by RJ Scott
Fly huffed. “So they’re chanting his name, and he comes running out, best you can on the blades, and he jumped on the ice, only he falls over thin air—”
“The edge of the rink, asshole.”
“Like I said, thin air, and he goes sprawling ass-over-head onto the ice, sliding out to center circle, and the worst was he had the captain right behind him, and the poor bastard never stood a chance, falling right on top of our boy here.” Fly pulled out his phone. “Look, I have it in my favorites.”
Alex reached out for the phone, but Fly was taller, holding it higher, and they were fighting, so Jo didn’t see the video. She opened her own browser and typed in Alex’s name and the keywords “falling”, “ice”, and “captain”.
“I’ve got it,” she said, and pressed play.
Alex groaned, but he did lean over to watch it upside down; clearly he wasn’t too worried about being teased.
Whoever had posted it had put the whole thing to music, and it was funny—she couldn’t help but laugh, covering her mouth with her hand to keep from embarrassing herself.
“I’m hitting the head,” he finally said with resignation, and vanished through the kitchen door.
Big, burly Fly took his seat and immediately leaned in.
“So, you like Alex, then,” he began with a questioning quirk to his eyebrow. “Because he’s one of the good guys, you know. Don’t believe everything you read or see on the internet.”
“Does he need defending?” Jo asked curiously. Alex seemed like the kind of guy who had a handle on life and was confident in his own skin.
Fly sighed noisily. “He was called up for the expansion team, captain of the franchise, raking in the money, you know what I mean? He’s an easy target.”
That sounded more like a warning than anything, and she stiffened in her seat.
“I can assure you that I’m not after his money,” she said, ice dripping from each syllable.
Fly looked shocked and reared back in his seat. “Jesus. No. I didn’t mean that. Fuck, I meant… Shit…”
“Cursing isn’t explaining it any differently,” Jo said when his voice trailed away.
“I just meant, before you, he had all these girls who wanted nothing more than the kudos of banging the captain. Or, you know, we’re used to it…puck bunnies, that kind of shit. Sorry, I don’t mean to keep cursing…”
“I’m a rookie firefighter. I’ve heard worse.”
He nodded then, and cleared his throat. “See, that there is why you’re nothing like the girls he’s had in his life. You’re real, and you work, and you don’t know much about hockey, and most of all, you like my food, and you ate all of it.”
Fly was defining her because she’d eaten his food? That was a new one, but she wasn’t going to argue. She was real. A real woman with her own issues, her own neuroses, and with a need for a partner who was just as real.
“Stop right now,” Alex said from the door.
Fly looked guilty. “I was just—”
“Seriously, Fly, no more embarrassing stories, right?” He hip-checked Fly off the stool and sat back down. “How will I ever get Jo to agree to a second date if she thinks I can’t skate, let alone walk in a straight line?”
Jo reached over and patted Alex on the back of the hand. He swiftly grasped it so he could hold her hand across the counter, and she didn’t snatch it back.
“I get it must be difficult,” she began seriously. “You being the captain and not being able to skate.”
He squeezed her hand. “Oh ye of little faith. Next date, skating,” he announced.
Jo shook her head. “I really can’t skate. I’ll kill myself. Or you; I’ll end up killing you, and the team will end up killing me for killing the captain.”
Alex lifted her hand, pressed his lips to the back of it, and smiled that devastatingly gorgeous smile of his.
“Skating it is, then.”
Chapter 9
Alex had been expecting the knock on the door, already had the coffee on and a call in to Loki that management had shot their load and traded in Vasiliev. Thankfully, the Dragons had only given up two prospects and a third-round pick in exchange. That wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Still, a team couldn’t grow if the guys coming up from the draft and the minors were taken away from the team. There was an actual freaking point to keeping draft picks, getting in the raw talent to expand the pool of skaters that the team could develop.
Loki wasn’t surprised at what had happened, any more than Alex was.
“At least we didn’t lose anyone who can make an immediate difference,” Loki summarized. “And our wing does need some shoring up.”
