Game Breaker (Portland Storm Book 14)

by Catherine Gayle

  OUR HOME-ICE ADVANTAGE against the Sharks didn’t seem to be working out in our favor so far. Granted, it was only halfway through the first game of a seven-game series, but they had a two-to-nothing lead and had been drowning us with constant, smothering pressure in our own end. Nicky Ericsson, our goaltender, had been standing on his head to withstand their assault, but the man was only human. He’d been calm and steady for us, and he’d even made a few miraculous saves that would play on highlight reels for the duration of the playoffs. One of the goals that had gotten past him had been on a three-on-none breakaway when we’d been caught on a bad change. The other came on a Sharks power play just a few moments ago when they converged on the net, and Pavelski banged in a garbage goal that deflected off Brenden “Soupy” Campbell’s ass in his first game back after a long stint on the injured list.

  Soupy wanted to impact the game, but I didn’t need to look at the thunderous expression in his eyes to know this wasn’t the kind of impact he’d been hoping for. He slammed his stick against the boards, splintering it in two before taking his spot on the bench.

  “Not your fault, Soupy,” I said. He was one of our best penalty-killing forwards and had been since before I’d joined the team. As long as he was healthy, at least. I knew this had to rankle him like nothing else, though. No hockey player liked being responsible for scoring on his own goaltender, but especially not the guys known for being defensive specialists.

  Soupy glared at me.

  “We’ll get it back,” Koz added. Blake Kozlow was the center on my line. About the only time I could stand the guy was when we were playing hockey. He was a jumped-up spaz the rest of the time, and one of the biggest assholes I’d ever met on a good day. On a bad day? Better to stay the hell away from the guy. But he seemed to chill out when he got out on the ice. I wasn’t sure what it was—the activity, the competitiveness—but whatever was behind it, he seemed to focus in a lot better in a game, and his asshole-ish tendencies drifted away.

  Except for when it came to the opposition. Koz never stopped talking trash. At least he was starting to back it up more often than not. Pissed me off, though, when I was out there with him and he started shit that he wouldn’t finish. That left me and Jo-Jo to clean up his messes—and Jo-Jo was just a twenty-one-year-old kid. A skinny blond Swede, no less. Not a fighter. I was scrappy, but that didn’t change the fact that almost every guy in the league had at least half a foot and thirty pounds on me. Besides, Bergy didn’t want me fighting. He wanted me on the ice, setting an example for those two and trying to somehow take over games like he seemed to think I could.

  Bergy slapped a hand down on top of my shoulder. “Koz, Ghost, Jo-Jo… Get out there and give ’em hell.”

  “That’s what I do best,” Koz said, jumping over the boards with more energy than should be legal.

  I tamped down my annoyance and followed him and Jo-Jo out to take the face-off at center ice. The guy hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Yet. Sounded like he was planning to stir up a crap ton of shit, though.

  The Sharks left Pavelski’s line out there for this shift. They had the momentum, so it made sense, even if they were more winded than we were.

  Levi “501” Babcock and his new defensive partner, Leif Sorenson—a trade deadline acquisition who’d been with the Oilers most of the season, and a guy we all called Thor because of his godlike build and long hair—joined us on the back end.

  “God, suck on a fucking breath mint, would you?” Koz said to Pavelski. “I might pass out from the fumes before this guy ever drops the fucking puck.”

  Pavelski just put his stick on the ice and readied himself for the face-off.

  Koz managed to get his stick under Pavelski’s and win the draw back to Thor. My guy tried to tie me up, but I ducked past him and barreled my way toward the Sharks’ zone, sure that Thor and 501 would get the puck up to me in no time. Sure enough, as soon as I reached the blue line, the puck hit my stick. Sharks defenseman Brent Burns and his caveman beard were all that stood between me and the goalie, and Jo-Jo was streaking down the other wing with Paul Martin covering him hard and tight.

