Page 20 of Holiday Hostilities

“ROACH BOY’S HERE!”

Dallas is currently whooping in delight. Meanwhile, Triple J holds his hands towards Colton and the two men attempt a salsa dance that’s both terrible and terrifying as Perez belts out “La cucaracha! La cucaracha!” which makes the rest of the guys collapse in hopeless, side-splitting laughter.

Even the Swedish giant Lars—who might be the most stoic man in the universe—scuttles his fingers in a particularly roachy fashion.

It’s a total locker-room looney bin.

Seb sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles. “SHUT UP, EVERYONE!” he bellows, and a stunned silence falls over the place. Seb is the most Canadian person on the team—in that he’s always polite and never yells. At anyone.

I’m actually impressed.

“What Slater means is: can someone please tell us what the hell is going on?” I demand, looking around the room.

“And why Marino’s captaincy just got called into question by the media?” Seb adds. He seems almost as riled up about this as I am.

All eyes in the room grow wide as they slide from Seb to me, and I nod. “Whatever Cockroachgate is about, it’s got lips wagging.”

“Wait, what?” Jake’s head jerks up. “It’s just some stupid internet story. Your captaincy has nothing to do with it.”

“Try telling that to that bloodthirsty Sadie chick out there.” I jerk a thumb over my shoulder.

Dallas shudders. “Ooh, yeah. She can be cold as ice.”

Jake smirks at him. “Sounds like you know this from experience.”

“Oh, I do.” Dallas’s rueful tone makes me think that Sadie’s behavior might have something to do with my teammate.

“Unsurprising.” Jake rolls his eyes, then passes me his phone with an article open on the screen.

I scan the story—predictably, a write-up on a trashy news outlet—and my mouth slides into a grimace. “People are… naming cockroaches after their exes?”

“They’ve been doing it at zoos all over the country,” Dallas nods sagely, because of course Dallas would know all about this. “Started as a Valentine’s Day revenge thing. Atlanta Zoo picked it up this year as a holiday publicity gig.”

I read the tagline from the zoo’s website aloud. “Name a cockroach after a particularly awful ex and gift it to a lizard of your choice this holiday season.” I shake my head. “Sounds idiotic.”

“Agreed.” Dallas shrugs. “But a few minutes before your pre-game interview, that ex-fiancée of yours live-streamed herself getting to the Atlanta zoo, naming a cockroach after you, and sacrificing it to a lizard. It’s clearly getting a ton of shares.”

“Super good publicity for the zoo,” Triple J adds oh-so-helpfully, which earns him a whack across the arm from Perez.

Meanwhile, I’m totally confused, scrolling further down the article. “Huh? What do you mean,myex-fiancée?”

As I say the words, everything suddenly clicks into place. I stare at the familiar auburn-haired woman on Jake’s phone screen, and realize exactly which detail I missed.

AaronMarinosMistress.

Brandi.

Who was definitely never my fiancée, as Dallas damn well knows.

I really should have seen this coming. After the texts last week got borderline creepy, I changed my number again without replying to her.

This is what she must have meant by “getting my attention.”

Hell hath no fury like a woman ignored, it seems.

I scrub my hand over my face, then look around the room. I’m met with the confused, slightly concerned gazes of my teammates. So I straighten up, get my game face on, and channel my inner calm. Present the perfect picture of being totally unfazed.

“Well, guys, lucky for us, all publicity is good publicity. And the more distracted our opponentsthinkwe are with this story coming out, the more advantage we have to focus and get our heads in the game. So let’s go out there and wipe the ice with Vegas!”

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