Page 131 of Slew Foot
Jesse, maybe? He was a lot more comfortable withfeelings, but he was also kind of …intimidating. He was too nice to make fun of Rafe for something serious like this, but he also seemed like he was confident and had it all together and well Rafe definitely did not at the moment …
So Jesse was out.
Other than Mickey, Tanner was probably his best friend, and he’d totally be willing to listen but he had never taken anything seriously in his whole damn life so there was no way he’d actually be helpful.
Rafe glanced around the gym.
Who elsewasthere? The problem was, most of the guys were straight and/or not dating teammates.
His gaze landed on Crawford, doing deadlifts—his face red from exertion, every muscle bulging as sweat dripped down his face—and Rafe shuddered. Yeahno. That wasn’t fucking happening.
Graham, who was doing box jumps, was a better candidate. He was a good guy, thoughtful and easygoing, but again, he was straight and had never dated someone with the organization. Rafe assumed so, anyway.
Plus, he’d just broken up with the woman he’d been dating and seemed to be in kind of a funk about it.
Rafe didn’t want to bother him with his own relationship issues right now.
Kady was great, but he was dating Mandy and his grasp of English was still questionable. Tom was great but he wasn’t around at the moment.
Ugh. The rest of the guys were a rotating cast of call-ups or guys Rafe didn’t know very well, so he was running out of options.
“Keep an eye on your form, Moon!” Leah Frye called out. She was the strength and conditioning coach, so Rafe snapped to attention.
“Yes, Coach,” he called back. He put all thoughts of his troubles out of his mind. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up in injured reserve too and that was thelastthing this team needed right now.
Several hours later, Rafe left the locker room following practice, video review, and a shower, and went in search of food.
He got stopped by his general manager halfway there. “Do you have a minute?” Gavin asked.
“Uhh, sure,” Rafe said, wondering what the hell this was about. He was starving but this was his GM, so …
“I thought we could grab lunch and take it upstairs to my office.”
Rafe gulped. Ohfuck. He was definitely in trouble. He was supposed to be the solution to the team’s defensive problems and well, with Mickey out of the lineup they weren’t exactly doing great. “Sure thing.”
It didn’t take them long to fill takeout containers with food from the buffet and carry them up to Gavin’s office.
Rafe had never been up here before, so he took a moment to look around as Gavin grabbed bottles of water and he caught a glimpse of a framed photo on Gavin’s desk.
It looked like it was maybe from Christmas—there was an evergreen tree with lights on it in the background, anyway—and Gavin had his arm around Dakota. They were laughing at something, totally in love, and it made Rafe smile.
Okay, so, he’d beenkindafreaked out about the idea of people within the organization dating when he got here but clearly that had been stupid.
Gavin and Dakota were great together. And so were Jesse and Connor.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been earning my contract,” Rafe blurted out when Gavin took a seat across the table from him.
Gavin blinked. “Uhh, you don’t need to apologize. That’s not why I asked you to have lunch with me.”
“Really?” Rafe asked. He dug into his grilled pineapple chicken and brown rice with a sigh of relief.
“Really,” Gavin said, smiling a little as he forked up some salmon. “Things have been a littlechaoticsince you joined the team.”
“You can say that again,” Rafe agreed, noticing he’d spilled some rice on the table. He debated if he should clean it up now or wait until later. Probably later. There would be more.
“You’ve hardly had a chance to show me what you and Mickey can do on the ice,” Gavin pointed out.
“True.” Rafe hesitated. “And we kind of made a mess of things in Minneapolis, I guess.”
