed. My hackles went down minutely as Marcus took Jack out of the room. Hopefully he’d keep him busy until we were all on the ice. Or take him outside and push him into traffic. That would be fine, too.
“You boys good?” Travis, our PR director, appeared beside us, concern written all over his face.
“I’d be a hell of a lot better if that guy lost his press pass,” Temo snapped.
Travis sighed. “I’ll talk to him.”
Temo glared at him. I suspected it was the same look he gave one of his kids when they were on his last nerve.
Travis shifted nervously and looked at me. “Can I borrow you out in the hall?”
I gritted my teeth. “Warmups are in twenty minutes.”
“And I only need you for two.”
It took all I had not to roll my eyes. Had I been anyone but the captain, I probably would have. The need to set a good example kept my professional facade in place, and I just quietly followed Travis out into the hallway.
There were people out here. Mostly equipment managers and a few team and arena staff members. Still, we managed to find a corner with some relative privacy.
As soon as we were as alone as we were going to get, Travis gave another sigh and faced me. “Look, I know you don’t like him, Saints, and I don’t like his approach either. But the last thing we need is footage of you getting in a reporter’s face.”
“What about footage of that same reporter asking a player inappropriate questions?” I gestured back the way we’d come. “Before a game, no less, when we should be focused?”
Travis scowled and shifted his weight. He didn’t seem frustrated with me, per se, just the situation itself. As if he were trying to find a diplomatic solution that kept the press and the players happy.
“Why can’t we go back to the way things were a few seasons ago?” I asked. “When there was no press in the dressing room until after games?”
He eyed me. “You want to talk to the news sites that keep giving them tighter and tighter deadlines?”
I shrugged, my pads squeaking with the movement.
“Maybe if the reporters suddenly couldn’t get their stories done in time, the sites would have to loosen up their deadlines.
I don’t see how their bullshit means we have to have reporters breathing down our necks while we’re trying to focus on games.
” I narrowed my eyes. “Or is the club prepared for one of us to tell a camera that ‘maybe if I hadn’t been grilled about my personal life five minutes before warmups, I’d have played better. ’”
Travis worked his jaw.
“You think we’re too media-trained for that,” I said. “But sooner or later, he’s going to fuck up someone’s concentration and cost us a game, and the truth is going to come out.”
He looked for all the world like he was genuinely surprised his hair wasn’t going to gray before my eyes. I couldn’t imagine the pressure he was under, and I had some sympathy, but my teammates and I were under a ton of pressure too.
“How about a compromise?” I asked. “All the reporters can still come in pre-game, but Jack Arlen is banned from the dressing room. Period.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I am not explaining to the owner of the team why his own stepson is banned from the Phantoms’ locker room.”
I rolled my eyes. “Nepotism is alive and well, I see.”
He spread his arms. “What do you want me to do, Saints? Honestly, tell me, because I’ve tried everything I can think of.”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. But he’s going to start fucking us up on the ice, and it’s going to start costing us when we need the points.
” I paused. “Look, I get it. I do.” Flailing a hand toward the room, I added, “But the way he was digging at Temo? I can’t just sit back and let him do that. Especially not right before a game.”
“Then you let me or another staff member deal with it.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And that was going to happen… when, exactly?”
He glared at me. “Just keep your cool, all right? I’ll keep an eye on him.”
I grunted and walked back into the locker room without another word.
Travis must’ve clocked that I was done with him, because he didn’t try to stop me.
He was probably slinking away to do more damage control and tell Jack to cool it.
One could hope, anyway; I usually liked Travis, but it irritated me how much leeway he gave Jack.
Especially when Jack was a notorious provocateur.
Travis had asked him a few times to keep the more incendiary questions until after a game, but before long, Jack was always back to his old ways.
And because Stepdaddy Warbucks owned us, Jack kept his press credentials and access to our locker room.
I needed to have a talk with the front office. At some point, his connection to our owner should stop taking precedence over his damage to the team. Shit like this could throw people off, and if even one teammate was a mess, it could pull the whole team apart.
Like if a player finds out the captain is screwing his dad?
I winced.
Okay, what Garrett and I were doing wasn’t that bad.
Garrett was nervous about it, sure, and for obvious reasons.
But this wasn’t like when Garrett had cheated on Chris’s mom or anything like that.
He was a single guy. I was a single guy.
Chris was a mature and reasonable man. He might not be thrilled about it once we told him, at least at first, but it probably wouldn’t be a crisis.
Not even if Jack Arlen tried to make it one.
I hoped, anyway.
With a shudder, I continued putting on my gear. I’d talk to the powers that be about Jack later. Right now, I had to get my head together to play hockey.
No way was I letting Jack throw me off my game tonight.