  Head up, I surveyed the scene before me. Burns had his eyes locked on me. The guy always seemed to read things exactly right. I had to fake going one way and convince him to bite or I’d never get free from him. Time to use the moves I’d been working on with Bergy.

  I made like I would go left, but at the last second, I shifted my weight and powered my way to the right with my thighs.

  Burns took the bait, and in his effort to change directions the same way I had, he fell down. Clear path to the goal.

  I deked once, glanced across to see Martin had Jo-Jo tied up, deked one more time to convince the goalie to take himself out of position, and shot the puck high, glove side. It clanged off the crossbar and in the net. The goal horn sounded and the crowd went wild.

  Jo-Jo and the rest of the guys converged on me, and Thor lifted me up in the air.

  “Fucking right,” Koz shouted in my ear. I couldn’t make out all the rest of the things the guys were saying. Because, despite myself, I’d frozen with an unfounded fear. I didn’t want to look out into the crowd. I didn’t want to see if there were any people out there screaming things at me instead of shouting in elation.

  I’d never reacted like this before to something that should be positive and exciting. I should be on top of the world, but instead, I was shaking in my skates.

  I didn’t like this new side of me. I wanted to bury it. Six feet under didn’t seem deep enough.

  Bergy gave me an odd look when we skated over to the bench, but it was gone before I could try to figure it out. He slapped me on the back. “That’s what I’m talking about, boys. Let’s get some more of that going. Keep it up.” Then he leaned over my shoulder. “Hell of a fake on Burns. Told you.”

  I nodded and stared out at the ice. No one needed to know how bad that shit had gotten into my head, and I was going to have a hell of a time hiding it if Bergy was already giving me strange looks. The only thing that needed to be in my mind right now was this game. Period.

  Everything else was just a distraction, and I didn’t need any more of those.

  THE PRESS CONVERGED around Koz instead of me, Babs, or any of the usual suspects after the game, for once, since he’d not only scored the game winner, but he’d also assisted on my second goal and fought two different Sharks players in the third period. My knuckles thanked him for dealing with the shit he’d started instead of leaving it all to me. Commenting on Pavelski’s breath had only been the start of it. By the end of the second period, every guy on that team wanted to rip Koz’s head off, and I couldn’t say I blamed them. I was just glad he was on my side. Playing against him would drive me batshit crazy in about 0.12 seconds.

  I gave him a warning look from my stall, hoping he’d interpret that to mean he shouldn’t say anything stupid that he’d have to retract later, but it didn’t seem as though he’d noticed. His problem, not mine, I reminded myself. No matter what kinds of idiotic things Koz said, it was on him. Kurt Yarbrough and the other guys in the communications department could help him sort it out. I was just glad they weren’t all over me tonight. I’d had enough of that in the last few days to last a lifetime.

  I stripped off all my gear and headed for the showers, hoping they’d be finished with all of their interviews by the time I got back. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Anne ditching her crutches and hobbling over to say something to one of her camera guys. She really shouldn’t be doing that. I had half a mind to tell her as much before I took a step back and reminded myself it wasn’t any of my business if she fucked up her ankle worse than it already was. Not my show; not my monkeys—same as with Koz.

  When I returned to the room a while later, fully dressed and ready to get the hell out of there, most of the media had left. Anne and her guys were still around, though, camera trained on Koz and a mic shoved in his face. I inched past and hoped she wouldn’t no
tice, but as I walked by her, I couldn’t help but hear what he was saying.

  “…not going to let anyone do or say shit about Ghost.” He cut himself off and grimaced for a moment. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have used that word, but I think you catch my drift. We’re not going to just sit by and let people get away with that stuff. He’s one of us. He’s our brother. We’re all sticking by him.”

  “So are you saying that one of the Sharks players made a comment about Golston and that’s why—”

  “I’m not answering that,” Koz cut in dismissively. “What happened on the ice stays on the ice. That’s how it’s always been and how it’s always going to be.”

