“Right. Think you can shut up for two lousy seconds, so I can finish this announcement?”
I couldn’t help snorting. I even had to clap a hand over my mouth. At least I’d restrained the belly laugh that that one deserved. Detenbeck spoke through gritted teeth, and Kayden shuffled back, wearing the closest look to sheepish I’d ever seen from him.
“Congratulations, Erik.” He smiled and shook my hand.
“Congratulations for making team captain, you mean?”
“No, congratulations for not making an ass of yourself like Kayden just did.”
Kayden perked up, like he meant to give Detenbeck an earful but kept quiet. Nothing worse than proving someone else’s point for them, right?
“And congratulations for being selected co-captain.”
“I really appreciate the thought,” I said, “but are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Oh, I don’t know. We don’t get along. Not that we haven’t tried. We’ve been at each other’s throats, and you guys know that.”
“Yeah,” Kayden said. “Erik can be a total pill, totally unstable. Didn’t you see how berserk he can get when you had to pull him off me?”
Everyone turned to him. No one needed to roll their eyes to say he was acting like a dope.
“Dude, we know how weird this must seem,” Braxton said, “and, trust us, we know about all the bickering.”
“That’s what worries me.”
“It doesn’t worry us. It shows how passionate you two are. You’re both committed to winning.”
“You just have different ways of trying to do it,” Detenbeck said.
“Right. Erik, you want to win in a cool, calm, and rational way. Kayden, you try to win games like a raving madman.”
“Oh, come on!” Kayden sounded ready to burst at the seams. “I didn’t want this honor so you could beat me up, you know.”
“I’m just saying you guys have what it takes to win—and you complement each other.”
Obviously, they saw something I didn’t. But I couldn’t tell them that, not after they’d given me such an honor. Okay,halfan honor.
Kayden’s lips pursed then turned into a frown. He looked so sour. He obviously felt way differently about this than I did. He looked away before revealing too much, but I knew what he was thinking. He would share nothing with me, the Canadian who’d made him question everything he thought he knew about himself. After all, he was the master of his own destiny and could control everything, right?
They needed an answer, and I couldn’t just stand there looking like an idiot.
“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” Braxton asked. “Because if you are?—”
“No, no, of course not. Don’t be crazy. You guys are right. We do complement each other.”
Kayden half-smiled and lifted an eyebrow in what I considered aspeak for yourselflook.
“It’s settled then,” Detenbeck said. “We’ll leave you two to figure out the details. We know you guys can handle it.”
And we could—as long as they didn’t leave us alone in a room together. Things could get pretty heated and in all the wrong ways. I wanted to tell him to ignore any panting and moaning heheard from behind our closed door. We were just tackling some serious business.
Just not hockey business.
22
KAYDEN
