When Tom woke up, he knew Aurora was gone. He sighed. He didn't like to admit that waking up without her bothered him, but it did. And he was tired of pretending otherwise.

He sat up in bed, rubbing an eye with the back of his hand. His nose twitched and he grunted, trying not to let out too much of a cry and handle it like a weak bitch. Instead, he forced himself to stand and pad into the bathroom. He needed to shower. He needed to wake himself up.

The shower lasted fifteen minutes. His nose had cleared up and it was easier for him to breathe, though his shower consisted of a steady stream of pink water thanks to the blood that still came out of his mouth. He wrapped a towel around his waist and brushed his teeth, debating whether or not to head to breakfast, when there was an insistent knock on his door.

Tom frowned. That couldn't have been Aurora, could it? He stepped to the door and glanced out through the peephole.

Michael.

And he did not look happy.

Too many thoughts raced through Tom's mind as he stepped back from the peephole. Did Michael know about him and Aurora? Did something happen to Aurora and that was why she left this morning without saying goodbye? Was Michael just pissed at him for some reason Tom either didn't remember or even know about?

Tom opened the door and stood back so Michael could come in and he did, without waiting for an invitation.

"What the hell were you thinking?" he asked as Tom shut the door.

"I'm not sure I know what you mean," Tom said slowly.

Michael scoffed. "Of course not," he muttered. "You fuck up all the time; you wouldn't be able to keep track of which time I'm talking about. You're a piece of work, you know that?"

"You like to remind me every day," Tom said, throwing his arms out to emphasize his sarcasm. "How can I forget?"

"Why would you do that to Edward Reno?" Michael asked. He stopped pacing up and down the suite and opted to remain just in front of Tom's bed. "He can't open his left eye, Tom. What in the hell were you thinking?" Before Tom could even reply, he threw his hands up. "You weren't. You weren't thinking—that's what it was, wasn't it? Maybe you had one too many because you can't fucking control yourself. Even as a grown man, you cannot control yourself. You realize this could be the very thing that gets us removed from being considered for this team, right?"

"Yeah, maybe so."

"What? You don't give a shit?" Michael let out a biting laugh. "Why am I not surprised? You were all for Orange County and now, you're ready to move on because another prospect pissed you off. Typical Tom Tucker. You run away when things get hard."

"That's not what happened at all!"

"Then please, enlighten me." Michael crossed his arms over his chest. "What the hell happened? Why did you feel like you needed to go out of your way and get into a fight with Eddie Reno?"

"He grabbed Aurora's ass, that's why," Tom said.

Michael shook his head, confused. "Aurora?" he asked. "What was she doing there in the first place?"

"That's your response?" Tom asked, throwing his arms out. "I just tell you one of your employees has been sexually harassed by someone who may or may not be your teammate and you're questioning why she was there in the first place?"

"Do not turn this around on me," Michael said. He sat down on the edge of the bed and placed his hands on his knees. "This isn't my fault."

"I never said it was," Tom pointed out, "but it seems like you're implying it's Aurora's."

"My question still stands," Michael said. "What was she doing there in the first place? Was she flirting with Eddie Reno?"

Tom paused. He could not believe his brother just asked a question like that. Didn't he know Aurora at all? She had been with them for three years. Aurora didn't date hockey players. At least, not until now.

Granted, were they dating? Were they just friends who liked to sleep with each other? Was last night a one-time thing? God, that was the last thing he wanted. He wanted to be with her. He wanted to always be around her. He wasn't sure how to label his feelings, but when it came to Aurora, he would do anything for her, even beat up a potential teammate.

"You know Aurora doesn't flirt," Tom said. "You know this."

"Don't tell me that." Michael stood up and started to walk away from him. "Don't tell me what I do and don't know. I wasn't there. How would I know?"

"She came in looking for you, actually," Tom pointed out. "She said she needed a response from you."

"Yeah, well, she didn't call me."

"Why did you have her be a designated driver in the first place?" Tom asked. "That's not her job. We could have Ubered. We didn't need her to drive us around. I'm sure she would have rather been reading her romance novels in bed than driving around with a bunch of drunk assholes."

"Wait, why do you even care?" Michael turned around and met Tom's eyes. "Why are you even concerned about what I do with my personal assistant? Why is that your concern?"

"I just…" Tom faltered. Shit. How was he supposed to answer this question? He cleared his throat, trying to buy time, but it wasn't working.

"Please." Michael rolled his eyes. "You want to fuck her, don't you? Because she refuses to give you the time of day, you want her. So fucking typical."

