[Tulsa Thunderbirds 01.0] Bury the Hatchet

by Catherine Gayle

  I pulled out my phone and tooled around, checking my email and playing a few rounds of Bejeweled Blitz before an idea came me. Then I started Googling everything I could about cooking classes in the area. A few clicks later, I found one that sounded promising and called to sign up, but the classes wouldn’t start until next week. In one sense, that was good because it would give my hand time to heal. In another sense, it was bad because it meant I had another week of mornings to fill and no good idea what to do with them.

  I kept coming back to Kade, though. Hunter had his reasons for not wanting to be too involved with his brother, and I absolutely respected that. Maybe he was right, and there wasn’t any hope for Kade’s recovery. I wasn’t sure I believed that, though, and I was determined to find a way to help repair that relationship, no matter what sort of end this marriage might come to.

  The idea of searching for information on drug addiction and recovery grabbed on and wouldn’t let me go, so I started searching for that in the hope it would give me some insight about what I might be getting myself into as far as Kade was concerned. Rehab, counseling, twelve-step programs... I found all sorts of information, but very little of it was anything I could play a part in.

  I was still curled up on the couch, poring over the oodles of info I’d found, when Hunter returned so we could have lunch together. He tossed a box of condoms on the counter, effectively answering my unasked question from earlier. He didn’t want this new side of our relationship to be just last night any more than I did. The little seed of hope that this could become something more permanent took root inside me.

  Admittedly, he had been right that the pill wasn’t completely effective. We both knew it, so ignoring the fact that we didn’t have condoms and sleeping together last night anyway was probably not the brightest decision either of us had ever made. I tried to push that thought out of my mind because worrying over it wouldn’t do any good. Either I was going to end up pregnant or I wasn’t. Going forward, we would be more careful.

  I shut down the browser before shoving my phone into my pocket and getting up to greet him. He surprised me by drawing me into his arms and kissing me, a deep, sound kiss that had me rising up on my toes to meet him.

  “Hi,” I said, breathless and flustered, when he released me.

  “Hi, yourself. How’s the hand?” Without waiting for my answer, he gently lifted my arm so he could take a look for himself, even though there was nothing for him to see, thanks to the bandage.

  “Better,” I lied.

  His eyes turned to suspicious green slits.

  “Okay, not better.”

  “Hmm. Still no blistering, though?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, are you up to going out for lunch?”

  “Of course.” I’d been expecting that. We were still making sure to be seen out together as often as possible, and with the hockey season looming, that was going to be a lot less regularly than it had been so far.

  “Good.” He took my good hand and led me out to his car, stopping momentarily for me to pick up my purse.

  Instead of going to one of the usual swanky downtown restaurants we’d been frequenting, he stopped in front of a homey-looking Italian place I’d never been to, close to the Thunderbirds headquarters.

  “Change of pace?” I asked.

  He winked. “Lunch with the boys. It’s a pregame thing that Zee wants everyone to do together. If that’s all right?”

  “No, it’s fine.” Better than fine. I wasn’t quite sure how to react, though. Instantly, I flipped down the sun visor and popped open the lighted mirror, checking on my appearance. Never mind the fact that I’d been prepared to have photographers following us around. The thought that I was going to be seen by Hunter’s teammates turned me suddenly self-conscious.

  “Hey,” he said, settling his hand on my knee.

  I looked over at him, holding in my breath. Even that small touch seemed to reach all the way into my core, drawing me to him like a beacon.

  “You look amazing. Don’t worry about it.”

  Don’t worry about it. Right. Much easier said than done. That was so deeply ingrained in me I doubted I’d ever be able to walk past a mirror without stopping to examine all my flaws and attempting to minimize them, if not hide them altogether.

  Hunter shut down the engine and came around to help me out. By the time we got inside the restaurant, the rest of the guys were already there—a huge table of them. Big, rowdy men who seemed like giant boys with the way one of them was blowing a spitball at another, using his straw to launch it, and cackling as we approached.

