Dear Roomie (Rookie Rebels #5) - Kate Meader Page 0,7

He hadn’t made enough of an impression to stick with any team, and the Rebels was his fourth in five years. But did he want to be in the same city as Bast, constantly compared to his more talented brother, always falling short? The goldfish bowl was more pressurized here.

He grunted in response.

“How much gym time you getting in?”

Reid went through his regimen, though Henri knew it off by heart.

“That’s more than your brother. Careful you don’t overdo it.”

Reid’s fingers made dents in the seat back. Asking him to take it easy now was a little like pulling the steak away from the rabid, starving dog. He was a product of Henri’s masterplan.

When Reid was eight years old, he had to decide whether to make hockey his life. Bastian was six and already committed but Reid was still unsure. He didn’t take the same joy from it as his brother, not that it would have made a difference. Reid had never been the kind of person who needed one hundred percent satisfaction in everything he did. Happiness was never guaranteed so if you could be good at something, could make people proud of you, then maybe that would be happiness of a kind.

Henri had asked him back then, “You want this, Reid? Because you’ll always need to try harder than your brother. You have to want it because it will never come as naturally to you.”

Reid had looked up at the man who married his mother when Reid was two years old, who had thrown him on the ice when he was five, and now was hoping to have sons who followed in his legendary glide. This man was as tough as old skate boot leather. If he was unhappy with you and your effort levels he let you know. If Reid didn’t want to play, Henri would have accepted it but something fragile would have broken. The tentative thread of father and almost-son. Reid didn’t want that to happen. He might not be as good as Bastian, Henri’s biological son, but he could be if he tried.

Today he repeated what he had said nineteen years ago on the practice rink Henri built ten miles outside of Grenville, Quebec. “I don’t mind working hard.”

Henri chuckled darkly. “Yeah, anything to beat your brother, right?”

I am what you’ve made me. “I need to go into practice.”

“All right. Make sure Coach knows what you can do. When I come down to see you in a couple of weeks, I want a good fight.”

Reid shuttered his eyes briefly. Henri would be visiting Chicago for a couple of days capped off by a hockey crosstown classic: Rebels v. Hawks. Both of the Durand boys in the cage together where Henri could assess that plan for world domination.

“Sure, Dad. Gotta go.” He went to hang up but his father had already done so. Typical power move.

Fifteen minutes before practice, so he headed into the locker room. One nice thing about the Rebels practice facility was that they built the locker room to be just like the real one. It was a good way to ground the players and keep that continuity between the practice and playing space. Reid headed to his cubby and changed into his gear. Most players were superstitious, employing rituals about the order in which they dressed, the number of rounds of tape on the stick’s butt, kissing their holy medals, even for practice.

Reid wasn’t superstitious.

Reid was observant.

The Rebels were a tight team. Sure, most sports teams had a band of brothers vibe, but this team was different. More like family, if your family was modeled on some sitcom perfect TV shit.

You had the father figures: Gunnar Bond, Vadim Petrov, even Levi Hunt, though he was newer to the NHL after a stint in the Green Berets. Total badass and a great center.

Then there were the little brothers: Theo “Superglutes” Kershaw, Cade “Alamo” Burnett, both D-men, and Erik “Fish” Jorgenson, their Swedish goalie. Goofballs, the lot of them.

So, all the standard architypes. What made the Rebels different from other NHL teams was at the top. Owned by the Chase sisters, they had inherited from their father who had been a maverick in the game (read: asshole) and cut from the same ice block as Henri. It should have been a disaster but it worked.

The Chicago Rebels had den moms.

And then there was Cal Foreman, a right winger like Reid, and who, also like Reid, had started with the team this season. In the