"Stop saying things are typical when they're not," Tom roared. He hadn't meant to lose it on his brother but that was the last straw. Everyone had an opinion about him and his behavior. Everyone wanted to tell him how to behave, how to act, what to say, what to do. But no one had endured what he had endured. No one could tell him what to do with his life, with the choices he made. Maybe they had before, maybe he let people make choices and tagged along because he didn't think he was worthy of having a voice.

That ended now.

"You think you know everything because you're a better hockey player than I am," he continued. "And yeah, maybe you have more skill than I do, but you can't receive a pass to save your life. I soften my passes to make it easy for you to score. You wouldn't be where you are without me."

"I never doubted that," Michael insisted.

"Really?" Tom crossed his arms over his chest. "Because you seem to think that you get to make the decision of where we go for both of us. You haven't even asked me what I think about Orange County."

"Because I already know what you're going to say. The women are beautiful. The sun is always shining. There is a sense of luxury here. I get it. And these aren't the wrong things to look at, but—"

"Wait, are you blind?" Tom asked. "I attended the same morning skates as you did. I was there. I have opinions on the hockey here just as you do. The problem is, you don't even ask. You don't even ask me what I think. You just assume I'm going to do what you tell me to do because that's what I've always done. But I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to make the decision on my own."

"How can you do that?" Michael went over to fiddle with the covers of his bed. He was obsessive about making his bed each morning. Apparently, he didn't like the way the maids did it. "Newport wants both of us."

"Maybe," Tom said. "But I want to stay here."

"That's not going to happen." He picked his eyes up from the orange cover so they locked with Tom's. "I've been in contact with the GM from Arizona. He wants us there a day early."

"I don't want to go to Arizona," Tom said.

"How can you know what you want if you've never been there?" Michael asked.

"And how can you know you don't want to be here when you don't even give it a chance?" Tom asked. "Michael, ever since we got here, you've been ready to go to Arizona. Stop pretending you were even going to give Newport a fair shot. You're only here because of me."

"I thought I didn't let you make decisions," Michael said flatly. "You can't have it both ways."

"You're humoring me by being here," Tom pointed out. "You're not here because I get to decide on Newport."

"Tom, I don't know what else to tell you," Michael said.

"Will you give me time?" Tom asked.

"Time for what?"

"Time to talk to Seraphina Hanson," Tom said. "Maybe…" He started to pace. "Maybe she'd be okay with signing me. Just me."

"Tom."

Tom spun around to glare at his brother. There it was. That pity. The one syllable. His name, laced with pity, like Tom was some pathetic idiot who didn't understand something as basic as the alphabet.

"No," he said, lifting up a finger. "You don't get to feel sorry for me. Can you honestly say that you know she wouldn't?"

"It's not that," Michael said. He took a step closer, tilting his head to the side. Tom knew that look. He had seen it plenty of times on his brother's face. It was the look Michael got when he was trying to figure out how to explain something to him using the least amount of small words. "You really think I'm an idiot, don't you? You really think that I can't be on my own or make decisions on my own."

"What happened the first couple of days out here?" Michael asked. "You lost your phone and your wallet. You wanted to go to Disneyland like we were children. Why waste an entire day at a theme park when you could have been bonding with the team?"

"Oh, was that what you were doing?" Tom asked. He didn't bother to hide the bitterness from his tone if he tried. "You weren’t bonding. Last I heard, you never left your room that day. What were you doing?"

"I was contacting Arizona, Colorado. They all want to see us."

"Why would you be contacting them when we already made arrangements?" Tom asked. "You never gave Newport a chance, which I don't understand because Newport just won the Stanley Cup. Why wouldn't you want to be with the best team?"

"Because you're not good enough," Michael snapped. There was a flash of regret in his pale green eyes before it hardened into emerald. "Zachary Ryan is first line center. James Negan is second line center. Going into next season, that isn't going to change unless one of them gets injured. Possible, but not likely. Dimitri Petrov still hasn't figured out if he's going to retire or not, which means he could be third line center. Which would make you a fourth liner, playing with the likes of Xander Vane."

"So?" Tom asked. "I would be grateful if they put me anywhere on the team. I would gladly play fourth line if that's what Cherney thought was best."

"What about what I think?" Michael asked. "I'm not a fourth liner. I'm not even a third liner. At least in Arizona, we can be big fish. They can build a team around us."

"That's not what I want," Tom said. "I want to play with the best so I can get better. I don't want to be the best. I want Newport."

"I don't," Michael said.

"So what does that mean for us?" Tom wanted to know.

Michael shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you, baby brother," he said.