  “Fuck off, Razor,” the spitballee said.

  The guy he’d called Razor grinned. “You fucking love me, Zee. Admit it. You missed me, and you’re so fucking glad to have me around again you just can’t contain yourself.”

  So that was Eric Zellinger, then, the one whose wife was supposed to teach me the ropes tonight. He was a good-looking guy, a bit less unkempt than some of the others. Razor was good-looking, too, but in a slick, cocky, dangerous sort of way. I had no doubt he was a bad boy of the highest order, so I made a mental note to keep my distance. I already had enough of those in my life.

  “He looks well contained to me,” Hunter said, and all of them whipped their heads around to look at us. “Same as always,” Hunter added, winking at me.

  Zee cleared his throat, and suddenly they all straightened and tried to make themselves more presentable, no doubt because I’d joined them. Well, almost all of them. Razor blew another spitball at Zee.

  I wondered if Hunter had said anything about bringing me, or if they’d found out when we’d walked up. Probably the latter, not the former, now that I looked around. There weren’t any other wives or girlfriends present. I stood out like a red rose in the middle of a Tulsa ice storm.

  Hunter took it all in stride, holding out a chair for me across from Zee and down the row from Razor. “Boys, this is my wife, Tallie. Her family’s good friends with the Jernigans.”

  “Which means watch your mouths,” one of the men I hadn’t been introduced to yet said with a foreign accent I couldn’t place. On first glance, he looked too old to be a player. He was fully gray and starting to go bald. But he had the skin and other features of a man Hunter’s age or thereabouts, so I couldn’t be sure. He winked at me before adding, “Or you’ll be adding more money to Mrs. J’s swear jar.”

  I nearly choked on my own laughter. “Swear jar?”

  “Hunter didn’t fill you in on that one, huh? That was one of the first things I told my wife.”

  “Can’t say he did.” It was just one more thing about his life he hadn’t wanted to share with me.

  Hunter shrugged.

  “My lips are sealed,” I said. “I promise not to say a word to Mrs. Jernigan about any slipups you all might have.”

  “Doesn’t mean anyone needs to go crazy with the language, though,” Zee said.

  The gray-haired man reached across the table to shake my hand. “Franz Ackerman. The boys all call me Grandpa.”

  I tried not to laugh but couldn’t stop myself from smiling.

  “He’s about to be one, too,” Hunter said. “So we’re not just being dicks about his hair.”

  “My oldest didn’t waste any time. For that matter, my wife and I didn’t, either,” Franz said, winking at me and drawing my attention to his smiling eyes. The lines around them were the only sense out of all his facial features that he had passed thirty, which made the idea of calling him Grandpa even odder than it was at face value. I just couldn’t let myself think of him as that. I knew he’d told me to call him that, and he might technically be about to become one, but it felt…wrong, somehow.

  A waiter brought menus and a round of water, and before long they all fell into talking again, as if I hadn’t intruded on their guy time. In no time, there was talk on one side of me about the dirty things a girl had allowed one of them to do in bed, and on the other side of me, it focused more on a ne
w sports car that one of the guys wanted to buy. Franz and Zee both made an effort to engage me in conversation, telling me about their wives and kids and asking about the sorts of things I liked to do around town. Soon, they were making plans for their wives to get together with me.

  The whole time we spent making those plans, I had other thoughts swirling through my mind about how I would fit that in alongside whatever I intended to do with Kade.

  Hunter didn’t say much. He answered when needed and interjected a question every now and then, but for the most part, he sat there and watched me with a curious expression on his face. Every now and then, he would rest his hand on my thigh, or he’d put an arm behind my back. It seemed almost casual, if not for the fact that it caused waves of tingles to course through my body. Especially because there were no cameras on us here. This wasn’t a show he was putting on for anyone, unless he felt we needed to convince his teammates that we were madly in love, the same as we were trying to convince the rest of the world.

