My heart stuttered. Stopped. Jolted to life again. It had been a long time since I’d been kissed—really, truly kissed—not for more than four years, since Jason and I split up. I’d been too busy taking care of my kids to date for many of those years, and more recently I’d been too afraid of letting anyone get close to my kids. But Brenden Campbell was making me want to be kissed, making me ache for it like I hadn’t in so long. It felt new again.
“I want to kiss you long and deep and hard, over and over again. I want to make you squirm, to make you beg me for more. I want you, Rachel.”
I wanted him, too, which terrified me. “I’m not ready to give you that,” I said, the shaking of my voice betraying how needy I felt.
“I know. I can wait. The longer I wait, the more time I’ll have to plan all the ways I want to touch you and all the places I want to taste you.”
I shivered all over, thinking of his big hands sliding over my body. Of his tongue exploring me. Of doing the same to him. I had to change the subject to get a grip on myself again. “What happened to your sister?” I asked, and immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”
“She was raped,” he interrupted. “Her freshman year in college. Three guys hauled her into a janitor’s closet after a hockey game she’d played in and ruined her life. After that, for years, she had panic attacks anytime a man touched her—even me and our dad. I hated myself for a long time because I was supposed to protect her, and I hadn’t been able to protect her from that.” He fell silent for a minute. “I wanted to kill Zee for touching her when they got involved, but he gave me my sister back.”
So that was what Martha had meant when she’d said Brenden would never hurt my kids—he might even be protective of them, if he knew what Maddie had been through.
At least he would understand my need to protect her.
I wanted to tell him, but it wasn’t so easy for me to talk about it. It was all still so fresh, so raw.
“I’m sorry,” I said after a few moments. “That’s awful.”
“It is. But we all have awful things in our lives. She’s doing much better now, though, and she’s got a hell of a lot more courage than I do. Dana faced her fears head-on and came out ahead.”
“Facing your fears is a lot easier said than done.”
“Yeah.” He sounded resigned. “Rachel?”
“Yes?”
“I have to call it a night. We have a game tomorrow afternoon, so it’ll be an early morning. Can I call you again afterward?”
“I don’t—” I stopped myself from telling him no. It was second nature for me now to do that, but maybe it wasn’t what was best for me or my kids. “Yes, you can call me. I’d like that.”
“Thank God.”
We said good night and hung up, and I saved his number in my phone.
That night, he starred in all my dreams.
Kissing me.
For the rest of our road trip, I’d called Rachel every night. She still hadn’t started opening up to me, not about whatever it was that had her overprotective instincts kicked into high gear, but she was starting to talk a little more. Each call, she’d stayed on the line a little longer.
We’d talked about her love of Texas barbeque—not that nasty stuff other states made and called barbeque—country dancing, superhero movies, and the Wonder Pets, and she told me that even just the sound of Elmo’s voice was enough to make her want to gouge out her eyes with a dull fork.
I’d told her that I would almost always prefer to read a book than watch a movie, that I could go the rest of my life without another bite of chocolate and never miss it, and that the fact that I could quote almost every line in The Princess Bride did not mean I would ever tire of watching it. Every time it came on, I watched.
We’d flown home Thursday night after a game against the Florida Panthers, not getting in until two a.m., and so Friday morning’s game-day skate was optional. Babs decided he was going to sleep in and skip the skate. I might have done the same, if not for the fact that I wanted the chance to see Rachel, and going in to the office was my best chance of getting some face time with her as soon as possible.
The only other guys who showed up to the skate that morning were Jonny, who was always fighting for his spot on the roster just like I was, Jared Tucker, a rookie who was barely holding onto a fourth-line position, and Shawn Nelson, the goaltender called up from the AHL to fill in for as long as Nicky stayed out with his concussion.
We probably weren’t the brightest guys on the team to show up for an optional skate after such a late night. No one ever said hockey players were smart, though.
Hammer ran us all through some drills, but he took it pretty easy on us for once. Mainly we just tried to get the blood flowing in our legs again after sitting on a plane for hours after a game. It was nothing like the skate he’d put me through right before I was cleared for contact again. Thank God. I didn’t think I could have handled that kind of skate today.
When he let us go, we hit the showers and got dressed. On game days, the media isn’t allowed in for an official scrum until after the game, so I didn’t have to stick around and answer any questions.
Jonny stopped me before I could head out of the locker room. “Want to grab a bite at Amani’s?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I need to head up to Jim’s office for a minute first, though.”
“You mean Rachel’s office?” He smirked, but he didn’t give me a hard time about it. Not like some of the guys had been while we were out on the road.
I didn’t respond. I just made my way up the stairs and around the corner. Martha saw me and gave me a brief nod, but she kept doing whatever she was doing without any other acknowledgment. Rachel was facing the other direction, so she didn’t realize I was there.
She had her phone tucked between her cheek and shoulder. Her fingers flew over her keyboard, frantically typing while she listened to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Yes, I’ll be sure that’s put in the notes.” She stopped typing long enough to reach for a manila file that was buried beneath a stack of mail and open it. Her eyes fell to the document inside the file, and she started typing again. “Yes, sir, I’m putting it in right now. You have a good afternoon as well. Good-bye.”