  “Because wouldn’t that be something the league would want to look into?” Anne continued. “I know there have been penalties handed out in the past when players have used derogatory language—”

  “Not answering that,” he said again. “And unless you have something else to ask me, I think we’re done here.” He didn’t give her the opportunity to ask him anything else, shoving past her and the cameraman and heading for the showers.

  I ducked my head down and tidied up my stall, hoping beyond hope she wouldn’t try to start anything with me next. I sure as hell hadn’t heard anyone out on the ice saying anything like what Koz had hinted at. If anyone had said anything to him, I figured it had a hell of a lot more to do with him being a son of a bitch who couldn’t shut the fuck up than anything about me. Lord only knew what he was thinking, because I sure as hell didn’t.

  “That’s good enough for tonight, guys,” Anne said to her crew behind me. She sounded weary, like she was overdoing it. Which she probably was, considering she still hadn’t picked up her crutches again. Not only that, but there was no telling how many hours she’d been working lately with producing this show.

  I grabbed my phone out of my stall and shoved it into the pocket of my suit jacket alongside my wallet. If she was telling them to shut off their cameras, she wasn’t going to hound me tonight.

  Or so I thought.

  When I turned around, she gave me a curious look and arched a brow. “Did you hear anything like what Kozlow was talking about?”

  “No,” I bit off.

  “Would you tell me if you had?”

  This time, I chuckled. “Nope.”

  She shook her head with laughter in her tired eyes. “First episode is up. You can watch it when you get home.”

  “I doubt that’ll happen.”

  She deflated a bit, disappointment drawing those gorgeous brows together over her nose. “You’re not curious how it went?”

  “I lived it. I don’t need to watch it on repeat.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I wish you’d watch it. I’d like to know what you think.”

  “Why does it matter what any of us think?”

  “I didn’t say anything about an us. I want to know what you think. And I think you know why.”

  The only reason my opinion would matter was something I’d already determined wasn’t a possibility—that she cared what damage she might have inflicted on me on top of the sons of bitches who’d started it to begin with.

  Not a possibility. She was doing her job, and that was that. She didn’t care about me, and I’d be an idiot to think otherwise.

  I might be many things, but an idiot was not one of them. “I’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “Practice in the morning.”

  “Yeah.” Anne’s voice sounded strained. “I’ve got a lot to do, too.” She hobbled away without looking at me again.

  I couldn’t stop myself from calling after her, “You should get off that ankle!”

  “That’s what my dad tells me, too.” She turned her head toward me and winked. “But like you said, I’m too stubborn for my own good.”

  Damn if I didn’t like it too much when she smiled at me like that.

  Maybe I was a bigger idiot than I wanted to believe.

  AFTER THE STORM’S second game of the playoffs—a one-to-nothing loss—we were getting close to finishing up with filming the second week’s footage for Eye of the Storm. Several of the guys on my crew and I were up well after midnight at a bar, drinking a few beers and debating the angle we should take as we edited the episode together.

  I’d been studiously avoiding looking at social media, instead turning that responsibility over to my assistant, Tim Wilmington, who had signed on as an intern. He’d been given instruction to ignore the nasty comments about me but to pass on anything constructive about the show, and to respond to as many of those tweets and other posts that were positive as he could. We wanted to present a good image to the world and not get caught up in the nastiness that tended to come out in crashing waves when people could hide behind the anonymity of the Internet.

  “We could continue to keep the focus on Golston,” Dave put in, taking another swig of his beer. “I mean, he’s not giving us much, but you’ve gotten a few good sound bites out of several others. The guys want to stick up for him. You could paint it as the whole team, even the whole organization, rallying around him.”

  “He wouldn’t like that much,” I said. And I wouldn’t blame him. Granted, I didn’t think he’d bothered to watch the first episode, so I doubted he would be very keen on watching the second one any time soon, either. Maybe I didn’t need to worry too much about how Nate would feel about us continuing to harp on this one incident.

