Cooper rolled his eyes and tried not to gag. He stared harder. “What’s that empty space for next to the fish’s tail?”
Brick’s eyes lit up. “That’s for a picture of the Cup.”
“You guys are delusional.”
“Great confidence in your team, Cap.” Rush spit out some pizza accidentally and scooped it off the bed into his mouth.
“You’re disgusting.” He turned to Cedric who’d been oddly quiet. “Can you believe these idiots had Sockeyes tattooed on their arms, and we haven’t played our first regular season game?”
Cedric shrugged, not joining in on the razzing like Cooper expected. Cooper narrowed his eyes, suddenly suspicious. “No. Not you? You didn’t.”
The two idiots started laughing. Cedric shrugged and pulled up his sleeve.
“Ah, hell, you did.”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“I’ll play my heart out on the ice, but I’m not putting any team’s logo on my arm until I win the Cup.”
“Everyone on the team did it but you,” Rush said, then backed up a few steps at Cooper’s murderous glare.
The guys gobbled up the pizza and rumbled out the door, leaving an empty box and the smell of cheese, tomato sauce, and pepperoni floating in the room.
Cooper threw himself back down on the bed. “How’d you end up with them?”
“My encore performance with the girls came to a crashing halt when I had to drag those two jokers out of bar before they busted some big mouth’s nose.”
Cooper nodded, fighting off a twinge of guilt. As team captain he should’ve been keeping those morons in line instead of having phone sex with Izzy. “Thanks for that.”
Cedric gave a small nod and stripped off his clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor, he crawled into bed and turned off the light.
“I can’t believe you went along with the rest of the guys,” Cooper muttered, disgusted by his best friend’s betrayal.
“I like Seattle. It’s a beautiful city, the fans welcomed us with open arms, and I plan on being here a long time.”
“You do?” Cooper sat up and stared into the darkness at the lump on the next bed which was his former best buddy. They’d planned on staying together as long as possible because they had such great chemistry on the ice.
“Yeah. Ethan promised he’d make it worth my while.”
“So now he’s sucked you in?”
“No, he’s won me over. There’s a huge difference, and if you’d get beyond your stubborn ignorance and admit you’re wrong, you’d see what the rest of us see. I’m staying, Coop. With you or without you.”
Cooper grunted and rolled over in the bed, his back to Cedric. A few seconds later, Ced’s snores drowned out the traffic sounds on the street.
What started out as good night ended as a crappy one. Cedric betrayed him. He couldn’t fucking believe it. Ethan got to him, leaving Cooper the last man standing.
Well, he didn’t give a fuck. He’d be gone to sunnier pastures. These dumbshits could fight off the gray gloom all winter while he sported a tan year round.
Part of him recognized how unreasonable he was being, while the other, louder part didn’t give a shit. Disloyal bunch of ingrates. But disloyal to whom? Him? Definitely. The team? Not at all.
The part that bothered him was his own disloyalty to his current team. The old team didn’t need his loyalty. They didn’t exist anymore. His old city had moved on, and the handful of fans who mourned the loss of their team seemed few and far between.
Only Cooper couldn’t stay in Seattle, and no one could know why. It was his secret shame, his bad memories. He knew how unreasonable his behavior appeared. Hell, the fans had packed the stands for their first and only preseason game. They’d been noisy and rabid beyond what he’d seen in most arenas around the country unless that particular team happened to be a frontrunner for the Cup.
God. Those tattoos. Every member of his team sported those tattoos, while he, as the captain, hadn’t even known a damn thing about it. They’d done it behind his back. His team’s deception really stuck in his craw and twisted his gut. His fingers weren’t on the pulse of this team. For years, he’d been their heart and soul, the center of the team’s spirit. Now they were shutting him out.
He wasn’t sure how to take that.
But he sure as hell didn’t like it.
He was the team captain, dammit, and his team was keeping secrets from him.
The sooner he left Seattle, the better. This place held nothing but bad memories, except for Izzy.
Maybe he’d demand a trade during the season instead of waiting.
He knew they thought he was being a dick for hating Seattle as much as he did, that last summer he’d spent here haunted him. No one knew what happened to him and his brother and sister as children. He’d never told his parents out of fear and later out of concern for his mother’s precarious health. That past lived in a tightly locked compartment, but living here ripped off that lock and brought back the pain, confusion, and guilt of a small boy. If only he’d confessed when it first happened, told his parents, done something, instead of shutting his mouth. Yet, his dad had been oversees, and his mom had been dealing with a flare up of Crohn’s disease. Not to mention the perceived threat hovering over him and his siblings. He’d only been ten years old.
Seattle was the one place on earth he swore he’d never live, and here he was in the shadow of the Space Needle, Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains, not to mention Mount Rainier.
Cooper squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to block out the memories, but his mind replayed those scenes over and over like a bad horror movie. He did the only thing he could do to distract himself from his past. He thought of Izzy.