Dropping Gloves

by Catherine Gayle

  “This is what they’ve been doing to you all along, isn’t it?” For the first time, I really thought I understood how damaging her years in Hollywood had been. It had gone far beyond Jesse Carmichael and Beau Brunetti. The ways those two had hurt her had only been the tip of the iceberg.

  She nodded, hugging her arms to her chest. “Pretty much. They sneak around, following everything you do, take a pic, find a way to make it incriminating in some way, and ruin your life.”

  Several of the other guys had already come and gone from the owner’s box, and I knew I was running out of time before I needed to get down to the locker room. I kissed her on the forehead. “I’m not going to let them ruin your life,” I said.

  She nodded, but she didn’t seem as if she believed a word out of my mouth. I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t have the first clue how I would prevent the paparazzi from doing anything, and it might not even be possible.

  But I’d be damned if I didn’t try.

  The game against the Thunderbirds turned out to be an absolute blowout. Nicky had a shutout, the Storm put up eight goals, and the T-Birds were an utter wreck throughout. I felt bad for Zee, Hunter, and Razor having to play for a team that had zero chance of getting to the playoffs, and likely wouldn’t for years to come. They said all the right things to the media, of course—well, now Hunter did, even if he’d let a few choice sound bites fly when he’d first been claimed in the expansion draft—but it wasn’t hard for anyone who knew those three to realize they would rather be playing for any other team in the league.

  Jamie must have filled in the Storm’s head honchos on the TMZ stuff before the game, because Rachel sat down next to me midway through the third period. She wasn’t just Soupy’s wife. She was also Jim Sutter’s assistant.

  She dropped her voice and leaned in close. “Does your mom know yet?”

  I nodded. “Filled her in during the first intermission.”

  “Good. Jim’s already got PR working on it in conjunction with the Thunderbirds. We’re going to do everything we can to squash it as what it was—completely innocent.”

  I wrung my hands together. I’d been doing a lot of that today. “I just hate that Razor’s being dragged into this. I mean, he just wanted to hang out with Jamie for a bit. They never get to see each other.”

  “He’s a big boy. He can take it.” One of the twins waddled over and held up her arms, and Rachel instinctively drew her onto her lap. “I can see if Jim can sneak you in to talk to him for a minute after the game without the media around, if you want.”

  “Could you?” I owed him an apology for involving him in my screwed-up life, if nothing else.

  A few text messages later, it was all arranged. When the final horn sounded, I went with Davey through some back hallways and a private elevator, and he took me straight to an entrance to the visiting team’s area. I’d been all over this building through the years, but only on the home team’s side. It felt strange to turn right instead of left at certain points. Another security guard stopped us at the double doors leading to the locker room and went inside, and a couple of minutes later, Razor came out. He was covered in sweat and still had on his skates, breezers, and all of the lower half of his equipment, even though he’d removed his jersey and shoulder pads.

  The two security guards stepped a discreet distance away and started up a conversation, leaving us to talk.

  “Hey, Katie,” Razor said, rubbing a towel over his face and bare chest.

  “Hey,” I said, blushing. “I guess you know about…” I caught myself trying to read some of the tattoos on his naked skin that I’d never known he had, and snapped my head up. His tats were none of my business, nor was his chest or any other part of his body.

  He had a cocky grin at the best of times, but it was cockier than ever right now. No doubt he’d caught me gawking at him. “About the TMZ shit?” he finished for me.

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s all kinds of fucked up. Sorry they’re screwing you around like that. No pun intended.”

  I had no doubt he’d meant every bit of it. That was just Razor.

  “I’m the one who’s sorry,” I said. “If I’d thought they would find me here, I would have stayed home and left you and Jamie to hang out without me.”

  Razor let out a snort. “You think I’m worried about it? When the girls back in Tulsa find out that I’m open to a threesome, they’ll be all over me whether it’s true or not. I’m sure this will only help me score more than I already am.”

