Chapter 2 Drew
Drew
"Drew, the first game of the season is just a few days away. How are you feeling?"
Running my hand through my soaked hair, I hike up the grip on my stick and bare my weight against it. "Yeah, we're feeling good. The guys put in a lot of work this off season, and we're eager to get started."
Emma Dean, a reporter for Golden City's local sports channel, nods in understanding. She's a regular after practices, especially when there's buzz around a big game. "I'm sure you are. And you're coming off a Cup win. How do you think that will affect your mindset heading to Grand Oaks this week?"
"It won't affect us at all," I say without hesitation. "We know we'll have a target on our backs. Every team, not just the Gladiators, is gonna deliver their A game, but we'll be ready."
Emma leans in closer, her overly sweet floral perfume mixing with my post-practice sweat in the worst possible way.
She's objectively good looking, with her nice clothes, slicked-back ponytail, and perky tits she always makes sure to show off. But she's not my type. I like my women a little edgier—ripped jeans, inked skin. Chocolate hair, matching eyes. Women who smell less like flowers and more like… citrus.
"And how about you personally?"
Emma jolts me back to the interview with the start of her next question, and I'm grateful I'm still wearing my padded hockey pants to cover the part of me that's stuck on her.
"Are you feeling like you might get some residual kickback from last year's failed drug test?"
Without hesitation, a scoff falls from my lips.
Emma raises a brow as I roll my eyes and shake my head.
Countless goals, dozens of wins, and a goddamn Cup—yet this is what it always comes to.
It used to piss me off, but now it's entertaining.
That one mistake is the bone they can't stop chewing on.
Well, they can't shake me if that's what they're going for.
If there's one lesson that's been nailed home these last few months, it's that it's easier to stop caring when you stop feeling altogether.
Inhaling deeply through my nose, I smack my lips, grinding the blade of my stick into the floor. "Guys chirp us about everything. I've been doing this long enough to tune them out. At the end of the day, they're still worried about me when I couldn't care less about them."
She laughs, tilting her microphone back. "You don't feel the need to defend yourself?" she asks, an eyebrow raised. Several of the guys around me chuckle under their breaths.
"The scoreboard will do plenty of talking," I say, looking right at the camera.
Her expression falters, a cross between impressed and uneasy, but she continues.
"After everything last season, you seemed pretty quiet.
We didn't see many of your usual moves—trick shots, celebrations, crowd work.
Even your social media presence has gone dark.
.." She tilts the microphone toward me, waiting.
She raises an eyebrow, and I give her a blank stare. "Is there a question there, Emma?"
My voice is smooth and deliberate as I drag my tongue slowly across my lower lip. Her mouth parts slightly, and to the average viewer, she is preparing to respond, but I catch the slight hitch in her breath as her eyes track my movement. Two can play this game.
"I think Golden City wants to know if we'll be getting our icon back."
A quiet chuckle rumbles in my chest as I consider my answer.
I kept my head down after the failed test, trying to move past this.
To let it all blow over. To let myself process it all.
I spent most of last season either suspended or under scrutiny.
My P.R. manager and I thought maybe toning down my infamous antics might help them forget.
Let me breathe. Give me time to sort myself out.
It backfired.
All it did was give them a silence to fill with their own bullshit—and time for me to realize I don't want any of it.
Slipping into the role I know best, I smirk, letting my arrogance take the wheel. "Who says he ever really left?" I wink at Emma, then turn away, leaning my stick against the side of my stall—a clear signal. This conversation's over.
"That's right," I hear over my shoulder.
I don't have to turn to know Brett Burns, our best defenseman and my best friend, is standing next to me.
His voice is almost as annoying as his laugh, but we love him for it anyway…
usually. I throw him a side-eye as I stand back at attention, residual tension still hiding in my jaw from Emma's last question.
"Cap's been back. Can't keep Superman down, can ya?"
I smile softly, but swallow hard. Emma shakes her head and gives a tight-lipped nod. She faces the camera and starts signing off as I go back to removing my equipment.
"Thanks, Drew. Nice to see you again," she says, turning back to me once the red light blinks off.
I tip my chin up to her before peeling off my shirt, pretending I don't notice the way her eyes linger on me. She's not subtle. None of them are. Sitting on the bench to remove my skates, I consider the last few minutes while the guys dick around in the background.
I didn’t ask to be put on a pedestal. The media, my dad, the whole goddamn world—they’re the ones who decided I was untouchable.
But the second I slip, they’re the first to throw stones.
I crossed a line, yeah. But the truth is, all of it—my ego, my game, even the drugs—serves the same purpose.
To hold up the version of me they created.
"Yo, that little news hunny wants her some Anderson pie, doesn't she?" Burnsey throws his shoulder into mine before sitting on the bench that runs along our stalls. "You gonna hit that or what?"
I blow a heavy breath through my lips before responding. "What?" I ask, trying to drain my voice of irritation.
"Ms. Microphone with the knockers. She's always givin' you the eyes." He wiggles his brows up and down, and mine crease in annoyance.
All the puck bunnies are the same. They're just looking for attention and would love to get it from someone with a reputation like mine. Who wouldn't want a taste of the Flames' wildfire?
Well, now it's worse.
"Not this time, Bursney," I say casually, despite my crawling skin. "She’s all yours."
Burns arches a brow and nods. "Sweet!” He pauses a moment in thought before he turns back to me. "You think she takes that camera in the bedroom?"
