[Tulsa Thunderbirds 01.0] Bury the Hatchet

by Catherine Gayle

  Dmitri Nazarenko took the seat on my other side, flexing his right hand until I glanced down at it to find another tattoo, this one some Russian phrase in Cyrillic letters, so I didn’t know what it meant. The boys all called him Dima. He was a hotshot left wing the T-Birds had picked up from the Kings. He’d always had my number, so in a way it was good that he’d be a teammate now instead of an opponent. Still, his skill was the only thing he had going for him as far as I was concerned. He’d won the Cup with LA a few years back, and he’d gotten drunk and crashed his car in the aftermath, ending his best friend’s career. I didn’t like the guy on principle based on that alone, and I wasn’t inclined to give him the chance to win me over. Not only was he covered in tattoos but he had a piercing in his nose, and his hair was even longer than mine. His beard put his hair to shame. He never said much, so at least he had that going for him. He just ducked his head and went about his business. I could admire that, even if I didn’t have an ounce of respect for him otherwise.

  Beyond those three and Razor, there were several older guys who’d been around the league a long time: Franz Ackerman, Slava Zherdev, Elvis Jansons, Jason Stewart… I knew of them more than I knew them. They were all on the wrong side of their careers, though, much like Zee. They’d been around, and maybe at one point in time, they’d been effective NHL players. These days? If not for expansion, they would all likely be playing in Europe or else they’d be hanging up their skates for good. They couldn’t really hack it at this level anymore.

  And there were a lot of younger guys I didn’t know at all. These guys seemed to think they were the bomb, that they should make the cut no matter what, but what they really needed was to go back down and play a few more years in the minors. Some of them would end up there. Others would be my teammates. Probably too damned many of them would be, actually.

  We were going to be absolutely awful this year. Not just awful. Disgustingly bad.

  The hockey media always said that the best way for a good goalie to improve was to play in front of a bad team. I supposed I should look at things through that lens, but it was a hell of a lot easier said than done. I’d already paid my dues. I was one of the best fucking goalies playing in the best league in the world. I should be competing for the Cup, not backstopping the team that was sure to finish at the bottom of the standings when it was all said and done.

  Yes, I was bitter. So fucking sue me.

  The guys finally all settled in, and talk died off. Gary nodded, shoving his hands in the pockets of his suit pants. “Right. So we play our first exhibition game here tomorrow against Dallas. If you’re in the lineup, remember that we’re all watching, evaluating. We’re trying to narrow down who will be starting the season here in Tulsa and who’s heading back down to the AHL or your developmental team. Now remember, just because you get cut, don’t think of that as the end. There will be call-ups. There will be injuries. Some guys won’t pan out. You might still get your chance, and if not this year, then maybe next year. But we’re always keeping an eye on your development so we can make the best decisions about not only your present but also your future.”

  Paying attention was not my forte on a good day, and I was already feeling pissed because I’d found yet another “news” article in the Tulsa media this morning focusing on Kade and all of his drug issues instead of how I’d been all over Tallie while we were out last night—further proving that our efforts weren’t doing even the slightest bit of good. Instead of getting people to forgive the two of us for our relatively minor transgressions, they were painting us in an even worse light. It was why I’d insisted we had to put Kade in treatment regardless of his opinion on the matter and whether Mom was on board or not.

  Add the fact that I’d heard the same speech, or some variation of it, every year I’d been playing hockey, to all the shit running through my head about my deadbeat brother, and chances of me catching half of what Gary said were just about nil. It all started to blur together after a while.

  “You think he’s going to name the captain today?” Razor whispered next to me. Only he didn’t do a very good job of whispering. “They’ve got to fucking know who it’ll be by now. They could put the C on someone before the first preseason game.”

  “Not like it’s going to be you and your sorry ass,” I replied. Definitely too loudly. A few guys in front of us whipped their heads around and snorted in laughter.

