Page 14 of Holiday Hostilities

I want to prove it to myself, too. Silence that little voice inside me that keeps telling me I can’t. That my teammates would have been better off voting for Slater, instead.

I grab my phone, check the screen, and immediately regret it. The unknown number has texted again.

There’s no upper limit on what I’ll spend by the way! Either way, I’ll have you…

And as if that wasn’t weird enough, there’s another message time-stamped twenty minutes later.

Answer me, Aaron, or I’m going to have to do something big to get you to pay attention.

What the actual hell?This is just getting creepy.

I click my phone screen off and head to the locker room. It’s empty, but I’m surprised to hear multiple voices carrying from the showers. I figured everyone would be gone by now—we leave tomorrow for two back-to-back away games. When we get back next week, it’s our annual Thanksgiving Day face-off against Vegas, which means extra practices in the days running up to the holiday tradition game. I assumed the guys would be making the most of their downtime.

“What’re you all still doing here?” I ask as I walk into the shower room, towel wrapped around my waist.

“Captain!” Jimmy Jones-Johnstone cries from beneath a stream of water. “Just the man we’ve been waiting for.”

“Took a hot second,” Dallas Cooper mutters.

I snort, stepping into a stall and turning on the water. “Hang on, don’t tell me you were all hanging out in the showers together, waiting for me to get here.”

Our shower set up features waist-high half-stalls, which means that we can chat while we’re showering without a full-frontal nudity fest. But it’s not like any of us make a habit of having heart-to-hearts while we’re butt-naked.

Jake, who’s in the shower stall next to mine, rolls his eyes. “Unfortunately, that is the case.”

I have to laugh as I test the water, find it hot enough, and then throw my towel over the wall of my stall before ducking under the stream. I savor the heat on my skin for a moment.

“We have an idea,” Triple J says excitedly as he rubs a veritable mountain of foamy shampoo into his hair.

I cast a worried glance in Sebastian Slater’s direction. Jimmy’s “ideas” are usually the harebrained ramblings of a maniac, and I trust Seb, the team’s new alternate captain, to be the voice of reason.

Seb shrugs. “It’s actually a decent one this time.”

“Seconded,” Colton Perez adds from my other side.

“Okay. Hit me with it.”

“Teamsgiving!” Jimmy announces proudly.

I raise a brow. “Come again?”

“Teamsgiving,” he repeats, not bothering to elaborate.

I look to Seb for help translating.

“We thought we could do a team Thanksgiving dinner next week.” Seb explains. “We usually go out together when the game’s away, obviously, but it’s at home this year, and none of us really have family in town. So Triple J suggested that we start a new tradition.”

“Teamsgiving dinner,” I repeat slowly.

When Mal was captain and our Thanksgiving games were in Atlanta, he would spend the holiday with his wife Chantal’s family. Some of us other guys would hang out from time to time, seeing as most of us don’t have family living here, but we’ve never had an official team event for the holiday.

“Puck doesn’t drop til 5pm, though,” I muse. “Kinda late to do a big dinner afterwards, and I doubt we’ll wanna eat all that before a big game.”

I don’t mean to sound like a killjoy nor a party pooper, but I’m trying to think about what’s best for everyone. Team moraleis important, but so is being in the right mindset to win an important game.

“What if we did it on Friday instead?” I suggest.

Jimmy nods eagerly. “You read my mind, Captain. That way, we have the full day to enjoy it.”

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