Delay of Game

by Catherine Gayle

  Then a giant ball of confusion welled up in my chest and traveled up to my throat, where it lodged itself, and I could barely catch my breath for the frustrated tears welling in my eyes.

  Love? When had this become about love? I’d never factored that into the equation, and the thought of solving for Y only filled my head with X’s and O’s.

  SOUPY AND BABS dropped Rachel and her kids off to stay with Sara and Scotty during the game. The guys came in with them. Babs lived in the same building as them, right across the hall, actually, and the two of them were going to take me with them tonight so we could head out to the Moda Center together for Game Four.

  I chuckled at the way Tuck walked in like he owned the place, dropping his Lightning McQueen backpack just inside the door and heading straight for Scotty and his recliner. Without even a moment’s hesitation, he climbed right up onto Scotty’s lap.

  “Elbows, Tuck!” Rachel said, but not in time to stop her son from digging his elbows into Scotty.

  Scotty winced a little, but he quickly masked his discomfort.

  “Sorry,” Tuck said, blushing until his face was as red as his hair. “Mr. Coach? Mommy said I’m in charge of you tonight.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yep. She said we have to make you feel better, and I always feel better when I cuddle with Mommy, so I’m gonna cuddle you all night. ’Kay?”

  Pinning Scotty to his chair with a little boy seemed like an excellent way to keep the man from trying to overdo it. I had to admire Rachel’s style. She winked at me while she was helping Maddie get her backpack off. “I have to use the tools in my tool belt,” she said, laughing.

  I hummed in assent. “I think in this case, Tuck is more like a weapon than a tool.”

  She didn’t deny it.

  Babs and Soupy carried some bags with groceries into the kitchen and set to work putting things in the fridge or out on the counter. Rachel got her daughter situated at the dining room table with some books.

  I turned around to find Sara coming down the hall from the bathroom. She looked a little green, as though she was nauseated again. In the last couple of days, morning sickness had been hitting her at random times, not just in the morning anymore, but she was starting to move around on her own a little better despite the pain of her injuries, just like Scotty was. I crossed over to her, putting one hand on the small of her back.

  “Are you sick?”

  “Just nausea. Nothing’s coming up. It just feels like it might.” She leaned into me a little, laying her cheek against my chest.

  I’d been worried that she was going to freak out on me after what I’d said to her earlier. I hadn’t thought it through. The words just came out before I could think about them and what kind of reaction they might provoke. And really, who tells someone they might be falling in love with them? What a crock of shit. Adding might into the mix only proved that I was a fucking coward because if I’d had any balls at all, I would have just flat out told her I loved her. But because I’d thought she would flip when I told her that, I’d softened the blow a little—only not really.

  But even though she had definitely been uncomfortable hearing what I’d told her—there was no way for her to hide how she’d tensed up in my arms or the fact that she hadn’t responded at all, whether to laugh in my face or tell me to shove it or to say she might be falling in love with me, too—she was still letting me hold her, still curling in toward me, still seeking my comfort when she didn’t feel well.

  She just wasn’t ready to love me. Or at least not to admit that she might. I knew that. She’d built too many protections around herself over the years, kept pushing men too far away, so it was going to be a long, slow process getting through all of that. I knew it. I was okay with it.

  I put my other arm around her and kissed the top of her head. The peppermint scent of her shampoo tickled my nostrils. “Get Rachel to make you some ginger tea,” I said. It had been helping more than anything else Sara had tried. “And rest. I’ll see you after the game.”

  “All I do is rest,” she grumbled into my chest, her nose brushing against the lapel of my suit. Then she tipped her head up to pout at me.

  I couldn’t resist. She looked so fucking adorable like that, I had to bend my head down and steal a real kiss, stopping it a hell of a lot sooner than I would have liked because Scotty cleared his throat in warning behind me. “Good,” I said. “That’s the plan.”