She was still typing with the phone receiver caught between her chin and shoulder for a few moments after the call had been completed.
I moved over behind her desk and lifted the receiver away. “You’ll get a crick in your neck if you aren’t careful.”
She jumped but recovered herself pretty quickly. Other than the blush. Red flames licked all over her cheeks, and they only intensified when she spun in her chair and looked at me. “What are you doing here?”
I put the receiver back on its cradle. “I work here, too, you know. I’m just saying hi. It was too late last night.” And then there was the fact that I didn’t trust myself to keep my hands off her if I’d knocked on her door when we got back last night. And I’d promised her I’d wait until she trusted me to kiss her again. I had no intention of going back on that promise.
“Hi,” she murmured. An inch at a time, she pushed her chair back on its rollers, until it ran into her desk and she couldn’t go any further.
I could have backed up some to give her a little more room. What was the fun in that, though? I liked seeing her a little flustered…and knowing I was the cause of it. I waited a few moments longer than I probably should have before stepping back. “Are you bringing the kids to the game tonight? No school tomorrow.”
“Tuck would never let me hear the end of it if we didn’t come.”
The thought that she’d be there left me unreasonably giddy. I tried to shake it off, to react like it wasn’t a big deal. “Good. Dana can’t wait to see you again. She has big plans to latch onto you in the owner’s box tonight and not let go.”
“The owner’s box?” Rachel shook her head, confusion turning her lips down into a cute pout. “We’re just using the tickets I g
et for working here.”
Ah. Yeah. I was getting ahead of myself. The players’ wives and girlfriends all hung out in Mr. Engels’s box during the games—their kids, too, if they brought them. He and his wife were probably going to be there tonight, since he was in town for the Christmas party tomorrow. In my mind, I was already placing her among them.
“Right,” I finally said. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I’m just so used to my sister being up there, but she’s Zee’s girlfriend…”
Martha let out a snort that she tried to disguise as a cough. I shot her a look, but she didn’t even bother to glance up at me. I really didn’t need the added awkwardness of trying to get Rachel to go out with me—she may not be my girlfriend yet, but I wanted her to be—while Martha listened to my every move. I didn’t really have much choice in the matter, at least not if I intended to keep going since I’d already started.
“Well, will you wait for me after the game?” I asked. “I’ll come find you once I’m finished, and we can take the kids—”
“Home,” she interrupted me firmly. “It may not be a school night, but it will be plenty late by the time the game’s over.”
“Okay. We can take the kids home, and maybe I can stay and…and talk a while.”
She blushed again, and I knew whatever she was thinking about, it wasn’t talking. “Maybe,” she agreed. She spun her chair around again and started sorting through the stack of mail I’d noticed earlier. “We’ll wait for you afterward. But don’t make us wait too long. Tuck gets cranky if he doesn’t get to bed soon enough, and if that happens, you’ll be the one dealing with him.”
I worked my way out from behind her desk. “That’s settled, then. It’s a date,” I said, taking off down the hall toward the stairs again.
“It’s not a date,” Rachel called after me.
“Sounds like a date to me,” Martha put in.
That sealed the deal. Martha was officially my hero.
I was gasping for breath as I skated over to the bench, my hands on my knees to aid the process of filling my lungs with oxygen. The other guys on the ice with me seemed like they were in equally bad shape. Scotty looked livid, his eyes practically bulging out of their sockets and his face far redder than could possibly be healthy. Hammer and Bergy—Mattias Bergstrom, the other assistant coach—didn’t look any happier.
The team had hit a rough patch when we’d lost Nicky to that concussion on the road trip. Hunter Fielding was our backup this season after Jack Boyle retired over the summer. Hunter had played fine earlier in the year, but when we’d needed him to become our number one goaltender all of a sudden, he’d lost his confidence. He’d been leaking goals like a sieve, and that made the rest of us not trust him to do the job he was out there to do.
Jim had called Shawn Nelson up from the Seattle Storm to come serve as his backup, but he’d only played in relief situations at the NHL level. Those instances hadn’t gone very well. He’d been just as leaky as Fielding so far, and so everyone else on the team was suddenly trying to do too much.
This was quickly becoming a vicious cycle—and there was no telling how long it would be before we pulled ourselves out of it.
The stress of it all was getting to Scotty. In all his years of coaching in the NHL, I’d never seen him so visibly agitated. Granted, I’d seen him on TV much of that time and not in person. Things like this are difficult to mask for the cameras, though.
Scotty had just called for time-out even though we were only halfway through the second period because we’d gotten hemmed into our zone. The LA Kings were completely dominating us with their forecheck, and we’d iced the puck twice in a row. The NHL only allowed a single time-out per team each game, and most coaches preferred to save them for the end of the game.
Scotty hated using his before some late moment in the third period, especially when the score was pretty tight—like now, where we were only trailing the Kings by a single goal.
My line—Zee, Antoine Gagnon, and me—and two of our defensemen, Peter Nylund and Slava Lukashenko, had all been stuck out on the ice for well over three minutes of playing time. All season long, Scotty had been hammering home the idea that he only wanted us to take thirty-to-forty-five-second shifts—anything longer than that was too long. Considering that, we were definitely in his doghouse tonight.