  I scowled up at him. “Charming.”

  “It was a joke. I’m not in need of that much de-douchifying. De-douchification? Whatever.” He waved a hand, dismissing his attempt at coming up with a real word.

  “I come down here to apologize to you, and this is what I get.” I laughed. “You’re something else, Razor.”

  He winked. “That’s why the ladies love me. But seriously, there’s not a fucking thing you need to apologize for. Don’t worry about me. I can handle it. I’m just worried about you and Babs.”

  “I don’t want your family to think you’ve done anything wrong.”

  “I can promise you, my mom’s seen and done much worse than anything some tabloid thinks they can peg on me. This won’t even faze her for a second. Now, Mrs. Jernigan, on the other hand? She’ll throw a shit-fit.” He grinned at me, the kind of wicked grin I recognized as meaning he was up to no good, as usual. Mr. and Mrs. Jernigan were the husband-and-wife ministry team who’d made a fortune with their massive church, televised sermons, and Bible-study books. They’d decided to invest their earnings by buying a hockey team, for some reason. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how a guy like Razor was getting along with them at the helm, let alone how a couple of morally upright people were putting up with him and his shenanigans, but he seemed like the same Razor I’d known when he’d played in Portland—no concern at all for what anyone else thought. He was always himself, no matter the consequences.

  “But while you’re down here and Babs isn’t around,” he said slyly. “Did he finally get some? He fed me some pansy I don’t kiss and tell bullshit and threatened to break my nose when I asked earlier, which makes me think he got laid. So did he?”

  “I have to go,” I said, rolling my eyes and spinning on my heel before retreating down the tunnel.

  “He did! I could kiss you for that, Katie. I could totally fucking kiss you.”

  I kept walking but called over my shoulder, “You already did. Just check TMZ if you don’t remember.”

  The Storm’s win against the Thunderbirds might have been a positive sign of the team coming together, finally, working out their differences and figuring out how to play together as a cohesive unit. That was certainly what everyone hoped, but it didn’t prove to be the case.

  In their very next game against the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Storm couldn’t score at all despite getting more than forty shots on the Leafs’ goaltender, Jonathan Bernier, and Nicky let in three Leafs goals in the first period alone. Bergy sat him on the bench and sent in Sean “Bobby” Roberts, the Storm’s backup goalie, when the teams returned for the second. That didn’t work out much better. They lost the game five to nothing thanks to stellar goaltending from Bernier and a hat trick from Joffrey Lupul.

  The script flipped on the Storm again in the next game when they played the Winnipeg Jets. Nicky might as well have stood on his head, making all the “easy” saves alongside a number of spectacular ones, and the Storm’s offense was clicking like they rarely had all season so far. The problem that night was that they completely forgot how to play defense—a fact the Jets took advantage of at every turn. The Storm squeaked out a win, but they didn’t deserve it. Not by a mile.

  They couldn’t seem to play a solid game unless they were up against a team that was in shambles, and that was the talk every night in the owner’s box between the wives and girlfriends. Apparently now I was one of them instead of one of the kids. I’d been hanging out with them for years
, but things seemed different now.

  One thing I’d learned in my time with these women was that while each of them had her own life and interests, they all very much lived and died right along with their men during these games. Whatever was happening with the team inevitably came home with the guys, and that meant the women spent a lot of time trying to sort out how best to help them.

  That extended to helping each other, too. Last season, when Nicky’s sister had passed away leaving him with his niece and nephews to look after, these women had dropped everything in order to help Nicky and Jessica find their footing. That was just the latest in a long string of events where they’d all banded together to support each other, proving Jim Sutter’s mantra that the Portland Storm was a family. Weddings, births, illnesses, deaths, injuries, birthdays—the fact was, with the guys on the road so much, sometimes the women of the Storm family saw each other more than we saw our guys.

  They’d banded around me before, when I’d had cancer the first time. That was back before my reputation was in tatters, though, so I could understand that.