  “Fuck you, Hunter,” Razor said, but he was grinning. The guy was an ass, but he was a likeable ass. Hell, he might be the only guy in this room that I hadn’t thought about throat-punching for some reason or another in the last few days, so that was definitely saying something for him.

  I winked in his direction. “No, thanks, but it’s a hell of an offer, I’m sure. That’s what my wife’s for.” Not that she wanted me in her bed, but damn if I was going to reveal that to any of the guys. As far as they knew, everything that had been said in public was the truth. We’d met at a function, fallen head-over-heels in love, married right away, and couldn’t keep our fucking hands off each other. Never mind the fact that my balls were now so blue they were about to dry up and fall off.

  Gary spoke louder, probably because half the guys were paying attention to me and Razor instead of him. “We’ve got an Ice Breaker on Thursday afternoon at the Woodland Hills mall. This is your first opportunity to represent the Tulsa Thunderbirds organization within the community, so I expect everyone to be there ready to make an impression.” His eyes fell on me, so I straightened up and tried to focus better. “Remember, this is all new to the people of Oklahoma. Things here aren’t like they were wherever you grew up. A few of them might have been to some minor league games in the past, but likely not many. So unless they grew up somewhere else where hockey was more prevalent, they don’t get it. And we want them to get it. We want to embrace Tulsa, and we want Tulsa to embrace us. Bring your families with you to the mall if you want, and be ready to have a good time.”

  Bring your families with you to the mall if you want. That was the part I knew he’d meant specifically for me, and I also caught on to the fact that—for me—it wasn’t an if you want sort of deal. It was a direct order. I needed to bring Tallie with me because they wanted us to perform for the cameras.

  I nodded, holding Gary’s gaze so he’d know I’d gotten the memo.

  “All right. That’s all I wanted to say to you boys right now,” Gary said. “I’m going to turn it over to Spurs, because he’s got an announcement to make.”

  Spurs was what everyone called the Thunderbirds’ head coach, Doug Spurrier. He’d been a successful head coach at every lower level of the game, but he had zero experience in the NHL. The guy had never even played a game at this level, let alone coached in any capacity. He’d brought in the guy who’d been by his side as his assistant for the last fifteen years, but Kevin “Baby Face” Young didn’t have a lick of NHL experience, either. To help them out, Tim Harvey would be the other assistant. Harv had been a defenseman in the league for about a dozen years, and he’d been an assistant coach for a number of teams for another decade beyond that. I was of the opinion that Harv ought to be the head coach and maybe the other two should back him up, but I wasn’t the one being paid to make these decisions.

  What little hair Spurs had was already a whitish-gray, despite the fact that he was barely fifty. At least he hadn’t resorted to attempting a comb-over, letting his bald head shine in the unforgiving lights in the locker room. Dressed in a Thunderbirds tracksuit, he took center stage and nodded, looking around the room until he’d caught the eye of just about everyone present.

  “Right,” he said. He always spoke in a no-nonsense manner, cutting straight to the chase. “Time to announce the captain and assistant captains for the upcoming season.”

  “Told you,” Razor whispered next to me.

  “Still won’t be you,” I replied.

  Baby Face and Harv headed out to stand next to Spurs. Harv passed a jersey into Spurs’s hands. The oth
er two each held one, as well.

  “Zee, why don’t you come on up here?” Spurs suggested. “Slava? Drew? You, too.”

  The three guys he’d named headed up to join them. They unveiled the jerseys. Zee had the C, and Slava and Drew both got the A’s. No huge surprises there, as far as I was concerned. Like him or not, Zee was made to be a captain. Slava might not have a lot left in the tank, but he was a decent leader. Drew Nash was one of the younger guys in the room, but I had no doubt they wanted to groom him to become the captain sometime in the next few years. My guess was Zee was just a placeholder, someone who could do the job while they made sure Drew was ready.

  The guys broke out into applause, several of them shouting congratulations with varying degrees of profanity mixed in. “Could’ve at least given me a fucking A,” Razor muttered.

  This time, Dima snorted. Okay, so maybe the guy would end up growing on me. That remained to be seen.

