Playing the Game (The Renegades) (Volume 3) (6 page)

His hip throbbed. He dropped his pads to the floor,
and peeled his Under Armour off to investigate the injury. A large
bruise was already forming.
Fuck, that really hurts.
He’d
been interfered with and hauled down on his way to the goal. The
defenseman was bigger than him, and there was no way Ty could avoid
falling. Too bad the net was right in his path and his hip clipped
the side as he fell.

No penalty was called. It was his job to say
something, to stand up for his team. He complained about the missed
call, but the ref waved him off and skated away, uninterested.

They blatantly missed the second call. The refs
needed to open their eyes and call the game right. Kris had been
held the whole way to the net; there was no way he could’ve got a
decent shot. It was a clear holding call and the refs missed it, so
Ty let them know about it. Apparently, after the first two times he
over-zealously
discussed
the missed calls, they were at
their limit with him.

The Renegades were down 3–1 when he was ejected from
the game, and his gut ached with an ominous ending to this night.
There was no way they could win without him. Loud boos from the
crowd vibrated the lockers; he could only guess that Chicago had
scored. Again.

They had a game tomorrow evening and the team needed
to win. Playoffs were quickly approaching, and team rankings were
on everyone’s mind. The Renegades had started off the year on a
high, number one in their division. But now that wasn’t the case.
They had to start winning or they wouldn’t make the playoffs.

He was the captain, and he should be the one to get
them out of this funk. Well, he was the captain for now. Ben had
made it clear that he needed to settle down, and this wasn’t the
way to do it. He needed to bring his game up and his temper
down.

It’s those damn refs’ fault that I’m sitting in this
locker room while my team is out there fighting for a playoff
spot.

CHAPTER 6

“All right Paige. Time to throw you into the deep end
and see if you can swim!” Melanie said loudly, as she pushed her
way into Paige’s office.

“
Good morning?” Paige scrunched up
her face, not having any idea what was about to happen.

“
Sorry. Good morning! I get a bit
excited. Plus, I’ve already had three coffees.” Melanie laughed as
she sat on the corner of Paige’s desk, tapping her finger and
bouncing her foot.

Paige sipped at her hot coffee; she needed to wake
up. Pointing to her mug, she said, “My first. I may need to catch
up with you, because I have no idea what we’re talking about.”

“
Today is your day to shine,
sweetie. Tyler Kidd got tossed from the game last night, and that
does not make for good publicity for the team. It’s your job to put
a spin on it and make us look good; well at least make it better.
Don’t give the media or the public much to talk about.” She tossed
a few manila folders onto Paige’s desk. “Here are files on all the
reporters who want to talk to us this morning. Write up a few
paragraphs and quotes to get out to them before Coach addresses the
media at eleven. Dance around the truth as much as you want, but
make it believable.”

This is what Paige was here for; this is what she did
best. She thumbed through the folders.

“
While you’re doing that, I’m going
to meet with Tyler.” Before Paige could say anything else, Melanie
hopped off her desk and hurried out the door. “Ta-ta!”

I can totally do this
. She hyped herself up.
This is why she went into public relations to begin with. Opening a
new screen on her laptop, she stared at the blank document. She’d
watched the game and Tyler hadn’t really deserved a game
misconduct.

She also knew how upset he was last night after the
game. When she’d gone down to the locker room to police the media,
she’d heard him slam his helmet against the wall. Needless to say,
the media was turned away from any contact with him last night.
While Melanie handled what went on in the locker room, Paige had
streamlined the process outside in the hallway.

The best way to handle this was without placing blame
on anyone in particular. Players get tossed all the time, well, not
all the time, but often. It’s only a big deal because it was Tyler
Kidd. The tale she spun was about a decent guy who’d had a bad
night and was suffering from exhaustion. She threw around the word
‘frustration’ and that the Renegades were ‘out-played’. Her fingers
frantically typed until she had enough of an explanation to release
to the media. She knew better than to blame the refs. The team
could get fined for that, and she assumed Melanie wanted to make
sure Tyler Kidd knew that too.