“Don’t think for one minute I don’t know that,” Alex said on a sigh.
“What did Gooly say?”
“He’s on his way over.”
“You need me there?”
Loki was the other alternate captain alongside Gooly. For all of Loki’s pranks and idiot jokes, he was a solid team man and a leader in the room. As was Gooly—minus the pranks and jokes, of course, and with less English.
Alex considered the offer. Did he want Loki there, so the three of them could get their heads around what had happened? Would that freak Gooly out, like there was something way too serious going on?
“No, give me this, and we’ll catch up after.”
“You know where I am,” Loki murmured. “Good luck with the…uhm, Russian situation.”
Alex opened the door, and Gooly was standing there looking like the wind had been taken from his sails. The Russian situation had landed on Alex’s doorstep, and he could see it going sideways quick. Gooly didn’t look angry, or any of the other versions of furious and pissed that Alex had been expecting.
“I want to be traded,” Gooly announced, the icy-cold December wind blustering around him. Then he turned to leave.
Alex opened the door wider and stepped to one side. “Get in here.”
Gooly stopped, but he didn’t turn to face Alex.
“Don’t make me drag you in,” Alex warned.
Gooly huffed. “Like see you try.” His voice was thick with his accent, and if Alex didn’t know better, it sounded like Gooly was going to cry. He’d never seen Nikita Gulin cry before.
“C’mon, Gooly, it’s colder than a witch’s tit out there.”
Gooly turned to face Alex, and he looked utterly broken. He glanced back at his Jeep, which was parked at a crazy angle in the wide driveway; seemed caught in indecision.
“Seriously, Gooly, get your ass in here.”
Finally, his friend and teammate was inside, and Alex shut the door on the frosty, snowy season.
“Vodka,” Gooly said.
“I have coffee,” Alex countered. He went straight to the kitchen and poured two large mugs of caffeine. The last thing this situation needed, whatever it was between his friend and Vasiliev, was alcohol. He added the cream and sugar that Gooly loved, and realized with tightness in his chest how well he knew Nikita Gulin; better than half the team. The fiery center had been brought in on the expansion draft to hold the second line steady behind Alex’s line, and they’d been together all that time. From the first shaky moment the newly created Dragons had stepped onto the ice at Sweetings Arena in a home game against the Sabres, it had always been him and Gooly, fist-bumping at successes and hugging out failures.
“Nikita…” Alex began as Gooly sat on the kitchen stool and cradled his hot coffee. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, I didn’t know what they were planning, I honestly thought we were done with trades until February.”
Gooly muttered something in Russian and sipped his coffee, interspersing each sip with a growl or a grimace, or hell knew what curses.
“Are you serious about asking to be traded?” Alex asked, even though his chest was tight with the emotion of it all. The concept of Gooly leaving the team was one he’d never thought he’d have to consider. A few years older than Alex, he was an unrestricted free agent in a couple of seasons
, and they’d always said, mostly when drunk and inhibitions were low, that they’d be Dragons forever, together. Alex realized he’d unconsciously rested a hand against the dragon tattooed right over his heart. Gooly had the same tattoo, but it spread over his entire back, the wings of the stylized black-and-red creature curling up and over his shoulders.
Alex had always thought there was more to the size and placement of the tattoo than Gooly had ever let on; Ryan’s was on his biceps, as was Loki’s.
“On chertovski ublyudok,” Gooly murmured. “Alexey Vasiliev, fucking bastard.”
Alex waited for more, but Gooly subsided into silence.
“You want to talk about it, Nikita?” Somehow, the man sitting opposite him wasn’t Gooly, the man who centered one of the best second lines in the entire NHL. No, he was Nikita, a friend with a wound in him that Alex didn’t understand. “Nikita?” he asked again.
“We both Moscow,” Gooly began. Alex was used to the dropped words, particularly when his teammate was emotional or in a stressful situation, but he was finding it hard to make out the words in the rolling vowels.
