Page 2 of Meant for Mayhem

“Mistake,” I said, feeling all eyes on me.

“Damn right, it was a mistake. You let O’Connell right by you, then stood there and watched as he scored. Play like that again and I’m cutting your minutes.”

I heard him, but my head was a thousand miles away.

“It’s cool.” Logan nudged my arm. “He was testing out a theory about Jedi mind control over our opponents. Now we know it doesn’t work. Glad we got that out of the way now, right buddy?”

I didn’t answer. Didn’t look at him. Did nothing but stare at the floor and breathe, which I was also bad at.

He elbowed me in the side. “Should I say it in Klingon?”

“That’s Star Trek,” Kozak said from across the room. “It’d be Shyriiwook if you wanted to go with Chewbacca. Feels right for Meeks, right?”

“Spoken like a true goalie,” Logan said, and several people chuckled. “How would I say, Hey Mikko, don’t suck?”

Kozy opened his mouth to answer, but Coach held up his clipboard. “I don’t care what language we say it in, that was absolute garbage, and I don’t want to see it again.”

I yanked at the straps holding my chest pads on. Everything felt too tight, too constricting as Coach kept talking, laying out strategies for the next period.

I knew I needed to listen, to focus, but I couldn’t stop replaying the moment I’d looked into the stands and then back at the ice.

What a perfect example of how I was failing everyone, all at once.

Being part of a team sport meant I had to pull my weight, or we all suffered the consequences. But at home, I didn’t have a team.

It was just me and Leena.

If I let her down…

Fuck.

My body vibrated with adrenaline, trying to resist the temptation to pull my phone out of my locker and call my mom again.

Three months ago, that wasn’t a concern. Sure, I worried about my mom, but she lived in Finland, halfway around the world from me, and no amount of worrying about her could do a damn thing.

Now, nothing was the same, all because of one phone call.

One little girl left on my parents’ doorstep.

One note, claiming she was mine.

Now, I was a single dad to a 19-month-old. Or was she 20 now? That seemed like something a good parent was supposed to know. But then again, every single day I seemed to come to another realization that maybe I wasn’t a good parent.

Maybe I was failing at this harder than I’d ever failed at anything before.

My breaths sawed out of me. Every piece of equipment strapped to my body felt constricting, sucking the air out of my lungs.

With each passing second, my vision tunneled until I focused on a roll of tape on the floor, everything else fading into the distance. My ears buzzed with static, only the sound of my racing heartbeat audible above the noise.

I yanked on my jersey, pulling it over my head, then ripped at the rest of the pads on my body.

Logan stood in front of me, his mouth moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

I pushed him out of the way, standing up so fast the room spun, only to see Frankie Rhodes, our head trainer, hurrying across the room toward me.

“I’m fine,” I growled, but I felt like I was about to pass out.

Frankie raised one dark brow, then pointed at the bench beneath me. And dammit, I sat back down.