Dear Roomie (Rookie Rebels #5) - Kate Meader Page 0,102

but this minute looked about as agitated as Reid had ever seen him.

“So that’s it?” Erik said to Casey. “We’re not even going to talk about it?”

“I have nothing to say to you.” Casey walked back out the way she had come.

Reid didn’t need to know the specifics to feel Erik’s obvious pain. “You all right, Fish?”

Erik merely shrugged and walked through the kitchen in the opposite direction to Casey.

Reid turned to Remy. “And that’s why relationships and hockey do not mix. Too many distractions.”

Of course it would help if the absence of Kennedy wasn’t providing the ultimate distraction. Once she had left the country or the planet or the galaxy, he might be able to return to his usual Zen calm.

“Yeah, I probably could have done with fewer distractions in my playing days,” Remy said. “But, hey, it’s life—one long distraction. And it worked out.”

Reid wouldn’t usually bite, but DuPre was one of his favorite players and he hadn’t had a chance to talk to him much since he was acquired by the Rebels. “You mean the Cup win in your retirement year?”

“Yeah, I sure did cut it fine.” Remy chuckled in fond memory.

Cut it fine? There were a million reasons why the Rebels shouldn’t have won that year. New ownership by three half-sisters who barely knew—or liked—each other. The label of second worst team in the league. Led by the man beside him, who was on the butt end of his career. It was a perfect storm of shit yet somehow it all came together for a magical season.

It had Reid curious, though. “Why do you think you won? I mean, on paper it was never going to work. It shouldn’t have happened that way.”

Reid had studied the tapes of the playoff games that season. Five years had passed since they won the Cup, and while they had been in contention since, they hadn’t scaled those dizzy heights again. The team had good players back then, some still on the roster: Burnett, Petrov, DuPre, Callaghan, St. James, Jorgenson. United Nations of Badass, someone called them. But they’d had good players the last couple of seasons, too. What was it about this combination that turned those zeroes into heroes?

“I guess it shouldn’t have,” Remy said, stroking his chin. “In fact, that year was personally momentous for most of us. It should have thrown us off, screwed us up, messed with our minds, but instead it made us stronger. We were all finding our soul mates while we discovered the recipe that worked to form a winning band of brothers.” He smiled that pirate’s grin. “You’re too young, maybe, to be thinking about settling down. But me? I was ready during that season. Had my sights set on some imaginary little homemaker who would bake cookies, fix me a bourbon, and let me fill her with babies.”

Remy smirked. “Yeah, I know, I know. I was pissed at being traded to this shit team. I felt my last shot slipping away. And I had a chance to trade out just before the deadline. We were getting better but not that much better. I could’ve had a shot with a different team but I’d fallen for the team owner and when I say fallen, I mean flat on my beautiful face. This woman had me, body and soul, and I knew there was nowhere I’d rather be. I’d already won the prize. The Cup was just gravy.”

Reid hoped his face was as blank as he wished it to be. Inside, his organs were gallivanting, moving around, swapping places. He read a lot of sports memoirs and psychology treatises. He watched game after game, searching for the clues to what produced a winner. Talent wasn’t enough. Graft helped, but even that was just another string to the bow rather than the whole damn weapon.

It was something indefinable. Some it factor that Reid had been grasping for.

He had always viewed a player’s personal relationships as a liability, especially romantic ones. Sure some players were happily settled with kids, a stable home life that evened them out. But the journey there was usually momentous, filled with potholes and detours that threw a player off his game. It was why Reid had ruled it out as a contributory factor to being the best. The dip in his play wasn’t worth it because he didn’t see that the end would ever justify the means.

He refused to believe he could ever be as happy as the man before