Curious about anything else that may have happened
last night, she searched his name on social media. She pursed her
lips. Unfortunately there he was, at the bar with women hanging all
over him. It wasn’t last night, but the previous night, probably
right after he was told he wasn’t going to play.

Does he ever stop
? No wonder Melanie needed an
assistant; simply covering Tyler’s ass was a full time job! She
scrolled through the posts. Luckily there was only one photo, but
it had been posted over and over again.

She was able to get most of them taken down, and the
ones that remained changed the titles to “Kidd suffering from
frustration—is he breaking under the pressure?” Well, it wasn’t
ideal, but it was better than him whoring himself around the
bars.

She did her best to counteract whatever negativity
those posts caused Tyler, but he was acting like a man-whore. How
was anyone supposed to fix that? Maybe they could just sit him down
and tell him to grow up and stop all the stupid shit.
Maybe? No,
probably not
.

Seeing those girls hanging on him brought on a weird
feeling, something she wasn’t used to. A tight feeling knotted in
her stomach, her face filled with warmth, and she was just
aggravated.

Of course he was attractive. He was Tyler Kidd; every
girl thought he was attractive. Sure, she had his jersey at home
hanging in her closet, but so did every other girl. He was a pig,
and that wasn’t her type.

Taking a breath, she pushed her hair out of her face,
pulled it into a pony tail, and sat back in her chair. Had she done
enough to make him look good? Reading over her posts, she decided
it was as good as it was going to get. And since everyone knew he
was the newest hockey bad boy, she could leave some of that
naughtiness out there. Even if she didn’t like it. Something told
her that he didn’t care either way. Because if he did, wouldn’t he
stop being such an ass?

She usually didn’t hear anything from Melanie’s
office, the walls were too thick, but she was suddenly aware of
raised voices in the room next door. Tyler was in there. The voices
were muffled, but hard to miss.

“
Melanie, I’m not a child. You
don’t have to scold me or tell me how I’m supposed to
act.”

“
I wish I didn’t have to tell you
how to act. Then you wouldn’t be sitting here right now! Tyler it’s
time to grow up!”

“
Look, I don’t have to take this
I’m—”

“
Yes, I know, blah, blah, blah.
You’re
Tyler fucking Kidd
. Everyone knows you’re
Tyler
Kidd
. Especially the girls you think are going home with you
for companionship. Newsflash—they aren’t. They’re going home with
you so they can say that they slept with
the
Tyler Kidd. Is
that how you want to spend your days? With girls that don’t care
about anything but your name?”

“
By the end of the night they care
about more than that.”

“
No Ty, they don’t! Don’t you get
that? I know you’re just trying to mask the hurt that Gia caused
you. Yes, I said her name. Deal with it. But you can’t just mask
your feelings forever. She’s married to Patrick; she’s not coming
back. You need to stop picking fights with Patrick and get over
yourself.”

“
Me? Stop picking fights with
fucking Patrick? Mel, he ruined my life! You don’t do that to a
teammate! Every time he looks at me all I see is my life that he
ripped to pieces, and I’m not supposed to want to beat the shit out
of him?”

He was so loud at that point Paige could hear him as
if he were in her office, no longer muffled through the wall. She
felt bad listening, but it wasn’t like she had a choice.
Was he
always like this?

“
Lower your voice Ty. Maybe you’re
right about that. You don’t do that to a teammate, but it happened.
Things happen, even when you don’t like it.”

Their conversation must’ve moved to the hallway and
was clearer now.

“
Ty, you know I only get upset
because I care about you and I want you to be happy. You’ve moved
on from her, but not in healthy ways. Trust me when I say there’s a
girl out there who’s going to be exactly what you want.”

“
Mel, I really don’t think there
is. I screwed everything up when I left her here and went away for
training. I could’ve stayed or I could’ve taken her with me, but I
didn’t do either, and she suffered for my choices, my hockey
choices.”

