Page 88 of The Rebound Plan

Max gets in my way, frowning. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“Bike,” I growl. “I only played fourteen minutes tonight. No thanks to you.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Nothing.” I go to step around him, and he shoves his arm out, putting his palm in the centre of my chest.

The room goes quiet.

“Hey,” someone says behind me. Kieran, I think.

“Get your hand off me,” I say tightly.

“Your ice time is your own fault,” Max snarls. “Don’t put that shit on me.”

“You saying you didn’t tell the coach I was too slow to practice with the A-squad?”

He laughs. “Do I live rent free in your head, Rusty?”

I’m not laughing. I’m wondering if he watched any part of the game tonight when he wasn’t actively on the ice. Because I might be a gentle giant, but I am still a giant. I don’t care if someone postures. I don’t care about chirping or smack talk. But the second someone drops their gloves and comes at me, it’s on.

And Tilman’s hand in the middle of my chest is the dressing room equivalent of flinging his gloves across the ice behind the ref’s back.

I grab his wrist and remove his hand from my body, squeezing tighter than I need to. “Projecting much, Tiller?”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Okay,” Gustafsson says as he and Marsh get between us, and Hale starts barking orders to everyone else. “Move along, nothing to see here. Shouldn’t you be on a bike? Calhoun, press room, now.”

The room mostly clears out, until it’s just the veteran core, and Jenson because he’s an alternate captain.

“I didn’t start it,” I point out.

Marsh rolls his eye at me. “Can you fucking finish it? Politely?”

He means I should apologize to Tilman for a perceived slight.

Except Max and I both know this isn’t about his usual diva feelings. There’s nothingperceivedabout the beef between us.

“Politely, I’ll just ask our captain to keep it professional in here.” I shrug. That’s as good as they’re going to get from me.

Everyone waits.

Max doesn’t say shit.

So I shrug Gusty off of me and stalk out of the room.

While I’m on the bike, I can see on the closed-circuit TVs that he goes into the press room next. He looks pissed off, and manages to make the press think that’s aimed at himself.

I know better.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell the trainers.

Quickly, I head to the locker room, adjacent to our dressing room, where our street clothes live—and where we usually lock up our phones.

I grab mine and head back before I get in trouble. This late after a game, nobody cares if we’ve got our phones on us. Other teams have different rules, but the Highlanders are pretty flexible as long as we’re doing what we should be.

Hopping back on the bike, I fire off a warning message to Shannon.

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