  Once the coaches were finished, I assumed we were done for the day and would be released to clean up and go home. I assumed wrong.

  The coaches cleared out of the way, and none other than Sharon Jernigan walked up.

  “Fucking hell,” I muttered.

  “Who’s that?” Razor asked me.

  “Owner’s wife.”

  He slumped down in his seat like a kid who didn’t want to get called on in class. “Fucking hell’s right.”

  Her helmet hair looked even bigger than the last time I’d seen her, at the wedding. Her smile was as forced as ever. “Welcome to Tulsa and the Thunderbirds organization,” she said, her thick drawl accented by the all-too-familiar waving arms. “Tom and I want to be sure y’all feel like a part of the family.”

  I knew she meant her church family, even if the rest of the guys didn’t. Yet. They’d figure it out soon enough.

  With that, I decided it was as good a time as any for me to tune out again. I leaned back, crossing my arms and my ankles, doing my best to relax without quite falling asleep. I was doing a damn good job of it, too, until Razor elbowed me in the ribs.

  I hissed in a breath, rubbing the spot he’d targeted. “What the fuck was that for?”

  “She can’t fucking do that, can she?”

  “Do what?” Maybe I should have paid at least some attention while she was talking.

  “Put a fucking swear jar in the room. She says the money’s going into the Thunderbirds Foundation fund. That’s got to be against some rule in the CBA or something. Don’t you think?”

  A swear jar? I’d known since the first time I’d met her that she was going to have a rude awakening being around hockey players, considering how she’d gotten her panties in a twist over the language I’d used that first day, but this was beyond ridiculous.

  Throughout the room, guys were shifting in their seats and muttering beneath their breath, talking to one another.

  “I don’t have a clue,” I said quietly. “But if she can, we’re all going to be fucking broke.”

  He gave me a thorough once-over, a single brow raised. “Good thing you’re paid more than you’re worth.”

  “Look who’s talking,” I shot back. He was making the kind of bank a top pairing defenseman would normally earn, but on any other team, he wouldn’t be placed any higher than the third or fourth D on the team. That was probably why the Sabres had left him available in the expansion draft, come to think of it. They didn’t want to pay him that much anymore, and they knew the T-Birds would need to add some salary to meet the cap floor.

  We were still debating who was being overpaid the most when Dima stood up and walked to his stall. My arguments dropped off. I couldn’t help but watch him, and apparently I wasn’t alone. At least half the guys in the room were staring in the same direction.

  Dima dug his wallet out of his jeans pocket. He pulled out a wad of bills and headed for Mrs. Jernigan, pressing them into her hand. “For first fucking month,” he said, his Russian accent thick even if his English was only slightly broken.

  She gaped at him as he returned to his seat next to me. “But you’re supposed to stop swearing,” she said in a daze.

  I couldn’t help it. I chuckled.

  The next thing I knew, every guy in the room got up and followed Dima’s example, me included. The owner’s wife could do nothing but hold out her hand and collect the bills she was handed.

  I guess she still had a thing or two to learn about being around hockey players.

  THE GARAGE DOOR was already opening, and I had yet to come up with a plan as to what I would—or wouldn’t—say to Hunter. He was home, and I was still nuttier than a five-pound fruitcake following my afternoon visit with Kade.

  Trying to sort out my thoughts and keep my emotions on an even keel, I slipped on my oven mitts and removed the aluminum takeout containers from the oven. Then I placed them on trivets so they wouldn’t burn his brand-spanking-new countertops. I was taking out some dinner plates from the cabinet overhead when he came in.

  He stopped on the other side of the bar, dropping his keys there and raising a brow in question. “I guess we’re staying in tonight, then.”

  “I didn’t feel like going out. I need a break.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I’m not upset by the idea. I’d actually like having a night in, too.”

  Had I bitten off the words or something? I must not have done a very good job of calming myself down before he’d come in.

  What I’d said wasn’t the whole truth, but it was one hundred percent true, what there was of it. I couldn’t keep up this charade we were putting on for the world every time I turned around. All the nights we’d spent out groping each other in public had long since started taking a toll on me in countless ways.