  “It’s not about what he likes,” Bill said. “You can’t make your decisions based on if you’re worried about hurting his tender feelings. You’ve got to put together the best show you can using the material you’ve got—and right now, he’s the best material you’ve got. Or at least the way they’re closing ranks around him is.”

  I scowled down into my empty beer glass, wishing I’d asked for another the last time the waitress had come by. “I still don’t like it. We can’t keep pushing the same story repeatedly with only minor changes. The audience will tune out fast if we do. It’ll get stale. We need a fresh angle on it.”

  “This is a fresh angle,” Ben said. “In the first episode, it had barely happened. There wasn’t much exposition on it. We left them drowning in the muck and mire of how awful it felt with nothing but Golston’s initial response to ease the sting. In a way, it was a cliffhanger. You need to resolve that story arc, and that could take a few episodes to tie up neatly.”

  “I’d rather it become a side plot instead of the main focus, though.”

  “It will,” Bill said. “With time. You can’t push it to the side right away, even if Golston would prefer for you to.”

  “I’m not doing things based on what Nate wants!” I argued. Maybe too forcefully.

  The guys all gave me looks that said as much before taking another sip from their beers.

  “So maybe you’re doing it based on your own feelings,” Tim said, and the other guys nodded.

  “Don’t you dare start with the whole Anne-is-a-female-with-too-many-hormones-so-she-can’t-be-objective bull,” I snapped.

  Tim blanched, but he said, “No, that’s not what I mean. I just meant maybe you’re sympathizing with him right now. He’s up against people who think he shouldn’t be doing what he’s doing because of his race. You’re dealing with something similar right now because some jerks think you shouldn’t be working in this field because you’re a woman. So maybe you’re getting too close and can’t look at the situation objectively right now.”

  He might have a point, but I wasn’t inclined to give in to it.

  “Objective or not, I don’t like the idea of harping on the racism issue any more than we have to. I’d rather we find another angle and start veering the audience into that territory sooner rather than later. So let’s see what direction we can shift the focus in this episode. We have a couple more days to film and then two days to piece it together. I want all your best ideas as soon as possible.”

  “You’ve got our best idea,” Bill insisted, and a couple of the other guys—the older ones, who had more expe
rience, nodded in agreement.

  “You know we’re on your side, Anne,” Dave said.

  “It doesn’t sound like it at the moment,” I shot back.

  “Well, we are,” he said. “But here’s the thing. You’ve got to give the guys who make decisions what they want. And what they want is the story that is all over the headlines. They want you to get the inside scoop from the people closest to what’s going on, and deliver that in a way that keeps viewers riveted, keeps their asses in their seats, and makes them want to come back for more. If you don’t—”

  “I’m not pandering to what they want just because they think they want it,” I cut in. “I’m producing the show that I think we need to produce, focusing on what’s important overall.”

  “Then you might not have this job for very long,” Dave said. I knew it wasn’t a threat. He worked for me and not the other way around, and he didn’t have any sort of say as far as whether I got to keep my job or not. He was telling me this more as a warning than anything, which, in a way, I could appreciate.

  And I wasn’t stupid enough to think that he was wrong. I still wasn’t sure how I’d landed this job. There weren’t many women in this field in any position, but even fewer who were entrusted with such big responsibilities. The kinds of responses I’d gotten on Twitter? It wasn’t just nameless, faceless people on the Internet who thought those kinds of things, and I was sure some people actually said them in real life—just not to my face. They were said in men-only meetings, in passing when those few women in the business like me weren’t around. Dave was very much right.

  But I still couldn’t produce this show while worrying about the possibility of losing my job if I didn’t do it the way they wanted it. I had to maintain my integrity. I had to do it the way I saw it, even if it meant losing my job. I’d be doing everyone a disservice otherwise, myself most of all.