“Get your fucking heads out of your fucking asses,” Scotty yelled as soon as the five of us who’d been on the ice reached the bench. “They’re shooting on Fielding at will, and all you assholes can do is wheeze at the puck while it flies past you. You’re fucking hanging him out to dry.” He threw a clipboard at the open area behind the bench that led to the tunnel and looked over at his assistant coaches. “You two fucking deal with them. I don’t even want to fucking look at them anymore.”
Bergy immediately took over. “Zee, you’re going to do whatever the fuck you need to do to beat Stoll, for once this whole fucking game. I don’t care how good he is, this time you’re going to fucking be better. Gags and Soupy, you’re going to tie your guy’s stick up so he can’t do shit. Whoever wins the puck, you get it back to Ny.” Then his eyes narrowed on Ny. “If you fucking ice the puck again, the whole damn team is going to pay for it later. Don’t you fucking do it.”
“I’m not going to—”
“That’s right, you’re not going to ice the fucking puck one more time,” Bergy said, interrupting Ny. “All five of you are going to work together, making short, crisp passes, and you’re going to get the damn puck out of our zone. Then you get your asses off the ice.”
The horn sounded, signaling the end of our time-out. I could still barely get a good breath in my lungs, but it didn’t matter. We had to get back out there.
I took my spot on the left side of the face-off circle, lining up against Drew Doughty of the Kings. He was one of those guys who’d cheat as much as he could until he finally got penalized for it. Already tonight, he’d cross-checked me at least a half dozen times, and he’d slashed the hell out of my left leg while none of the refs were looking.
With each second that ticked by before the linesman dropped the puck, Doughty crept closer and closer to my side of the circle, inching into my space. I dug my skate into the ice and jabbed my stick over his. He elbowed me hard enough that I let up for just a second, and he got his stick free right as the puck hit the ice.
Stoll won the draw cleanly and sent it over to one of his linemates. Doughty slashed me again and retreated toward the blue line. I followed him, ready to dive and block a shot if he got the puck.
The Kings forwards cycled the puck down low, shooting it on Hunter every chance they could. We were all so gassed, we couldn’t keep up with them. Stoll went behind the net with it. Ny and Luka both followed him instead of one of them staying at the net with Hunter like they should have.
That mental lapse opened up a seam. Stoll sent a pretty pass straight for Doughty. I dove to block the pass, but I missed and went crashing into the boards with my legs in an awkward position.
Doughty didn’t even settle the puck. He one-timed it with a slap shot.
I should have been in position to block it. That was my fucking job. My responsibility.
I wasn’t.
The shot hit the crossbar, then the post, and then it went in the net. They were up three to one.
I was still crumpled in a heap on the ice, and I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to put any weight on my left ankle.
Tuck shifted on my lap, settling his head more fully on my upper arm. A thin line of drool trickled from the corner of his mouth and pooled on my sweater. He didn’t wake up. I was halfway surprised he’d fallen asleep at all. I guess the excitement of the night and the late hour had been too much for him, and instead of just getting cranky, he’d zonked out.
He’d always slept like a log. Unlike Maddie. For years, she would wake up from the tiniest movements, the quietest sounds. I had a feeling it had an awful lot to do with Jason and all the things he’d done to her.
<
br /> I tried to pull my other arm around enough to see my watch, but I dislodged her in the process. She’d fallen asleep in her seat, leaning over to use me as a pillow just like her brother was. Her head snapped up, and she blinked at me. The garish neon lights of the Jumbotron above us and the signage going all the way around the arena couldn’t be an easy sight for a half-asleep little girl.
“Sorry, hon,” I said. “I just need to see what time it is.”
She nodded and pulled on the ends of her sleeves to better cover her fingers. “Mr. Soupy still hasn’t come out?” she whispered.
No, Brenden still hadn’t come, and the game had ended well over an hour ago. My watch read 10:52—way too late for these kids to be out, whether there was school tomorrow or not. I’d felt like an idiot staying in the stands with my two kids after the game finished, but I didn’t have the first clue where else we should wait for him. He’d said he would find us, and silly me, I’d taken him at his word. The last of the fans had trickled out into the concourse more than half an hour ago, and I’d stopped hearing the noises of a crowd not long after.
A lot of the people had left the game early, even. The Storm had lost the game badly, and about halfway through the third period the stands had started looking a lot barer than they had been at the start. At the end of the game, most of the fans remaining had booed the team off the ice. I’d never seen anything like it.
Workers were going through the seats and cleaning up the postgame mess, occasionally glancing up and giving me strange looks. I’d be giving me a strange look, too. Why on earth would anyone normal stick around so long after a game finished, especially with two kids? I couldn’t come up with many reasonable answers.
Nothing that came to mind worked, and the truth sounded pathetic.
I looked Maddie in the eye and sighed. “No, sweetie. He still hasn’t come. I think maybe he forgot.” Surely he was gone by now.
“Are we going home then?” she asked.
There wasn’t much point in waiting any longer. “Yeah, let’s go. Are you awake enough to walk?”
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