  I tried not to get my hopes up. There were so many questions still unanswered between us, and now wasn’t a time we could truly talk.

  Zee was just telling a group of us that his wife was pregnant with their third child when a loud snort from the end of the table caught my attention.

  I turned toward Hunter to see what was going on, glass of water in hand.

  “You fucking wish, Dima,” Razor said loudly to a bearded, tattooed man to his left. “You’re so full of shit not even an enema could help.”

  I shouldn’t have just taken a sip, because I ended up spewing my water and only getting my hand in the way soon enough to block about half of it. The rest ended up sprayed all over my husband.

  The whole table erupted in laughter and lewd comments. I blushed.

  Hunter wiped his face with his napkin and leaned down close to my ear, stretching his arm around my shoulders to draw me closer. “Remind me to pull out before I come, since you’re not a fan of swallowing.”

  Franz let out a snort of his own before turning his head away, pretending to be invested in another conversation.

  I’d only thought I was blushing before. I was pretty sure I was going to die of burning to a crisp from embarrassment.

  TALLIE WAS GONE when I woke from my pregame nap. Probably off visiting my brother. Some idiotic part of me had hoped that taking her to lunch with the guys and exposing her to that part of my life would convince her there were other things she could do with her time rather than spend it with Kade, but I’d known better. There had been something in her eyes yesterday when she’d informed me of her decision to go back to see him—a fierce sense of determination or something. No point in me getting my hopes up that she would come to her senses just because I took her to hang out with a bunch of crass guys she didn’t know.

  I fixed myself a toasted bagel with peanut butter while I waited for her to come home. I was still sitting at the bar, eating, when she came in through the garage door, head down. And fucking sniffling.

  “What happened?” I demanded. My right hand clenched into a fist, almost of its own volition. The next time I saw Kade…

  Tallie shook her head.

  That wasn’t good enough for me. Not by a mile. I tossed what was left of my bagel back on the saucer, got up, and went to her, tipping her chin up so she had to look at me. Her eyes were red and puffy, like she’d been crying the whole way home from the rehab center. Every protective bone in my body was on high alert. I wanted to bash my brother’s face in for whatever he’d done to my wife.

  But first, I needed to know what that was. “Tell me,” I coaxed.

  “It’s not important.” Even as she said it, a fat tear welled in her eye and dripped down her cheek.

  Anything that made her cry was important to me. That was another worrying thought. I seemed to be having those more and more frequently. Was I getting that close to her, or was it just because I knew that—whatever the specifics behind her tears might be—Kade was involved? This was exactly why I’d wanted to keep her away from him, exactly why I’d wanted to prevent him from being able to hurt her the way he’d hurt everyone else in his sorry life.

  I brushed her tear away with the pad of my thumb, debating what to do. “Did he tell you more lies about me and Carrie?” I asked. That had to be it, didn’t it? I knew he’d fill her head with all sorts of things that I’d have to clear up later.

  “No, it wasn’t Kade at all. I barely even made it in to see him.”

  That threw me so much that my muscles went tense from the surprise. “Then what?”

  Tallie shook her head and tried to shove past me. Her purse slipped down from her shoulder, hooking on her elbow and jerking her arm down, and she flinched. I couldn’t handle her walking away from me right now without knowing what was behind her tears. I reached out to stop her, putting a hand on her upper arm.

  “Oh!” she cried out. It was a sharp, pained sound, and she ripped her arm away from me in a move of self-preservation if ever I’d seen one.

  I hadn’t put very much force at all in my grip—only enough to slow her down—but she’d acted like I’d bruised her.

  And I knew someone who had bruised her arms before. Lance Motherfucking Benton.

  “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is,” I said, my voice low and far more controlled than I felt on the inside. Inside, I was a ticking time bomb, ready to blow.

  She went into the kitchen and put her bag on the counter, silent other than her sniffles.

  “Can I see your arm?” I asked, following her.

