He wasn’t wrong about that. Braxton Wilson had broached the topic with me. For all I knew, he’d done the same with Kayden. If not Braxton, then maybe another teammate caught on and started asking questions. In that case, Kayden had a point, but I didn’t care to pretend like nothing had happened. I’m not saying I’d been perfect, but Kayden had been creepy as hell and I couldn’t deal with that.
“You want clarification,” I said. “Great, what do you want to clarify?”
He half-smiled. He must’ve felt as uncomfortable as I did. “Neither of us said we were breaking up,” he said.
He paused, as if waiting for me to agree. I didn’t want to say any more than I had to. Talking only stood to worsen our problem. Think of silence as my only defense mechanism in that situation.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well, what?”
“Come on, Erik. Don’t make this impossible. If we didn’t actuallysaywe were calling it quits then…”
Again, I didn’t respond.
“Jeez, dude,” he said. “I always knew you were stubborn—a pain in the ass, actually—but I never thought you werethisbad.”
I pulled off my gloves, slammed them onto the ice, and huffed.
“What do you want from me?”
“You already know what I want from you. No need to repeat it.”
“Right, a simple conversation just so we know where we stand?”
“Right.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“I guess so, but with all the confusion, I can’t be totally sure. And I don’t know what’s coming next or if I should move on. As it is, people say it’s like we’re going through a breakup.”
“They’re saying that to you too?”
“Yep, and if they’re saying it to both of us, then there’s probably something to it, right?”
I shrugged. I understood his point but wouldn’t give him any leverage.
“And that means they’re on to something,” Kayden said.
“Whatever that something is. You’re saying you think they knew about us all along?”
Now he shrugged. “Maybe notallalong. Whether they did or not, they know something’s weird between us now, and that doesn’t help.”
I sighed. “And I’m supposed to do something about it?”
“If you’re asking me if I want you to wave a magic wand and make it all better, then no. I’m just saying we should…”
“Should at least pretend like everything’s okay?”
“If that’s what we’ve got to do to get through game seven, then hell yeah.”
I didn’t know if I could do that for a million dollars. Or ten million. How I felt was how I felt, optics be damned. I’d learned that from Kayden Preston, hadn’t I?
I saw no reason to change now.
But I wasn’t naïve. We would have to address the topic sooner or later. There would be no running away from it. Maybepretending like nothing had happened would help in the short-term, but it would only allow our problems time to fester.
“Why don’t we use the direct approach?” he said. “Are we broken up?”