  Once Babs and I were able to pry Soupy away from Rachel, we left. Babs seemed anxious tonight, which wasn’t normal for him. He bopped his legs around in the backseat of Soupy’s SUV, kicking into the back of my seat every now and then.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I groused after the fourth time he kicked my seat.

  “Nothing.”

  Soupy scowled into his rearview mirror and then glanced over at me. “He’s been like this for three days. Every time I’ve seen him, he’s fucking dancing around like a ticking bomb that’s about to go off.”

  Now was not the time for Babs or any of the boys to give in to nerves. We were up two games to one in the series. We needed everyone to dig in and keep doing what they’d been doing, not fall apart.

  No matter how hard Soupy and I tried to get him to tell us what was up on the way into the arena, though, he just bit his lip and refused to say a fucking word.

  That was not a good sign.

  Once all the pre-game stuff was finished, I headed up to the press box with the rest of the guys who’d been scratched for tonight. Jens and Monty were both in the lineup again, so Cody “Harry” Williams—a big redheaded kid who looked like he could be related to Rachel if not for the fact that he was twice as tall as her—and Radek Cernak—a Czech call-up from the AHL who knew a grand fucking total of three words of English—were the ones joining me, Luddy, and Chunk tonight.

  Early on in the game, it was pretty clear that Vancouver wasn’t happy with the way they’d played the last couple of games. Unlike the first game in the series, where they’d dictated the style of play almost entirely, in games two and three our boys had imposed their will upon the other team. Not so tonight.

  Our game was all about speed and puck possession, and Vancouver preferred to play more of a crash and bang style. They came out with the intent to make our boys hurt in the first period, laying out some pretty vicious hits on both RJ and Eller within the first few minutes of the game.

  It didn’t take long to realize that they were targeting our younger skilled guys. Halfway through the first period, Dan Hamhuis, one of their defensemen, slammed into Babs from behind. Babs’s head hit the glass hard, his neck bending in a way that was never a good sign. Hamhuis had been able to see Babs’s numbers the whole way in, and he didn’t let up at all. Textbook boarding, but the refs didn’t make the call.

  Not only did the refs blow the fucking call, but Babs was still lying on the ice while Hamhuis stole the puck from him and passed it up to his forwards, and they took off toward the other end. They scored before Babs was able to get to the bench for a change. He kept cringing while he was talking to the trainers, trying to turn his head this way and that.

  All of the boys with me in the box were up in arms about it. There wasn’t a fucking thing any of us could do from where we were sitting, so I didn’t bother yelling. I preferred to let my fists do the talking in cases like this, but all I could do right now was hope one of the other boys would take care of it for me.

  Picking your spot for retaliation in a game like this was imperative, though, so they couldn’t just drop the gloves immediately. They had to be sure they weren’t going to make the situation worse.

  Babs went down the tunnel with the trainers, and the game went on.

  The targeting of our skill guys didn’t let up. Every time I blinked, it seemed like one of their guys was banging into one of our guys’ bodies. The hits kept coming, harder and more frequently, and it was taking a toll.

  Webs and Burnzie did a little body checking of their ow
n, trying to turn the tide. Zee and Soupy got in on it, too. But that only meant we were letting them drag us into playing their style of game—and it was working. For them. Two minutes before the first period ended, the Canucks’ Sedin twins grabbed the puck when one of their big-bodied defensemen forced RJ to cough it up, and they scored again.

  Heading into the intermission, Babs still hadn’t returned to the bench, we were playing their game instead of our own, and no one had done a damn thing about how they were pushing us around.

  I was fuming, but that wouldn’t help a fucking thing. I wasn’t sure how to stop, though.

  One of the Canucks’ beat reporters was streaming a radio broadcast of the game through his laptop while he typed up his notes, loud enough that I could hear every fucking word.

