Page 186 of Hat Trick
“Like, responsibility? A heavy burden? I don’t fucking know. That’s not important. Whatisimportant is what happened. You okay, Mitchy?” Grant asks.
“I...” I trail off and take another sip from the bottle. “I don’t know.”
It’s been a week since I spilled my guts to Lexi. She’s dodged me on the team plane on our flights to and from Detroit, and I can’t find her in the tunnel during games. I keep checking my phone, hoping there will be a message from her, but it’s been silent.
I’m starting to think I fucked up.
Majorly.
I’m pretty sure I came on way too strong with that wholeI love youspeech, but I do. I do love her, and I’m not going to let her push me away without a fight.
Unless that’s what she wants.
And the more days that pass where I don’t hear from her, the more I’m starting to think I read this entire situation wrong.
“You can tell us anything,” Hudson says.
“Is it about your leg?” Maverick asks, and I shake my head.
“Does it have to do with skating?” Ethan chimes in. “Those videos the team posted of you are fucking sick.”
“No. It’s, ah, more personal than that.”
“A girl,” Liam rumbles out, and I jerk my head up in surprise. “Thegirl.”
There’s a chorus ofohhhs from around the room. Grant jumps up and runs to the kitchen, returning with half a dozen beers he sets on the table. Ethan grabs the bowl of popcorn and puts it in his lap after shoving a fistful in his mouth. Hudson leans back on the couch and drapes his arms across the cushions, and everyone stares at me.
“You all know?” I ask.
“That you’re in love with Lexi? Uh, yeah.” Maverick snorts. “Keep up, Mitchy.”
“Why don’t you tell us the whole story?” Hudson asks, and I do.
I launch into what I was working on in my rehab and the time we kissed in my hotel room. The second time we kissed, then the third. How we’ve been spending day after day together and going on dates without anyone knowing. Grant screams when I mention the skinny dipping. Ethan throws the bowl of popcorn in the air when I give them the play-by-play of my confession after the job offer, and Maverick gasps when I share the real meaning of my constellation tattoo.
“Oh, shit. You’re so fucked,” my captain murmurs.
“Yup.” I down the rest of my beer. “Thoroughly.”
“And you haven’t heard from her in a week?” Grant confirms, and I nod.
“Seven days. She won’t look at me when I get on the plane. When I go to the training room, she’s not there. She’s avoiding me, and I know what that means. She’s trying to find a way to let me down easy without disrupting the entire dynamic of our team.” I scrub a hand over my face and sigh. “Maybe I should go to Minnesota. The last thing I want is for her to be uncomfortable.”
“We need a diagram.” Maverick snaps and points at Liam. “Where’s that whiteboard of yours, Sully? The one we used for our fantasy football draft?”
“In my office,” he answers.
Grant sprints down the hall and returns with a three-by-five whiteboard on wheels, proudly rolling it to the center of the room.
“We don’t need to do this,” I say. “It’s going to make me feel worse.”
“Let’s analyze this like we would a romance book.” Maverick snatches my glasses off my face and slides them up his own nose. “Hell, Mitchy. How do you see with these things?”
“I can’t seeanythingsince you stole them, bastard.”
He waves me off and scribbles out a handful of words on the board, using a candlestick as a pointer. “Lexi doesn’t date, but she’s spending all her time with you. We all know she’s never been shy about expressing her feelings, yet when you dropped theI love youbomb on her, she’s gone quiet.”
“I don’t see how any of that helps,” I say.