  They’d done it again a few days ago, though, when all the news outlets started putting out their crazy stories about me, Jamie, and Razor. They were sticking close to me, never letting me be seen anywhere alone. It was like they were putting up a front around me, trying to show the world that whatever might be said about me, they were with me. I wasn’t sure how well it was working so far, since I still saw more vicious rumors and innuendo every time I flipped on the TV or cracked open the Internet, but at least the girls were helping to prevent anything new from showing up there. Through it all, I felt more and more…confused. Seriously confused. I didn’t get why they would put their own reputations on the line by being seen with me if they could avoid it.

  And if that wasn’t enough, I could tell they wanted to rally around me again over the cancer returning, too. I hadn’t told anyone but my family and Jamie that I was sick again. I wasn’t ready to deal with the sympathy and well wishes and whatnot. It sometimes felt stifling, smothering, especially when there wasn’t a damn thing they could do that would help.

  But they knew.

  It was clear because of the way they were treating me when we were all together. It wasn’t the kind of girl talk and giggling I would have expected when they’d figured out Jamie and I were finally a couple. It was more like they were treating me with kid gloves, scooching over to be sure I was in the center of things, getting up to grab a drink for me instead of letting me get it myself, asking if I was warm enough or if I needed to borrow a sweater.

  They knew. I hadn’t told them, but they knew. At this point, it didn’t even matter how they had learned or why someone had thought it necessary to tell them. I was just resigned to it, and I figured I might as well come clean so they could stop pussyfooting around the issue.

  It was Sunday night during the first intermission of a tie game against the Chicago Blackhawks. The score didn’t even come close to telling the whole story of the game so far, as was becoming a trend with this year’s team. The Storm hadn’t been playing well at all, and a few of the guys were making the kinds of mistakes with the puck that would undoubtedly get Bergy’s blood boiling. I had a feeling they were in the locker room right now getting an earful from him.

  I was set to start radiation tomorrow morning. Mia and Rachel had gone down to the locker room because Q had gotten hurt a few minutes ago, but the rest of the regular crew were here. I steeled myself for fending off whatever help they tried to insist on giving me and dove in. “So I guess you all know by now that my cancer’s back,” I said, and they stopped talking and laughing almost instantaneously.

  Mom looked like she was about to burst into tears, even though I’d barely said a thing, and Jessica closed down the laptop she’d just opened and pushed it aside. Brie nodded, like she’d been waiting for this. Sara was sitting right beside me, Connor curled up and sleeping on the bit of lap her pregnant belly wasn’t covering. She took my hand, which was a big deal for Sara Johnson. She’d never been the touchy-feely sort.

  “I’ll be starting radiation tomorrow.” I was doing my best not to get choked up but failing miserably.

  “Tell us what you need,” Brie said.

  I shook my head. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Bullshit,” Sara said. “We can hold your hair back when you puke. We can bring you movies and chocolate and soup. We can drive you to doctor’s appointments or the hospital, or pick up groceries, or take you to the damn pharmacy. We can help you get out of the house when you’re up to it. We can fucking cry with you when you need to cry. Don’t try to push us away, Katie. I think you should fucking know by now that we won’t let you.”

  I looked to Mom for help. She knew. She understood. But she just nodded for me to go on with tears in her eyes.

  I clenched my hands into fists, digging them down between the arms of the chair and the cushion. “I know you want to help. All of you. I get it, but you can’t this time. I can’t be around any of you. The doctors said I have to be completely isolated for a few days with every treatment.”

  “Completely?” Jessica asked. “No one can be near you at all?”

  “No one who’s pregnant. No kids or animals.”

  “So that rules out the kids, animals, Brie, and Sara,” Jessica said, being her usual, logical self. “But not your parents. Not me. Not Rachel and Mia and anyone else we can get involved. Not the guys.”

  The others nodded.

  “But you have to go home to your kids and pets. What if you get exposed to radiation and don’t get it all washed away before you go home?”

