Joel
“Does your woman like to play with handcuffs in the bedroom too?”
I’d been on the ice less than a minute.
It was still warm-ups.
I couldn’t skate over the red line and knock the little shit to the ice, couldn’t pummel him and teach him a lesson.
Not yet, anyway.
But it had been three days since my Rosie’s world exploded.
The coverage of the “Fallen Mayor” was wide and unrelenting.
So, it was no surprise this asshole was trying to dish it out on the ice.
I still wanted to stab the fucker with my skate though.
“Ignore him,” Fox, my teammate who was battling for lumbersexual bachelor of the year with his bushy ass beard and pregame plaid suits, muttered. “You need to focus on the game.”
He was right.
If we won this one, we’d be off to the next round.
And I wanted nothing more than to send that little fucker on the other team packing.
End their season.
Let them get a head start on their golf game.
While we kept going.
While we moved on to our battle for the Calder Cup.
We had the team to do it this season.
But I was tired.
I wanted to be back at my house, sitting with Rosie, with our former teammate—and now official NHLer—Axel, his wife, Bailey, who was my Rosie’s niece (though they only had two years between them). I wanted to be with my parents, with Dessie, closing ranks around Rosie, making her feel safe and protected and not alone.
I wanted to be keeping an eye on Annie, who may have given her daughter the key to her innocence, but who—frankly—I didn’t trust.
Not after she’d spent a lifetime neglecting her daughter, making her feel unworthy of love.
Like Rosie was never enough—never good enough, never working hard enough, a poor replacement for her deceased brother.
I wanted to be going through Rosie’s planners and that flash drive with my dad and the rest of them, wanted to be there when Phoebe and Dave, the police chief, came by.
But…hockey.
My team relying on me.
Rosie ill-content to let me avoid my responsibilities.
And…I’d left them once and they won. Now I needed to be here, doing my part, pulling my weight—
“Are those cuffs fur-lined?” the little shit called.
“I’m going to put him through the glass,” I muttered, clenching my hands around my stick, probably cracking the composite of fiberglass and carbon fiber.
But I didn’t skate across the ice and kill the motherfucker, so that was a victory.
“We’re all going to put him through the glass,” Fox said.
“All of us. All fucking night,” Ryan, another teammate, said, his tone deadly.
Not a surprise.
I was protective, but Ryan took that to an extreme.
And suddenly, I felt better.
Because I wasn’t fucking alone. Because my Rosie was surrounded and protected, and because these guys had my back.
Because I was going to take every fucking opportunity to blast that motherfucker.
Boom!
The noise echoed through the arena, boards shaking, glass swaying, the crowd’s collective “Oh!” trailing shortly after.
Fox following through on his promise earlier.
To crush that motherfucker.
But I was focused right then.
So, it didn’t matter.
Because I was already moving, scooping up the puck, tearing up the left side of the ice, carrying it over the blue line.
The defender was flat-footed, a little slow, giving me way too much space.
Clearly, they thought I was going to pass.
And normally, I would have. I was a generous player with good game sense, and my shot wasn’t my strongest asset.
I was a passer, a playmaker.
I preferred it that way.
Today, though, I was fucking pissed.
And that D was giving me space to move into the offensive zone, to streak toward the net, to cut toward the center.
So, I was taking it all the way in.
I held the puck on my forehead, strode forward once, twice more.
Lifted my stick to fake a shot.
Then rode my edges hard to the right—
A sharp turn to the left, drawing the puck between my legs, tipping it off my skate.
The goalie was still following my stick, still sliding to the right, still trying to recover from my cut back to the left.
Too late.
The puck bounced forward off my skate, exactly where I’d practiced it a hundred, a thousand times before.
Skate to…stick.
A flick of my wrist and the puck was in the back of the net.
Silence for a single heartbeat.
Then the red light flashed on and the crowd erupted.
I slid to a stop, braced because—
Yup.
There it was. My breath being sent out of me in a rush as my teammates closed in, wrapping their arms around me, hugging me and smacking me on the back, sending me crashing into the boards, to the glass, a chorus of “Fuck yeahs!” filling my ears.
I looked through the mess of arms and bodies, sticks and gloved hands, and saw that little shit from earlier still peeling himself up off the ice.
And I smiled.