Coach’s disapproving insults left my head the second I stepped foot in the rink, three minutes before the whistle blew. I didn’t have time to warm up with the team, and though I was captain and would have been frustrated if any of the other guys had pulled this stunt, my teammates understood, and each of them patted me on the back after asking how Claire was.
The game was close, but the moment the last puck slid into the net, courtesy of Landon, I threw my stick down and ripped my helmet off. The buzzer rang, and we skated over to him, patting him on the back as the arena roared. Don’t think I didn’t notice that Claire’s voice wasn’t screaming my name, though. I missed seeing her in the stands with my jersey, and I thought about her within every empty space my brain could hold between plays.
I hurriedly undressed and threw on my sweats all while getting bitched at by Coach once more. He didn’t buy my excuses about why I was late and kept poking me to tell him the truth, threatening back-to-back suicides, all of which I agreed to do.
“I don’t blame you for punishing me, Coach. I’ll do whatever it is you want me to do. I deserve it.”
“Goddamn it, Wolf!” he yelled, pulling the attention from every player still in the locker room. “Quit being so accepting. It’s only making me angrier.”
“It would suck to be your daughter. Can’t please you,” someone mumbled in the back of the locker room.
The attention was pulled from me as Coach’s face turned a shade of purple I’d never seen before. Thank fuck. I pulled my phone out of my locker and grinned at the photo of Claire and Taytum both resting in the hospital bed that was attached to her text.
Claire: Did you win?
Just as I was about to text back, there was a hush that traveled throughout the locker room like a tidal wave, and silence erupted. I spun around with my phone still in my hand and landed on the hockey god himself: Tom Gardini.
I knew he would be here. He told me he would, which was why Coach was even angrier than usual at me for being late. The phrases ‘fucking up your future’ and ‘making yourself look lazy and irresponsible’ were thrown around a few times before my skates hit the ice.
“Can we use your office, Coach Lennon?” Tom, dressed in his black Armani suit, pulled his stare from me and landed on my coach.
“Sure,” Coach said before going back to hurling insults at whatever dipshit made a comment about his daughter.
Tom inched his head to the office, and I followed after him, shoving my phone in my pocket and preparing to defend myself and my character. Coach Lennon said that Tom Gardini didn’t allow players on his team that weren’t of good nature, so I hoped that he could see my side of things.
The moment the door shut, my nerves squeezed together just as tightly as my fists were bundled in my lap. I rested my back against the chair at the foot of Coach’s messy desk and spread my sore legs out in front of me.
“You were late.” Tom got right to the point. He didn’t skirt around the topic or make small talk, which I appreciated.
“I was,” I answered, looking him right in the eye. Tom was a clean-shaven man in his fancy suit, holding his expensive cane. His face was clear of scruff, his brown hair was gelled to the side, and despite him being old enough to be my father, he didn’t seem weathered.
Tom kept his mouth shut and continued to stare at me. I glanced away and rolled my lips together before leaning forward and steepling my hands together to try and dig myself out of a hole.
“Listen,” I started. “Hockey is important to me. I think that point has been made obvious over the years.” I flicked my gaze to his and saw he was listening intently without a flicker of irritation on his features. Coach, on the other hand, would be red-faced with steam coming from his ears. “And I have never in my life been late to a practice or game in the last four years of being at Bexley U.”
“I’m aware,” Tom said, nodding with a tight jaw.
“There was an emergency.”
“I’m also aware.”
Okay, then. I leaned back and eyed him cautiously before getting right to the point. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t seem all that upset. Should I be digging myself out of a hole, giving up my first-born to still be considered an option, or…”
“How is she?”
Wait, what?
“Uh…” I was more confused at this moment than I was when I had woken up drunk on top of the Zamboni the morning after our high school championship game. “You mean—”
“Claire,” he finished for me, leaning on top of Coach’s desk. Tom’s eyes hardened, but within them, I saw a vulnerability that was all too familiar. “How is Claire?”
How does he know her?
“She’s…she’s okay. She has a concussion.”
He breathed out a sigh, and I couldn’t stop myself from questioning him.
“I’m sorry, but how—”
I stopped mid-sentence as I tried sorting through the confusion, but that was when I saw it. The flicker of fear ran across his features. When he opened his mouth, he paused before looking away. “Well, Theo…she’s my daughter.”
I blinked. That was the only thing I could do at that moment. My brain was blank besides the conversation that Claire and I’d had about her father, which was on replay.
“That can’t be.” My jaw was hinged tightly, molded with anger and confusion. “Because the Tom Gardini that I’ve looked up to since I was ten years old was painted as a decent man with righteous morals. I’ve been told you only allow players on your team that are of good character, but what kind of man abandons their daughter and never looks back?”
Claire and her mother had struggled from the beginning. She told me her mother had never been able to recover emotionally or financially since he left them. Claire had been killing herself this semester by working, attending classes, and dancing to win the scholarship because of the financial strain, and to think that this man, who was wealthier than most of America, was the reason?
It hit too close to home for me, and some would say that this was an insert-foot-into-mouth kind of moment, but sometimes, the truth hurt, and by the look on Tom’s face, it stung.
“What did you just say?”
“I said, what kind of man abandons their daughter?” An angered breath left me, and I wasn’t sure if I was ruining my chances at a career in the NHL or just my chances with him, but defending Claire felt like the right move, and I wasn’t going to back down. “And please don’t tell me that you’re only interested in me because of her.”
“That is not true.” Tom was angry, but so was I.
“Which part?” I snapped back to him. “The part where you abandoned her or the part that you’re not interested in me because of her. I should have known better. What kind of NHL team owner scouts his own players?”
Tom and I were in a complete stare-down. His blue eyes were laser focused on mine, and my chest was ripped wide open with unshed anger and disappointment. Not only was I disappointed about learning that he wasn’t as righteous of a man as I had painted him to be, but also because it felt as if all my hard work was a joke that had erupted in laughter the moment he pulled me in here to talk about Claire instead of me joining his team.
Not to mention, seeing a man this successful sit in front of me to ask about his daughter, whom he’d allegedly left as a baby, felt all too familiar to my own scars. Didn’t he know that Claire struggled with money? Didn’t he know that her mother relied on her to pay for things back home while she was working tirelessly at The Bex and dancing to win a scholarship so she didn’t have to figure out how to balance everything? And don’t even get me fucking started on what Chad had said about Claire relying on him for money.
Tom finally spoke, splitting the ice around the room. “None of that is true. I didn’t seek you out because of her. I have had my eye on you since your sophomore year because of sheer talent and your drive to succeed. You remind me a lot of myself at that age, and I’ll admit, if you had been late for any reason other than making sure my daughter was okay, I might have reamed you just as hard as your coach. But how can I be angry with someone who has a piece of my soul in their best interest?” My mouth opened, but I stopped myself so he could continue. “And I give you props for defending her, even to me, but you have it wrong. I didn’t abandon her. They abandoned me.”
“Wh–what?” I asked, bending forward to place my elbows on my knees.
“Sit back,” he demanded. “Because we have a lot to discuss.”
