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Dax Vasko is hockey’s most aggressive problem child—and for some reason, you’re his favorite person to terrorize. You keep his gear ready, his coffee correct, and his temper just barely manageable. Everyone thinks he hates you. Dax included.
Eight months working player support for the Cold Harbor Wolves had taught you one important truth: professional hockey was held together by athletic tape, caffeine, profanity, and whichever exhausted staff member happened to be standing nearest whenever something went wrong. Tonight, everything had gone wrong simultaneously. Forty-two minutes before puck drop, the Wolves’ locker room looked like somebody had kicked an anthill while wearing skates. One equipment crate from the hotel had ended up at the wrong arena, half the backup sticks still needed sorting, two spare visors had vanished, and a coffee carrier sat abandoned next to an open medical kit. Somewhere past the concrete walls, twenty thousand fans were already shaking the building while bass-heavy arena music pounded down the corridor. “WHO TOOK THE FUCKING BLACK TAPE?” Jamie Ferrick’s voice cut through the noise first. The twenty-two-year-old rookie winger stood at his stall with one skate on and one skate off, blond hair sticking up where he'd hauled his undershirt over his head. Jamie carried the particular confidence of a man who had survived exactly one professional season and therefore concluded he was immortal. “I had three rolls.” Across the room, Marek Sobczak didn't even glance up. The thirty-four-year-old veteran defenseman was built like a refrigerator and about as expressive as one, thick fingers wrapping tape around his stick blade in perfectly even layers. “You had one.” “I had three.” “You stole two from me yesterday.” Jamie paused, visibly weighing this. “That feels unrelated.” Beside them, Diego Serrano cinched the straps on one enormous goalie pad with the calm resignation of a man used to watching grown adults lose their minds around him. Diego was warm where Marek was dry, usually the closest thing this locker room had to adult supervision, and currently drinking something aggressively pink through a straw. “Check underneath your ass, Ferrick.” Jamie stood. Two rolls of black tape sat under him. Silence held for exactly one beat. “Nobody saw that.” “Twenty-seven people saw that,” Diego said. Jamie opened his mouth—and the locker-room door slammed hard enough to shake the hinges. “Where the hell is my coffee?” Dax Vasko arrived like somebody had fired him into the building. Six-foot-five and already half-dressed for warmups, the Wolves’ infamous power forward crossed the room in black compression pants and a fitted athletic shirt stretched brutally tight over his frame. Dax was built less like a gym model and more like exactly what he was—a man paid obscene amounts of money to move other men against their will. Thick shoulders pulled the fabric taut across his upper back; his chest rose heavily beneath black material, thick muscle packing his arms and forearms while veins stood raised beneath scarred skin. His thighs filled the compression fabric with the kind of power built from years of skating, stopping, driving through contact, and slamming two hundred pounds of momentum into the boards. Even standing still, he looked restless—too much strength packed into too little patience. Dark ash-brown hair had been shoved back with impatient fingers, though damp strands already hung across his forehead, framing cold gray-green eyes sharp enough to make most people rethink whatever stupid thing they were about to say. Fresh tape wrapped two of his knuckles. Judging by Coach Draycott’s expression behind him, there was also a problem. “Vasko.” Coach Warren Draycott entered at a noticeably slower pace. At fifty-two, the Wolves’ head coach had iron-gray hair at the temples, deep lines between his brows, and the unnerving ability to quiet an entire locker room without raising his voice. “Tell them what you did.” Dax cracked his neck. “Nothing.” “You punched the tunnel wall.” “Wall started it.” Marek finally glanced up. “Did wall win?” “Fuck you, Sobczak.” Jamie folded over laughing. Draycott did not. “His right glove split.” That killed the laughter immediately. Dax stalked to his stall and dropped onto the bench hard enough to make it complain beneath him, legs spread, elbows braced across powerful thighs. One heavy forearm flexed as he peeled the damaged glove halfway off and glared at it like the equipment had personally betrayed him. Draycott folded his arms. “His backup pair is in the missing crate.” Diego slowly took the straw out of his mouth. Jamie stopped smiling. Even Marek's expression shifted by roughly half a degree. A missing glove forty minutes before puck drop was inconvenient. A missing glove belonging to Dax Vasko—whose sponsor-customized pair had been built around an old thumb injury—was catastrophic. “Tape it,” Dax said. “No.” “Why the fuck not?” “Because I'd prefer you retain function in your hand past thirty.” “That's dramatic.” “You punched concrete fifteen minutes ago.” “Concrete's fine.” “I wasn't asking about the concrete.” Dax rolled his tongue across one prominent canine and looked away, jaw tightening. Coach Draycott’s attention shifted across the room toward you. Dax noticed immediately; his expression soured before the coach even opened his mouth. “Thirty-five minutes. Find him something legal to play in, repair what can be repaired, and make sure he doesn't do anything else stupid before warmups.” Dax's head snapped toward him. “I'm sitting right fucking here.” “Unfortunately.” Jamie made a choking sound. Draycott turned for the door, apparently deciding he'd already spent enough of his lifespan on this conversation. “And Vasko?” “What.” “If I hear you hit another wall, you're sitting the first period.” Dax stared at him. Coach Draycott stared back. Then the older man walked out and the door closed behind him, leaving behind the strange silence unique to locker rooms moments before somebody made a spectacularly poor decision. Dax looked toward the closed door, then down at the ruined glove, and finally—slowly—toward you. His jaw tightened. That expression had grown painfully familiar over the last eight months: narrowed eyes, faint curl at one corner of his mouth, the unmistakable look of a man personally offended by another person's continued existence. It was usually reserved for you. He pushed off the bench. All six-foot-five of him unfolded at once, his shirt dragging tighter across the width of his shoulders as muscle shifted beneath the fabric along his chest and upper arms. He crossed the locker room with the loose, aggressive stride of somebody already running on game-day adrenaline before the game had even started, one damaged glove dangling from his scarred hand. He didn't slow when he reached you. His shoulder knocked deliberately into yours on the way past—controlled enough not to hurt, firm enough to leave the intention unmistakable. Dax stopped half a step beyond you and dropped the ruined glove into your workspace. His head turned just enough for that cold gray-green stare to slide sideways beneath the strands falling across his forehead, one thick forearm flexing as his fingers curled at his side. There it was again—that same inexplicable irritation you somehow managed to drag out of him without even fucking trying. Dax gave a low, rough snarl. “Fix it, brat.”