Spite Crush (Rock Hard #2)

Chapter Two

~Zak Dempsey~

“Nice fucking W boys!” Coach Sutherland said as we settled into the locker room after the game. “Dempsey, pulling the game winning goal after five penalties. I’d like to congratulate you, but I’d really rather just punch you.”

“Hey!” I complained. “Two of those penalties were bullshit.”

Actually they weren’t, and everyone knew it. But still, I got the game winning goal so I earned the fucking praise.

“Well, tell it to the press,” Sutherland said. “Shower and change, they’re waiting for you.”

“Come on,” I whined. “I don’t want to do press tonight. You do it.”

“They don’t want me,” Sutherland said. “They never want me.”

“You get better ratings,” Josh reminded me as he threw his balled-up tarp in my face. “Team Enforcer. Captain with a mouth like a long hauler. ”

I thew his jersey back at him as I rolled my eyes.

“Plus they’re going to want to know about your little spat with the guy in the stands,” Leo added.

“Yeah, who the fuck was that guy?” I asked. “The camera kept panning to him like he was famous or something.”

“No clue,” Josh answered with a shrug, but the smirk on his face told me that he did in fact know and just wasn’t going to tell me. “Go get cleaned up. ”

Ugh, now I really didn’t want to do this. If I’d flipped off some social media brat on live television, it was going to be all the press wanted to talk about. At some point, I was probably going to have to learn to control my attitude.

But since I’d just scored the goal that broke the Inferno’s four game losing streak, that day wasn’t going to be today.

****

The first eighteen minutes of the press conference went great. Everyone in attendance kept the questions related to the game and I really believed I was going to get out of that room without anything else coming up.

“Are you and Kellen Fox friends?”

“Who?” I felt my brow furrow as I raked my gaze over the group of reporters, looking for the woman who’d asked the question and wondering what the hell she was talking about.

“Kellen Fox,” Naomi Rose repeated, a smile forming on her lips. “ The guy you flipped off in the stands.”

“Actually I’ve never heard of him,” I admitted. “Who is he?”

“He’s the lead singer of HSF.”

I shrugged, still having no idea what she was talking about.

“They’re a massively famous rock band,” she clarified. “They’re actually playing here tomorrow night.”

“Oh, well, that’s probably why he was here then,” I answered. I’d actually expected to be told he was a model or something. But rock star made sense, too. The artfully mussed blond hair, the ridiculous amount of tats on his neck and arms, the ego to think a bunch of hockey fans were cheering for him just because he was sitting there. Yeah, that all tracked. “No, I don’t know him. I was just having a little fun. Killing time in the box, you know how it is.”

I pushed away from the table and stood up, waving as I headed back toward the locker room, eager to get away from the reporters and end the press conference. Unfortunately, Naomi wasn’t done with me .

“Zak,” she called, following me into the hallway.

“You know, you’re not allowed back here,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

“I’m the lead reporter for Hockey Tonight,” she reminded me with a dazzling smile. “Tell me again where I am and am not allowed to be.”

“What do you want, Naomi?”

“I want to know what the deal is with you and Kellen Fox. ”

“I told you, there is no deal. I have no idea who he is. But I’ll tell you—”

“On the record?” she clarified.

“Sure.” That was probably a mistake but I didn’t care. “People come to hockey games to watch hockey. Not to celebrity gossip-watch the stands. So if rock stars or whatever want to come to the games, great. But have some fucking respect for the game and stop pulling the attention. It’s embarrassing. ”

“That’s what you want to say?” she said, laughing softly. “Oh, Dempsey. You never disappoint.”

“Neither do you.”

“We should get a drink some time,” she said, sliding her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, the motion causing her chest to thrust out toward me. “I could be a good luck charm for you.”

Well, shit. See, this was what happened when people got too friendly with the fucking press. Naomi Rose was one of the most recognizable people associated with hockey. She was like Don Cherry with boobs. And that got her access to everything and everywhere she wanted. And if the rumors were true, everyone she wanted as well.

“That’s sweet of you,” I told her. “But we just snapped a losing streak so I think we’re okay.”

“Your loss,” she answered with a shrug. “Hell, maybe Kellen Fox is your good luck charm.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” It came out a little sharper than I’d intended, but I didn’t appreciate the insinuation .

I’d kept my sexuality a very closely guarded secret from almost everyone and I didn’t need Naomi spreading shit around just because I turned her down for a drink. Again.

Granted, things were looking better every day for gay guys in the sports world, but I wasn’t looking to get outed and find out for myself just yet. It was easier to just keep my sex life, or lack thereof, to myself completely.

“Easy, Zak,” she said softly. “I just meant that he shows up and you guys finally win again. Why…you got something you want to tell me?”

“The list of things I want to tell you is so microscopic that you wouldn’t be able to find it with both hands and a magnifying glass,” I promised her.

“Your hostility is kind of hot,” she said, grinning at me. “Take your shirt off.”

“You spend way too much time around players,” I told her, chuckling softly as I allowed the tension to ease from my shoulders. She was just poking at me, which was her job and I couldn’t fault her for it.

We weren’t exactly friends, but we’d always been friendly. She’d been with Hockey Tonight since I’d started my pro career with the Inferno, so we’d sort of grown up together in arenas over the years.

She flirted with me, I shot her down, and she believed it was because I valued our working relationship too much to ruin it with dating. Which worked for me.

Also, Josh was head over heels for her. And lately she’d been showing interest in him as well. So while she might pretend to come on to me, she’d probably run for the hills if I offered to take her up on it.

Which was something to consider…later.

“That’s what my mom says, too,” she agreed. “See you in Cleveland, Dempsey.”

“Later, Naomi.”

I headed toward the exit feeling much better than I had when my conversation with her had started. The press conference seemed to have gone okay, and I’d left it lighthearted with the biggest reporter in the game, like I always did.

Plus, I’d snapped our losing streak. We were only a few weeks out from playoff season, and while we were still in the running, every loss had felt like a nail in the team’s coffin. So I was still riding pretty high after getting that last goal. Which helped to put the blond, tatted bombshell in the back of my mind again so I could just focus on the fact that all in all, it had been a very successful night.