Alex nodded. “You’re both from Moscow, I know.” He’d just never assumed Gooly knew Vasiliev, because Moscow was one big city. Then again, professional hockey made the world small, narrowed down to constant practice and games. Maybe they would have known each other through that specific medium at least.
“My sister, Kristina…” He pronounced her name Kreesteena, rolling the vowels, and love dripped from each syllable.
“I didn’t know you had a sister.” Not as a friend, or as someone who’d seen Gooly’s file.
“Simba.” He raised his eyes from where he’d been staring at his coffee, and they were bright with emotion. “She dies.”
“She’s dead? I’m so sorry, Nikita.”
“He kill.” His grasp of English was gone.
“What?” Alex couldn’t help the less than eloquent answer. Taking in Gooly’s broken expression, and adding in the shock of the word “kill”, and he was startled.
Gooly huffed for a moment, obviously searching for words, and then in a smooth movement he pulled out his iPhone and thumbed to Google, typing something in Russian. Then, with the tip of his tongue poking out, he concentrated on scrolling through searches. Finally, he handed over the cell, but all Alex could see was a jumble of Cyrillic; he looked at it blankly, then handed it back to Gooly, who tutted and typed in something else before passing it back.
In the center of the screen was a picture of a car, completely caved in on one side, and a headline: Teenage Tragedy. Or at least that was what it looked like, but Google Translate had done some weird things to the page.
There had been an accident; a young girl aged fifteen dead at the scene, three older boys injured, icy conditions, and some other sentences that didn’t make much sense. The one thing that stood out was the name Vasiliev.
“Told them, too snow,” Gooly said, and his large frame seemed smaller somehow on the stool. “They still going,” he added.
“Why doesn’t the team know this? Why don’t I know this?”
Gooly shook his head, but words seemed to evade him. So Alex realized he needed to make sense of it himself. Either that or get a translator there, but that would mean exposing the story to more people, and there had to be a reason Gooly hadn’t shared it before.
“Okay,” Alex began. “This isn’t public knowledge because…he was a kid. It’s Russia…it was hidden, or he wasn’t at fault. Was he driving the car? Maybe one of the other boys was? Did he have money to pay off the situation?” Alex considered all the plot lines he’d seen on TV. “Is Vasiliev Russian Mafia?”
Gooly snorted at that last part but didn’t confirm or deny.
“Okay, so, this explains why you beat on him every time we play against him? Am I close? Why have you kept this secret?”
Alex had seen this with the Russians he’d played with before; even though they were playing on North American teams, they were almost a subset, more so than the Swedes, or Norwegians, or the multitude of other nationalities in the league. A lot of the Russian skaters came to the US with little or no English, not like the Europeans. Gooly had never been one to try super hard to learn English. Didn’t matter, though—he spoke eloquently through his hockey.
“Ya lyubil svoyu sestru, Simba,” Gooly said sadly. “Love sister.”
“I’m so sorry,” Alex repeated. He put on his captain hat. “Okay. What do you want me to do, Nikita? You’re my friend, and I’d do anything for you. Okay?”
Gooly nodded. “I know.”
“You want me to bring this to the attention of the coach, or management? You want me to send the whole fucking story to Deadspin?”
Gooly looked at him steadily, then shook his head. “Pust’ ona spat’ spokoyno—let her sleep quietly.”
“Nikita…”
“I’m trade.”
Alex couldn’t do that. He couldn’t give his friend this one thing. He had to think that Gooly would regret walking away from the Dragons. So how did he play it?
“Okay,” he said, and raised his hands in defense. “Please, for me, stay until January? Give it until the new year, until after your party.” He thought on his feet. “If you can’t… If it’s impossible, then I’ll go to management, the coach, I’ll tell them you go, I go. They won’t have any choice but to get rid of Vasiliev. You won’t be the one who gets traded, okay?”
He knew how reckless that sounded—it would never fly—but sitting there with one of his best friends, all he wanted to do was make things right.