“
You know that’s not true, Ty. I’m
not saying you shouldn’t learn from what happened. But you know the
saying, if you set it free and it doesn’t come back, it was never
yours in the first place. You and Gia weren’t meant to be. But what
you’re doing now isn’t going to find you the right
girl.”

“
You’re not listening, Mel. I’m not
looking for anyone else. I tried that and it didn’t work out so
well. I don’t want to get involved again, and neither do these
girls. They want me for a night because I play hockey, so I just
give them what they want. My body.”

“
Just promise me you’ll keep your
eyes open. She’s out there Ty, don’t miss her.”

The conversation ended. So it was true what Melanie
had said about his ex being the cause of Tyler’s messed up
attitude. Somehow it meant more to hear it from him. Her heart
pinched at the hurt in his voice.

“
Hey.” Melanie opened her office
door. “Sorry, I know you heard most of that. He just makes me so
mad sometimes, doing this to himself. He wasn’t always like
this.”

“
It’s okay.”

“
I don’t know what I was thinking,
that maybe if I yelled at him loud enough he would snap out of it?”
She shrugged and laughed. “I don’t normally yell at the players,
but he makes me just want to shake him.”

“
I gathered that. You sounded more
like a big sister in there.”

“
I kind of feel like that
sometimes.” Melanie shook her head.

“
Does that happen a lot?” Paige
questioned. “You know, shouting match with Tyler?”

“
Oh no, hardly ever. But lately
he’s been especially difficult and someone really needs to get
through to him. With any luck I did.”

She hoped she never had to do that, put Tyler Kidd in
his place. Not for her.

“
Hey, Earth to Paige. You still
with me? Don’t worry about it. If Ty ever needs to be yelled at,
just send him my way. You keep working your magic on social media
and we’ll make a great team.”

Paige knew this job wasn’t going to be easy, but she
hadn’t realized the bond Melanie had with the players. Her heart
started to beat faster and her stomach fluttered. Hopefully her
first encounter with Tyler would be a lot less drama than what she
just heard.

CHAPTER 7

Unfortunately, nothing was going to go to plan. A few
days later, Paige was faced with another Tyler Kidd social media
circus. This time, he was involved in a fist fight at Mannie’s Bar.
From what she could tell, it wasn’t actually his fault, but she had
to do genuine damage control. Every post made it look like he was
drunk and started a fight, but the police report told different.
Yes, the police were involved this time. Apparently some guy
accused Tyler of sleeping with his girl months ago. Tyler denied it
and did his best to ignore the guy. Marco said that the guy
wouldn’t leave Tyler alone. He knocked Ty’s hat onto the floor,
spilled his beer on him, then shoved him. Then the guy put his
hands on him, and Tyler had stood to defend himself but the guy
took a cheap shot. Thankfully he was drunk and slow and missed
Tyler, but chaos ensued.

When a beer bottle was broken Marco called the cops
because his security couldn’t handle the crowd that joined in.
Tyler was solely defending himself, and that’s what Paige needed to
convey to the cyber world. It should’ve been easy; he was just
defending himself. But all the public saw was that the cops were
called. When in fact they were called to protect Tyler, not because
of Tyler.

She did her best to explain that. Her fingers did the
talking, flying up and down the keyboard, writing a press release
for Coach to give later in the day, and stopping all rumors on
social media.

Melanie stopped by her office first thing, not her
usually bubbly self. Her face looked droopy and tired and there was
no hop in her step.

“
Hey, good morning. You
okay?”

Melanie pushed her hair out of her face and managed a
half smile. “Yes, I’m fine. Have you taken care of the Tyler
situation?”

“
Yes. I just emailed Coach Walker
his copy for the press conference later this morning. Is there
anything else I can help out with?” She had never seen Melanie this
off her game before. Something wasn’t right.

Melanie nodded. “Just glance through the media
requests for the presser, and only approve the usual folks. I’ve
set up a meeting with Tyler this morning to get his take on things
and see what I can do to help him stay out of this kind of trouble.
He’s giving himself a bad name and it needs to stop. Unfortunately
our job is to try to get him to understand that.”