  “We’ll be really careful,” she said. “You’ve got an extra bathroom at your house, right? So we can bring extra clothes and towels, take a shower in the bathroom you’re not using before we leave, and make sure there’s no trace of anything harmful.”

  My jaw dropped. “That’s crazy. There’s no reason for any of you to go through all that.”

  “There’s every reason for it,” Brie said. “You’re the reason. You can bet if I wasn’t pregnant, I would be there.”

  Jessica nodded. “There are enough of us around that we can make sure you’re never alone unless you want to be.”

  “I do—”

  “You don’t get to call us off yet,” Mom interrupted. “Not until you’ve given us a chance to overwhelm you with love.”

  “And Brie and I can call you and text you and drive you batshit crazy on FaceTime since we can’t be there,” Sara added.

  Brie gave a decisive nod. “Exactly.”

  “Exactly what?” Rachel asked as she and Mia came back in. She plopped down in the seat on my other side. “Are we finally planning for cancer treatments? Jim’s been asking me how things were progressing with that, so he could help sort out what the team can do.”

  “The team can’t do anything,” I said, throwing up my hands.

  “You really think that’s going to fly with them?” This time it was Julianne d’Aragon, Danger’s wife. She’d been keeping an eye on Elin and Étienne to be sure they didn’t sneak off alone somewhere, but now some of the older kids were coming over to join us, so she came, too. Julianne took a seat facing me and pinned me with the sort of mothering look she’d perfected probably around the same time Mom had. “Some of these guys have known you since you were thirteen years old. They think of you as a kid sister. Jim and most of the front office think of you as a daughter or a niece. They’re not going to let you shut them out. None of us are.”

  Maddie Campbell was one of the kids who’d just joined us. She was thirteen now, but she’d been wise beyond her years for as long as I’d known her. She sat cross-legged on the floor nearby and gave me the shy smile I’d come to be very familiar with, and it took me back to nights sitting in this box with her, sharing her blanket and letting her surprise me with her insights. “I don’t think Mr. Jamie’s going to stay away no matter what you tell him, so I think you’re just going to have
to accept that everyone else is going to help, too. Wherever he goes, the rest of them eventually follow.”

  And with that, the part of the discussion in which they allowed me to argue effectively came to an end. Whether I wanted their help or not, I was going to get it. I could live with it, but I wished I felt better about accepting it.

  Throughout the rest of the game, they discussed safety measures they’d have to take and worked out a schedule, and I waited until Jamie was done so he could take me home. Right now, he was the only thing I wanted.

  A thousand thoughts were racing through my head as Jamie drove us back to his house. It felt good to be cared about so much that the Storm’s WAGs weren’t going to let me go through it alone, but I wasn’t sure I deserved that sort of concern again. Being associated with me right now shouldn’t be on any of their to-do lists, because the firestorm of gossip mag fodder still hadn’t died out, and there were a lot of risks they would be running in terms of their health if they were with me. I didn’t know how to stop them, though, and I wasn’t sure I had the energy for it, anyway. Even if I did right now, as soon as the radiation kicked in, it would knock me on my ass and zap any energy I had left. I supposed I would just have to go with the flow, but that wasn’t something I was very good at.

  Over the previous few days, I’d done a lot in order to get settled in my new house. In the mornings and early afternoons, while Jamie and Dad had been busy with practices and other team functions, I’d spent a lot of time with Mom. We’d gone shopping for different knickknacks for the house and planned how to put together my studio.

  Dad had come over in the afternoons to help me paint the walls and measure the space. He wanted to do a built-in for me along one wall, even though I’d told him I could hire a contractor to do it. I’m your father, he’d said. Let me do this one thing for you. He hadn’t always been able to do the sorts of father-daughter things he’d wanted to over the years, so I’d given in, despite my reservations about his construction skills. He’d been tinkering with things in the garage lately, Mom had told me. She hadn’t seen anything he’d made yet, but maybe he would surprise us all.