Apparently Grady had missed something big. He tossed a shirt at Farouk. “What happened?”
Without speaking, Dawg gestured at the television.
Well…. Grady could’ve figured that much. The replay showed one of the Ottawa Tartans hooking Piranhas number 68. When he went down, his other foot twisted under him. He landed on it with his full weight, skating too fast.
Fuck, that was a bad fall. Grady could tell the guy wouldn’t be getting up again under his own power. “Who was that?”
“Baltierra.” Mitch put his head in his hands. “Fuck, if he goes on IR, that gives them so much cap relief.”
That meant the Piranhas would be able to trade for another good player during the regular season. For playoffs, Baller would be eligible to come back—assuming he’d healed from what was almost certainly a broken foot—giving the Piranhas a ton of firepower.
Which was presumably why Mitch was upset. “Show a little sympathy, dude.” Grady already had his phone out to text Baller a message of support.
“Right. Sorry. I forgot you’re friends.”
“Injuries like that suck,” Farouk said. “That could fuck him up for a long time.”
Grady hoped not. He didn’t want the Piranhas to get an influx of cap space and become that much more challenging to beat—especially since it looked like the Condors might come up against them early in the playoffs—but he didn’t want Baller to be badly hurt either.
Dawg had already moved on to, “Who do you think they’re going to go for?”
“Kirschbaum?”
“No chance, the whole city of Vancouver is married to that guy.”
“People get divorced all the time.”
“Could be Yorkshire. I mean, if they’re going for a Dekes reunion, it would make sense. And the Fuel are rebuilding again”—that was generous, Grady thought; they’d never managed to build anything in the first place—“so they’d probably go for picks and prospects on a trade.”
Grady tuned them out. He didn’t know enough about the Piranhas’ roster to know who they might be able to trade for another good forward, and it seemed in poor taste to speculate about it when there wasn’t even a report on Baller’s injury.
Instead, he pulled out his phone and found a video from Max—a ten-second clip of Gru chasing snowflakes. Apparently it was cold on the East Coast. Gru was wearing a little green sweatshirt with a hood that made him look like Creature, the Monsters’ mascot. The eye stalks bobbled hilariously as he jumped to try to catch a particularly fat snowflake.
Grady couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid that he’d almost walked away from this. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
MAX WOKEup the day before the trade deadline and checked his phone obsessively, the way he had for the past two weeks. No news about Hedgie being dealt, just the same unsubstantiated rumors. Realistically, if it were going to happen, Hedgie’s agent would’ve given him a heads-up.
But sometimes things moved fast. She might not have time.
In any case, today was still a good day. He pressed a kiss to Gru’s fuzzy nose and received a lazy blink in return, but by the time Max had finished putting on enough layers to go outside, the dog was waiting by the door, tail wagging.
Max slipped the harness over Gru’s head, tugged a toque onto his own, and stepped outside into the biting wind.
Some dogs didn’t like weather, but Gru approached walks with the same cheerful disposition no matter what the sky was doing. Max worried he was going to end up with frostbite. Every time he got ice stuck between the pads of his feet, he stopped, favoring the affected leg, and gave Max the most pathetic puppy-dog eyes until Max bent down and unstuck it.
But he hated his snow boots. Naturally.
Today Max kept the walk short, since he had to be at the arena early and it looked like the roads were going to be a mess. Gru didn’t mind; while he loved the morning walk, it was mostly important as a ritual that had to be observed in order to get to breakfast.
A snowplow went by, the sound muffled by the toque pulled low over Max’s ears to protect them from the howling wind. Driving snow stung his face and stuck in his eyelashes.
“Had enough?” he asked after Gru had dumped a load next to an ornamental cedar half bent under the weight of six inches of snow.
Gru kicked up a spray of snow behind him and pricked his ears.
Max bagged the turd. “Okay. Let’s go have breakfast.”
They had to walk into the wind on the way back. Max’s eyes watered and his ears burned, even under the wool of his hat. The hairs in his nostrils froze, which was always disgusting, but not as disgusting as it would be when the snot melted.