  “The Canucks are absolutely bullying the Storm,” the broadcaster said, “completely having their way with them. And no one, not a single guy on that team, is doing anything to put an end to it. They let Hamhuis put Babcock through the boards. He hasn’t come back to the bench yet, and no word on whether or not he will tonight. They’re letting the Canucks’ checking line run roughshod over the Jezek, Ellstrom and Kallen line. This is the way to lose this series, not the way to win it.”

  “You know what they need out there?” another voice on the radio said. “They need Cam Johnson.”

  “But Johnson took himself out of this series before he ever got in it,” the first guy said.

  “He did, but he’s exactly the thing Portland needs if they’re going to be able to play this kind of game with the Canucks. They either need to figure out how to force Vancouver back into playing their style of hockey, or they’re going to have to get someone to channel Johnson—the energy he brings to the ice, the way he can hit them back just as hard as they’re hitting the Storm’s stars.”

  “Who do you see out there that could bring something like that to the table?” the first guy asked.

  “No one. That’s the problem. That’s why the Storm will lose this series.”

  I’d heard enough. I pushed back from my seat, glaring at the back of that fucking beat reporter’s head, and left the press box. If I had to sit in there and listen to that bullshit for one more minute, my head was going to explode.

  THE STORM LOST Game Four in spectacular fashion, five to one, leaving us tied with the Canucks in the series at two wins apiece. It was all going to come down to a best of three. Win two games and move on; lose two games and go home to work on your golf swing. It was as simple, and as daunting, as that.

  Babs had rejoined the boys on the ice at the beginning of the second period. The doctors had run a bunch of scans on him and had determined that even though he’d strained some muscle or another in his neck when Hamhuis had smashed him into the boards, going back out there to play some more shouldn’t make it any worse than it already was. It would just hurt like hell. They gave him a shot to numb it up against the pain. Babs went out and played through it, just like almost any guy on our team would do. It was the playoffs. That meant you had to push through, whether you wanted to or not—and he had.

  Vancouver had continued to target him, maybe even more so because they knew he was hurt. I don’t think I’d ever seen Babs take so many licks in even a week’s worth of games combined, but he’d just kept getting up and going back out there for more.

  Even so, he’d been the one to score the only goal for the Storm, too, busting through the Canucks’ D like a bull in a china shop and barreling in on their goaltender in the third period. It was as though he was one of the players in his video games and someone had switched on Beast Mode. He’d been an incredibly talented hockey player since long before he was drafted, but these days he was really starting to come into his own. Now that his body and his strength were catching up to his skill, there would be no slowing him down. He couldn’t have had more perfect timing for it to all come together like this, and his mind-set was lining up perfectly with his physicality in that regard.

  There’d been one point during the game tonight when Canucks defenseman Kevin Bieksa had been trying to shove Babs out of the space in front of the crease, but Babs had dug in and refused to budge, and somehow Bieksa had been the one to end up sprawled out on the ice with his ass and skates in the air. Last year at this time, it would have been a completely different story. Give him another couple of years, and Babs would easily be one of the most dangerous players in the league. Hell, he wasn’t far from it now.

  More and more in this series, Babs was the only Storm player standing out in a good way. And whether I had liked hearing what those fucking broadcasters had said or not, they’d been right about one thing: the way the boys were playing was not a recipe for success. If the Storm kept playing like this, we’d be packing up for a long summer in less than a week.

  I sure as hell wasn’t ready to be done. I wanted my chance to get back on the ice, and that meant we had to at least get to the second round. I didn’t think anyone else on this team was ready to call it a season, either, but you’d be hard-pressed to know that after watching how the boys had played tonight.

  I didn’t know what to say to them afterward to help them figure their shit out. I went down to the locker room along with Luddy, Chunk, and the other guys who’d been healthy scratches, and we all stood along the walls with our hands in our pockets, shuffling our feet. Hardly anyone in that room was looking up and meeting anyone else’s eyes. They almost all had their heads hanging, like fucking dogs that had been whipped. It was painful to see.