The guys around us, including our goalie, Carter Ward, pause in their tracks before they erupt into laughter. Brett glances around with his eyes narrowed and his arms wide.
"What? She might! Anderson, come on, don’t act like you wouldn’t like a little role play. I’d let that girl give me a post-game interview.” He smacks my arm with the back of his hand, a devious grin across his lips. "She could talk into my microphone, if you know what I mean.”
I shake my head as I pull off my sock. "Dude, nobody has any fucking clue what you mean."
Burns scrunches his face and falls back from my stall. "You know, like a blowj…" His voice trails off as it's met with awkward silence. He scans the room, waiting for someone to join in his enthusiasm. Instead, Ward huffs out a laugh and shakes his head as he slips his other leg into his shorts.
"You're a strange bird, Burnsey."
Brett rolls his eyes, then flips him off. "Says the fucking goalie.”
When I'm stripped down to nothing but my signature gold chain, I wrap a towel around my waist and move toward the hallway in the back of the room, ignoring the ongoing conversation about Brett’s sex life that continues burning ears around me.
Heading to the showers, I finally let the weight of the interview settle. Sometimes I don't know what's worse—hearing this shit or pretending it doesn't get to me. I hang my towel on the hooks outside of the wet area, then walk to the first shower head—my shower head—and turn the water on.
I don't bother to let it warm up before I brace my hands on the black-tiled wall and let it cascade down the back of my head as it hangs between my arms. Letting the sweat from practice and the disgust from this whole situation rinse off of me, I allow my mind to drift back to last season.
I'm not sure I can pin-point exactly where it started.
The team shrink that Monte wanted me to see might have had an opinion if I actually went.
I'd say I had just fucking had it—the pressure building and building over the last several years.
Add in that we got fucking robbed of the Cup two seasons ago, and the dam was bound to break.
I hate being the underdog. I was never allowed to be.
So when my game started to slip from all the bullshit, I made an executive decision.
I knew I was playing with fire the moment it happened. It wasn't my first time trying coke. But this time it wasn't a hit at a party. This time was different, calculated.
This time I needed it.
It was the morning after another shitty game.
My dad called me, his words like salt in an open wound.
He told me he didn't understand why I was struggling, that my team was counting on me.
My city was counting on me. You're better than this, Drew, so be better.
That's Dad—never satisfied. The guy who couldn't make it past the collegiate level playing for the Grizzlies, but expected me to go all the way.
According to him, I can always do more, play more, score more…
be more. He's holding me to my potential, he says.
"You're capable of reaching the stars, Drew.
I'm not going to let you settle for walking the earth.
" But I don't think he realizes how easy it is to shoot for the moon and lose all sense of grounding.
There's no gravity in space. Nothing anchoring you down.
My natural talent has always been able to carry me, but that means I'm not allowed to have off days. I knew how the drug made me feel off of the ice—like I was incapable of stopping even if I wanted to—so when I fell into a slump, I figured maybe it could do the same thing on the ice.
And, fuck… it did.
As soon as the dust hit my bloodstream that first time before practice, a switch flipped back on inside of me.
I didn't just have energy—I was weightless.
It was like I was flying—gliding across the ice like I was hovering over it, my body moving without me asking it to, my knowledge of the game—where to be, when to bob, and how to weave—happening on autopilot.
It was exactly what I needed. Enough to lock me into the game and drown out everything else—be the man again. Half the time, I didn't even need a second bump. That first hit—those first thirty minutes—were enough to snap me into gear. To remind me who I am. Who I had to be.
That I was untouchable.
Until I wasn't.
And the fall was brutal.
"Yo, man. What's the plan for tonight?"
Brett breaks me from my trance, twisting on the shower head next to mine. Grabbing the shampoo from my shelf, I answer. "I don't know. Haven't really thought about it."
He stands back from the spray and rubs his palms in front of his face. "Come on, man. It's a new season, and this is the last weekend before the opener. We gotta do something."
Running my hands through my overgrown hair, I pause at my nape, gripping my neck and letting my elbows fall forward.
My head lolls back, putting pressure on my grasp, my fingertips naturally pressing into the tension at the top of my shoulders.
A flash of my mystery girl's hands massaging me in the same spot snaps me back to life.
She's always there.
Almost a year later, and I still can't shake the way she made me feel. The way she saw me. Or just didn't care about the rest. And ever since, every one-night-stand, every meaningless hookup, has been a failed attempt at chasing that high. At feeling anything again.
"Hello?" Burnsey sings.
I open my eyes and see he's too goddamn close to me considering we're both buck-ass naked. "Dude, personal fucking space." I dip my head backwards, allowing the stream of now piping hot water to wash away the suds. "Save it for Emma."
His eyes dart to mine as I smother a smirk. He splashes water on his face and uses both hands to wipe it away. "My bad, bro," he laughs. "Just trying to start the season off right."
My eyes slink slowly shut as I duck back under the water. I let it wash over me in an attempt to rid myself of everything I'd like to say—everything I'd like to do except that—just everything in general.
But it doesn't work.
It never does.
Inhaling deeply, I give myself one more beat of honesty before I slowly start to nod, falling back into the persona I can fake better than the real thing. "Yeah, " I say as I let out my breath. "Party at your place."
Shifting back toward the wall, I reach for my body wash before I pause and look back at Burns. "No fucking reporters."