Mr. Jernigan put his hand around her waist and drew her in against his side, protectively, not that I had any intention of doing anything worse than cursing in front of her. “If it’s all right with you boys, we’d like to say a prayer over you while we’ve got you all together.”
A few of the guys groaned and mumbled quietly to themselves. Nate Cochran quickly bowed his head and silently prayed along with the man, but there wasn’t much the guys who’d prefer to keep their prayers to themselves could do but let the man do as he would.
The preacher kept it short and sweet, at least, asking God to watch over and protect us all, and a bunch of other bullshit. Whatever. He finished, and they left the locker room so we could get on with closing out our season.
Spurs took a few minutes to go over our game plan for the day. We were playing the Blues tonight, who needed to win in regulation in order to clinch the top seed in the Central Division and guarantee themselves home ice advantage throughout the playoffs. We wanted to prevent that from happening. That was our goal for the night.
Finally, we headed out to the ice and went through the singing of the national anthem and all of the other pregame rituals.
The Blues came out with a relentless forecheck, which wasn’t a surprise. Their captain, David Backes, was playing like a beast, hitting every guy in our home turquoise-and-terra-cotta uniforms he could and crashing Hunter’s crease at every possible opportunity.
A little over halfway through the first period, Backes lined up Gustav Gunnarsson and boarded him. Zee immediately went over to drop his gloves with Backes, but the refs stopped him before he could. At least they sent Backes off for a boarding minor, though, putting us on the power play.
Goose skated off the ice holding his shoulder funny. The trainers took a quick look at him and hurried him down the tunnel to evaluate his injury.
“Dima, get out there and plant your ass in front of the net,” Spurs told me. “Look for a tip-in.”
I didn’t often get a chance to take the ice on the power play these days, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to pass it up. I skated out with Zee and Drew, filling in for Goose on the top power play unit.
Zee won the face-off, and we all skated into position. I did what my coach told me to do—I parked myself in front of the crease, not budging no matter how many times the Blues’ goaltender whacked me in the backs of the knees and their defensemen cross-checked me in the kidneys to get me to move. They weren’t as stubborn as I was.
The rest of our guys passed the puck around, trying to draw the Blues’ penalty killers out of position so we could get a good shot off. Finally, it all came together.
Razor shot the puck from the point. I got my stick on it just enough to tip it.
The goaltender scrambled and somehow blocked it with his left pad.
Drew raced in to gobble up the rebound, snapping off a wrist shot that hit the goalie right in the belly. It fell to the ice right in front of me, and I whacked at it a couple of times, to no avail. Then it was a full-on goal-mouth scramble, with every guy on the ice crashing in on the crease. We were trying to poke the puck in; they were trying to clear it out. Sticks and skates and bodies went flying.
The whistle finally blew as the refs lost sight of the puck.
But then something else was flying.
Blood.
I looked over and saw Drew holding a hand to his neck, which was gushing. Must have been a skate blade.
I froze. Panicked. Didn’t know what to do.
“Fuck,” Zee shouted. He tossed off his gloves, bent over Drew, and tried to cover the gaping wound.
“No.” Drew scrambled away as well as he could, with a wild look in his eye. “Seriously, Zee. Don’t touch me right now.”
“I’m not going to sit here and let you fucking bleed to death,” Zee said, following him. “Someone get the fucking trainers over here.”
I started to do that, glad to have some direction, when Drew shouted, “I said don’t touch me. I’m HIV positive,” right as Zee finally got his hand on the gash in Drew’s neck.
His blood kept spurting up through Zee’s fingers, staining everything in sight.
A few of the Blues players raced to the benches to help the trainers and EMTs out. They quickly got Drew loaded onto a gurney, with Zee still holding the wound.
Drew lost consciousness as they carted him off the ice, leaving a trail of blood behind.
Catherine Gayle is a USA Today bestselling author of Regency-set historical romance and contemporary hockey romance. She’s a transplanted Texan living in North Carolina with two extremely spoiled felines. In her spare time, she watches way too much hockey and reality TV, plans fun things to do for the Nephew Monster’s next visit, and performs experiments in the kitchen which are rarely toxic.
If you enjoyed this book and want to know when more like it will be available, be sure to sign up for Catherine’s mailing list. You can find out more on her website, at The Sin Bin, at Hockey Romance, at Facebook, on Twitter, and at Goodreads. If you want to see some of her cats’ antics and possibly the occasional video update from Catherine, visit her YouTube account.
GHOST DANCE is Book 3 in the Tulsa Thunderbirds hockey romance series, a spin-off from USA Today bestselling author Catherine Gayle’s Portland Storm series.
BURY THE HATCHET
SMOKE SIGNALS
GHOST DANCE
RITES OF PASSAGE
RITES OF PASSAGE will release on November 10, 2016.
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Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) Page 27