  “Do you need to?”

  Yes, I damned well needed to. So I could catalog every fucking fingerprint he’d left on her body. So I could memorize every detail of how he’d grabbed her. So I could be sure my rage ratcheted up to an appropriate level the next time I saw his scrawny ass.

  But I supposed that could wait until later. It didn’t have to be right this instant.

  Gently, I touched her with nothing more than my fingertips, trailing them down her biceps. She shivered, and goose bumps popped up on her forearms.

  “Will you tell me what happened?” I asked.

  “I will.” But she didn’t start talking.

  Dropping my hands to her waist, I turned her so she was facing me again, questioning her wordlessly.

  “Later,” she promised. “I need to get my head together.”

  And I needed to get to the arena, but this was something worth being late for if there were ever such a thing. But she said she would tell me later, so I made up my mind that it was good enough, even though I didn’t believe anything of the goddamned sort.

  I ground my teeth together, attempting to put a damper on my anger. “You still coming tonight? Zee wants to introduce you to Dana.” And maybe Dana could get Tallie started talking. Dana had always had a way about her that made other women trust her, from what I’d seen.

  Tallie took a moment to think about it, but then she nodded. “We still have to see and be seen, right? I’m sure there will be cameras there. Let me just go fix my face.”

  ELIAS VIRTANEN, THE guy who would most likely be my backup this season, had played the first half of the game against the Stars. With the massive breakdowns going on in front of Eli, it was a small miracle that he’d come off the ice at the halfway point of the game having only allowed six goals. In all fairness, he’d made some spectacular stops and probably should have given up a few more goals in that stint.

  Now he was guzzling Gatorade on the bench, sweating like he’d just run a marathon in Tulsa’s summer heat, and I was the one facing the fire.

  That honestly wasn’t much of an exaggeration, either. In my half of the second period alone, Dallas had peppered me with more than fifteen shots, and our D had done little more than look over their shoulders at me and slink away each time the red light flashed.

  I couldn’t blame it all on them, either. My head wasn’t in the game. Not at all. I kept thinking about Tallie and Lance, wondering how he’d gotten hi
s hands on her again and why she wouldn’t just tell me about it. What was so bad she needed to think about it first? Why didn’t she trust me enough to tell me about whatever the hell it was?

  Now that only five minutes remained in the game, and I’d let in four more goals to go along with the six that had gotten past Eli, there wasn’t any chance the Thunderbirds would come back to win this one. The guys had yet to score a goal, so I wasn’t going to hold my breath. That said, I knew I needed to get my shit together. One glance over at the bench to see the scowl on Spurs’s face as he glared at me was enough to know he expected more of me. I expected more of myself, but tonight just wasn’t my night on multiple levels.

  After a stoppage in play, Spurs sent out some fresh players—an odd mix of two young D who had a snowball’s chance in hell of making an NHL team anytime in the next decade and whose names I couldn’t bother to remember, alongside Zee, Dima, and Seth McCormick, a journeyman winger—to take the next face-off.

  They were down in the Stars’ zone, for once, and somehow Zee ripped the puck away from Stars’ captain, Jamie Benn. One of the Stars’ D lost an edge and went down, which left Dima free to break for the net. Zee passed the puck to Mac, who somehow got a seeing-eye pass through to Dima. All Dima had to do was tap it in, since the Stars’ goalie had pulled himself fully out of position.

  The light flashed, but instead of the expected goal horn, some fucking war drums started pounding, scaring the ever-loving shit out of me. For that matter, nearly everyone in the jam-packed arena jumped out of their skins at the sound.

  I scanned the crowd, trying to find the sons of bitches responsible, because those damned drums wouldn’t stop. Finally found them right behind me. It took a supreme effort to refrain from giving them the finger, but no doubt I’d have to put a few thousand dollars in the swear jar over a move like that, not to mention, the league might decide to fine me, too. Better to bite my tongue and try to ignore it.