Page 75 of Weak Side

“I don’t blame you for punishing me, Coach. I’ll do whatever it is you want me to do. I deserve it.”

“Goddamn it, Wolf!” he yelled, pulling the attention from every player still in the locker room. “Quit being so accepting. It’s only making me angrier.”

“It would suck to be your daughter. Can’t please you,” someone mumbled in the back of the locker room.

The attention was pulled from me as Coach’s face turned a shade of purple I’d never seen before.Thank fuck.I pulled my phone out of my locker and grinned at the photo of Claire and Taytum both resting in the hospital bed that was attached to her text.

Claire: Did you win?

Just as I was about to text back, there was a hush that traveled throughout the locker room like a tidal wave, and silence erupted. I spun around with my phone still in my hand and landed on the hockey god himself: Tom Gardini.

I knew he would be here. He told me he would, which was why Coach was even angrier than usual at me for being late. The phrases ‘fucking up your future’and‘making yourself look lazy and irresponsible’were thrown around a few times before my skates hit the ice.

“Can we use your office, Coach Lennon?” Tom, dressed in his black Armani suit, pulled his stare from me and landed on my coach.

“Sure,” Coach said before going back to hurling insults at whatever dipshit made a comment about his daughter.

Tom inched his head to the office, and I followed after him, shoving my phone in my pocket and preparing to defend myself and my character. Coach Lennon said that Tom Gardini didn’t allow players on his team that weren’t of good nature, so I hoped that he could see my side of things.

The moment the door shut, my nerves squeezed together just as tightly as my fists were bundled in my lap. I rested my back against the chair at the foot of Coach’s messy desk and spread my sore legs out in front of me.

“You were late.” Tom got right to the point. He didn’t skirt around the topic or make small talk, which I appreciated.

“I was,” I answered, looking him right in the eye. Tom was a clean-shaven man in his fancy suit, holding his expensive cane. His face was clear of scruff, his brown hair was gelled to the side, and despite him being old enough to be my father, he didn’t seem weathered.

Tom kept his mouth shut and continued to stare at me. I glanced away and rolled my lips together before leaning forward and steepling my hands together to try and dig myself out of a hole.

“Listen,” I started. “Hockey is important to me. I think that point has been made obvious over the years.” I flicked my gaze to his and saw he was listening intently without a flicker of irritation on his features. Coach, on the other hand, would be red-faced with steam coming from his ears. “And I have never in my life been late to a practice or game in the last four years of being at Bexley U.”

“I’m aware,” Tom said, nodding with a tight jaw.

“There was an emergency.”

“I’m also aware.”

Okay, then.I leaned back and eyed him cautiously before getting right to the point. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t seem all that upset. Should I be digging myself out of a hole, giving up my first-born to still be considered an option, or…”

“How is she?”

Wait, what?

“Uh…” I was more confused at this moment than I was when I had woken up drunk on top of the Zamboni the morning after our high school championship game. “You mean—”

“Claire,” he finished for me, leaning on top of Coach’s desk. Tom’s eyes hardened, but within them, I saw a vulnerability that was all too familiar. “How is Claire?”

How does he know her?

“She’s…she’s okay. She has a concussion.”

He breathed out a sigh, and I couldn’t stop myself from questioning him.

“I’m sorry, but how—”

I stopped mid-sentence as I tried sorting through the confusion, but that was when I saw it. The flicker of fear ran across his features. When he opened his mouth, he paused before looking away. “Well, Theo…she’s my daughter.”

I blinked. That was the only thing I could do at that moment. My brain was blank besides the conversation that Claire and I’d had about her father, which was on replay.

“That can’t be.” My jaw was hinged tightly, molded with anger and confusion. “Because the Tom Gardini that I’ve looked up to since I was ten years old was painted as a decent man with righteous morals. I’ve been told you only allow players on your team that are of good character, but what kind of man abandons their daughter and never looks back?”

---