  But the bigger issue right now was Kade. Or maybe it was all the things Kade had revealed to me about Hunter.

  I wasn’t even sure I could put my finger on what, exactly, was bothering me so badly at the moment. I just knew I couldn’t handle a night out acting like Hunter could possibly be in love with me. Not now that I knew about Carrie.

  Kade had called them fuck buddies, but I doubted that was entirely accurate. The better explanation, as far as I could see, was that Hunter was in love with her. It would explain a lot, actually—why he wouldn’t take things further with me and why he was so determined to keep me separate from the important things in his life, like his family and the team he was playing for. It could explain everything I’d had such a difficult time understanding in the last few weeks.

  The way that Kade had laid it out for me was obviously meant to hurt. I got that. He might have thought that I was getting too close—I had been pushing him to reveal things that Hunter had been keeping under wraps—and so he’d struck back at me with deadly accurate aim. Just when I’d started to realize I might be falling for Hunter, his brother had made it clear Hunter would never be able to return those feelings.

  Yeah, I definitely needed a night or two of staying in, away from all the media and the people who would gossip about us. In fact, I might need more than just a night or two.

  I wasn’t sure I could keep going with this at all. We’d said it would be for a year, and we were only about six weeks in at this point. How could I get through another ten months of this? I should have tried harder to keep my heart out of things, but it had proved to be too difficult. Damn Hunter for being so good at our game that he’d even fooled me.

  “Well,” Hunter said when I remained silent, stewing in my own thoughts, “it smells great.” He came around and took a plate from me, brushing his knuckles against my hand in the exchange.

  I refrained from flinching, but barely.

  “Did you have a good day today?” he asked, spooning out a serving of lasagna for himself.

  I opened a bottle of wine. I hadn’t had much to drink since we’d returned from Hawaii, remembering all too well the humiliation my overindulgence had led to, but tonight called for it. “It was fine.”

 
He opened the plastic container of salad and filled two bowls. “So what did you do today? Doesn’t look like you tried cooking again.” He winked at me and chuckled.

  I didn’t follow suit.

  He hadn’t laughed much lately. I should enjoy the sound of it, but I didn’t. Right now, I doubted it was possible. Ever since leaving Horizons, I’d been examining and reexamining everything I’d thought about Hunter, all the things I felt in relation to him.

  Kade’s revelation about Carrie wasn’t the only thing bothering me.

  There was Kade’s claim that Hunter wished his brother was dead. Had Hunter truly said something like that? It was a definite possibility. In all the time we’d been married, Hunter had done everything possible to avoid speaking of his brother at all. He hadn’t wanted to even go to the hospital, let alone go into the room to visit with his brother and be sure he was all right. At the wedding, he’d tried to stop me from helping Kade, saying he wasn’t worth it. Hunter had put Kade in treatment and come back with bloody knuckles and a broken nose.

  Their relationship was far from loving, but was it so bad that one brother would wish the other dead? I wasn’t positive anymore, and I didn’t want to be in a relationship with a man who could be so cold and callous about someone who was part of his family. But I was. And there was a big part of me that wanted to deepen that relationship, despite these developments.

  But it was Carrie who really had my head spinning. Part of the problem? I was jealous, and that could only mean one thing. I was falling a lot faster and a lot harder than I’d been prepared for. Fuck buddies. I kept coming back to that turn of phrase. Only, the more Kade had said about her, the more he’d made it seem as though Carrie and Hunter were far more than just friends with benefits. They’d dated in high school. It was only after Kade and Chantel—who had apparently been Carrie’s twin sister—had been deep in their addictions that Hunter and Carrie had broken up.

  It wasn’t too hard to imagine the stress their siblings’ addictions would have put on their relationship. I got it. I did. But they kept getting back together even all these years later, so they had to still love each other. None of it made sense, otherwise. And if Hunter loved Carrie but had been forced into marrying me…