  “Go home. Get some rest tonight, boys,” Hammer said without any sort of preamble. He sounded as beat up and dejected as they all looked. “No practice tomorrow. We fly out at ten.”

  “This was just one game,” Bergy added. “That’s it. One fucking game. We leave it here and don’t let it carry over to the next one. We go back to playing our way. Our game. The way Scotty has had us playing all year long. We force them to play our style instead of letting them roll over us like that.”

  The two of them walked out of the locker room and headed into the coach’s office, and all of the trainers and equipment managers followed them, until it was only the players left in the room. I stood there, waiting for Zee or Webs or Burnzie—one of the older guys, the team leaders—to say something. They didn’t, though. They just sat there shaking their heads, looking down at the fucking floor beneath their feet as though it could give them some answers.

  Granted, I didn’t have any answers; I couldn’t very well expect them to.

  A few of the guys finally started to move again, taking off their gear and hanging their pads up in their stalls. It was only when a couple of jerseys hit the laundry bin in the middle of the locker room that someone spoke.

  “Shut the door, Jonny. Lock it. We need to have a fucking meeting.”

  My head shot up to see who’d said it, and it was Babs whose eyes met mine. His lips were pressed together, his jaw locked. I’d never seen him look so serious.

  I wasn’t the only one curious about this turn of events. Almost every guy in the room was staring at Babs, waiting to hear what he had to say. He wasn’t usually one to speak up. He seemed to always sit quietly, waiting for someone else to take charge. But not this time.

  No point in putting it off. I grunted and crossed over to close the door like he’d asked.

  When I turned around, Babs shot a nervous look over to Zee, but Zee just nodded for him to go on. He’d never been the sort of captain who thought everyone needed to listen to him and only him. He was always open to allowing anyone and everyone a voice. If a guy thought he had something to say, Zee wanted to hear it. That was just one of many reasons he commanded so much respect among the guys: he didn’t think he was better than anyone else in that room.

  Babs shrugged, buying himself a little more time before finally saying whatever it was that was eating at him. “When I was—” He cut himself off and cleared his throat, then started again with more confidence. “When I left the ice at the end
of Game Three, one of their guys made sure to bump into me so he could deliver a message. I was one of the last of us to leave after we won, and he made sure I knew they were coming for me tonight. All of us, really, but me specifically because I’d beaten them a couple of times in that game.”

  Well, that explained the nerves he’d been dealing with. If he thought they were going to goon things up like they had during the last game of the regular season, he had a very good reason for being apprehensive heading into tonight. I wished he had said something before the game, though. Anytime over the last few days would have worked. It wouldn’t have stopped them from doing anything that they’d done, but the boys could have been aware it was coming. They could have mentally prepared themselves to deal with it. Hell, if he’d said something to the coaches, they could have gotten Jim to call someone up from the AHL, a fighter, who could have been out there to answer the bell.

  But Babs hadn’t said a damn word. And really, that shouldn’t have surprised me or anyone else. Shit like that gets said on the ice all the time. It was just one more way to play mind games with your opponent, and sometimes the mental aspects of the game were more important than the physical.

  “Who the fuck was it?” Webs demanded. He looked as livid as I felt. “Hamhuis? Bieksa? Sestito?”

  “It doesn’t matter who said it. What matters is that they all followed through. All of them. Every single guy on that team was out there throwing checks at me and at anyone else on our team whose feathers they thought they could ruffle. That’s their game plan. They’re trying to rough us up and get under our skin. They’re trying to get us off our game so they can capitalize on our mistakes, and that’s exactly what they did tonight.”

  Even though I was halfway across the room from Webs, I could hear him muttering beneath his breath—all sorts of choice curses about what he wanted to do to those asswipes for going after Babs. Despite himself, and despite his overprotective ways with Katie, Webs was starting to care about Babs. No, that wasn’t right. It was more that he wasn’t trying to keep the whole world from realizing that he cared about Babs.