Page 17 of Brace and Chase

“Shut the fuck up,” he stops me.

His face is as angry as it was eleven years ago when we lost our chance to go to the playoffs because of a shitty callby a rookie ref. He got expelled from that game with three seconds left on the clock. That’s how little of a shit he gave about the consequences of getting in an official’s face. And right now I’m the lucky recipient of his “death face.”

“You don’t get to talk right now. You only get to listen. Unless you can tell me right fucking now that Sweetheart did something to you to deserve being choked and slammed against a wall, I don’t want to hear your fucking voice for a full week, do you understand?”

I clench my teeth, giving it some serious thought. Thankfully, I dismiss the idea of explaining anything to Laney quickly, and I just nod my head to show him I’m listening to him and I hear him.

“Now you’re gonna be puking tomorrow morning from how many suicides I’m going to have you doing, you better be sure of that, but for tonight you’ll keep your spot on the second line and I’m putting Sweetheart on the first with Mater.” Then he points a finger in my face. “You better stay in fucking line, Santa, or I swear to god you’re not gonna like the consequences.”

He leaves me alone in his office then. I follow behind him, hauling ass back to the locker room, and get there just in time to hear the announcement.

“Mater, you’re on first with Sweetheart.”

Laney leaves without giving anyone a chance to react, so it’s me they’re all left staring at. Bear marches up to me and pulls me out to the hallway.

“What the fuck, man? What did he say to you?” hedemands. My heart breaks a little. I fucking love how loyal Bear is.

“Nothing.” I tell him the truth. “Nothing bad. I just snapped,” I confess, confused. Why can’t I keep my shit together when it comes to Heart? Why do I let him get to me like this?

“Are you sure?” Bear checks again, with doubt all over his face.

“I swear,” I tell him seriously. “Come on, we should go back in. We have a game to win.”

And everything that happened in the last twenty minutes probably fucked with most of the guys’ rituals.

Fuck.

Charlie’s is the first face I see when I step back into the locker room—because I might have been looking for him, but lets not focus on that—and the anger reaches boiling point in less than a second.

I really fucking hate his face.

I stare at him, hard, and he stares right back. For the first time, I see anger on his face and it brings me a sick satisfaction.

I got under his skin too.

So there’s that.

We win onlyby the skin of our teeth.

What should’ve been a standard divisional game againstPhoenix was a shitshow from the second it started, but in the end we did get the W, pretty much all thanks to Bear, if I’m honest.

We went into overtime and Jules put a beautiful one in the back of the net—but only after Charlie dived in to make a fucking heroic-looking save.I hope he has that bruise on his ribs for three fucking weeks.

Jules picked up the puck after it bounced around and broke away to the other side of the ice, and made it look fucking easy.

No one but Bear has talked to me since before the warmups and I don’t fucking blame them, but can’t they see that it’s not really my fault?

It’s Charlie who’s at fault here. He’s the one who came in here and didn’t even bother owning up to all the bullshit that’s happened over the years.

He’s the asshole, the piece of shit, and the fake nice guy. I’m not falling for it the way Milkman is. I see him go up to Charlie after the game, and Eagle and Spiderman follow, the dumbasses.

I shake my head and decide to just clean up and get out of here. I need to get back to having a cool head. I need to get back to ignoring Charlie Heart’s existence.

I look at Jules as he walks out of the showers and know just the way to do that.

I rush through my own shower—I’ll take another one when I get to my suite anyway—and find Jules gone when I get back.

“Where’s Picard?” I ask Spiderman.

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