At that, Gooly looked like he was going to cry, and Alex had never seen the big guy look quite so broken, not even when they’d missed out on the playoffs by two points.
“You want to skate?” Alex asked. That was the answer to everything for him and Gooly—they would skate until their muscles shook and they couldn’t breathe, and that was how they dealt with stress.
Gooly pushed himself away from the counter, stood, and stalked to the door. “No,” he said, and let himself out.
For the longest time, Alex stared at the closed front door and wondered what the hell to do, where to start. The captain was the keeper of everyone’s secrets and even with those inside him he had to make the team work. The Dragons were 5-4-1 in their last ten games; five wins, four losses, and one overtime win. The balance was skewed, and he needed to fix that by concentrating solely on hockey.
“I need to get out of this fucking house,” he said to the empty space around him. He really needed to get a Christmas tree for his place. He pulled on a jacket; and he had the whole day, and maybe that afternoon he’d get over to the practice rink and attempt to skate through his thoughts. In particular, the overwhelming need to see Jo again.
He fired a quick text to her. She was never too far from his thoughts, even when he was carrying the weight of the team. He couldn’t shake the need he had to see her, touch her, talk to her, and he’d never felt that way before.
Was he getting stupid in his old age? Maybe that was what every twenty-nine-year-old went through with thirty looming on the horizon. And when was the last time a girl had pushed aside the hockey part of him? He squinted at his cell, waiting for an answer to his text. Never; he’d never let a woman nudge him off course. Hockey. Team. Stanley Cup. The best.
Yesterday at Fly’s place had been an eye-opening, awe-inspiring experience. Jo was refreshingly different, the kind of girl that Alex could be friends with, a person who wanted nothing from him, and the kind of woman he could spend hours in bed with. He just knew it.
Being her friend was the furthest thing from his mind, though. He’d had a hard time getting to sleep last night, had kept reaching for his cell to call her, excited to talk to her. He’d been hard at the thought of her, remembering the taste of her, and the kisses.
He hadn’t actually contacted her, though. When they’d said goodbye yesterday, as he’d dropped her at her place, she’d kissed him, but she hadn’t asked him
in or talked more about the ice skating.
He was at a bit of a loss about that, used to women asking him when they would see him next. Since he’d been fifteen, sex had been easy—he hadn’t even had to try—but she was so different, and intriguing and sexy, and he seriously felt like a kid chasing his first ever girlfriend.
Maybe he should get some advice.
He opened a message to Ryan. The D-man was so freaking happy, and he’d managed somehow to have something real. He even typed in a message. I have this girl I like, it began.
“What am I? Fifteen again?”
I am a grown man who is perfectly capable of having a relationship with a woman, I can do this. So he deleted everything he’d written to Ryan and instead thumbed to Jo’s number.
His text—Morning, sexy, you want to help me find Xmas tree?—was open-ended and innocent, right? It didn’t mention how much he wanted to kiss her, or look at her, or taste her, or…
Her reply was quick, and to the point: Sorry, on rota.
There were no kisses, or hearts, or anything flowery, but then his text had been pretty generic. The kind of question you’d ask a friend. So thinking hard about his next step, he typed, You around tonight? x
He added the x as a kiss, and waited with pathetically hopeful bated breath. What is this woman doing to me?
Next free 20th
Hmm, no kiss. Never mind, he wasn’t giving up. He might be heading for his thirtieth birthday, but he could channel his inner teenager. And then another text arrived.
Really enjoyed yesterday. Love your friend Fly, he’s a good guy x
How ridiculous was it that his heart lightened with that stupid little x?
He began typing a response, then connected a call instead.
“Hey,” she said as she answered.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said back. Eloquent. Not. Flustered, he fell back on the one steady thing in his life. “So, the twentieth we’re playing the Islanders. You should come. See your first game, and we could meet up after for a drink or something?”
“Something?” she teased. And he was immediately hard at the thought of what that something could be. He hadn’t meant to imply anything but a drink, but something else could be good.
