Chapter four #2
But the big one wasn’t done. He put his hand flat on my chest and gave a little shove. Not hard. Just enough to make the point.
I looked down at his hand, then back at his face.
A thousand things ran through my head—the last two months of keeping my mouth shut, the year before that of pretending not to bleed, every coach who’d ever said be professional, don’t let them get to you, just stick to the system.
I thought of Kincaid, the way he’d said you’re not on trial, and felt the laugh lines under my skin like an echo.
“Did you want an autograph?” I said.
He moved, fast, like he’d been waiting for me to swing first. His hand came up, and for a split second I saw the shape of it, the way his fist closed, and I stepped just enough to the side that his knuckles hit the wood of the doorframe instead of my jaw.
The noise was sharp. Clear as a bell.
He swore loud enough that it would carry into the hallway.
“Jesus,” said the third guy, grabbing his arm. “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that?”
The noise the big guy made was almost surprised.
He lunged again, his hand catching my shoulder this time and shoving me back into the tile with a dull, echoing thud.
I just stood for half a second, feeling the way the world seemed to thin at the edges when adrenaline hit you cold and fast. Outnumbered, outweighed, and apparently the designated villain tonight.
Someone caught my arm. Another set of hands, rougher, and he twisted so hard I thought he’d rip it off.
I brought my knee up, not aiming, just reflex, and it landed somewhere soft enough that one of them gasped and let go.
I tried to step sideways. Bathroom floor slick, the smell of beer and urinals.
The third guy, who’d been trying to play peacemaker, got shoved against the countertop and just stayed there, watching. Not my problem.
The big one’s fist came at my face. I ducked, not enough, not fast enough—the edge of it caught me across the cheekbone, and my eyes watered instantly.
Another blow, this time lower, into my ribs.
The world compressed to the width of his fist and the inside of my lungs.
I tried to say something, but it came out a grunt.
“Not so tough now, are you?” he sneered, and someone else laughed, high and brittle.
I hit him back, open palm to his throat. Not elegant, but it connected, and for a second he staggered, hand at his neck, and I thought: you can just leave. Just go.
But that wasn’t how these things went. Never had been.
The other one caught me around the waist and drove me back.
My shoulder hit the edge of the sink. Metal bit into bone.
I lashed out with an elbow and caught someone in the mouth this time; he spat blood and swore, but it only made him angrier, and now all three were involved, shoving and cursing.
The smallest one kicked my knee, and pain exploded white-hot up my leg.
I swung blindly, made contact with hair and skin, but the numbers weren’t in my favor. Felt a fist in my gut, hard enough I doubled over. Second punch, this one to the back of my neck. I staggered forward, hands on the edge of the sink, struggling to keep upright.
“Should’ve stayed on your own side of the ice, asshole,” someone said behind me. Their voices blurred together, thick with alcohol and whatever else men like this carried around for nights like these.
Something sharp cracked against my jaw. My vision flickered, light at the corners. I tasted blood, bitter and hot. My head slammed into the tile, and for a second, everything went black, then came roaring back. The biggest one had me by the collar of my shirt, twisting, forcing my face up.
He smiled, mean and pleased with himself, and I hated him, not for the fight, but for how familiar this was. The old ritual: find the weak spot, exploit it, don’t let up until you’re sure the other guy won’t get up again.
I registered the third man dashing from the room, but then my arms got grabbed from behind, and the second crack to my jaw finished me off.
Theron
My phone jumped on the nightstand. Renaud’s name lit up the screen. I snatched it up.
“Coach,” Renaud said, calm as ever.
“What’s going on?” I forced my voice to steady.
“We’re at Northwestern Memorial ER. Dante got jumped in a hotel bathroom—three on one. He’s with a doctor now.”
Silence slammed into me. The world paused, like the air itself was bracing for impact. “Is he awake?”
“He is now. Was out cold when we found him.” A sharp noise behind him—door? nurse?—and Renaud’s voice tightened. “They’re running scans. The guy who hit him was a big bastard. Could be nothing, but you know.”
I knew. Every scar, every hit I saw on the ice, told me the cost. “Who’s with you?”
“Me, Keegan, Ash, Cole. I sent the rest back to their rooms.”
Good call. Renaud always did right under fire. “Stay with him. I’m coming.”
He made a sound—part curse, part laugh—and hung up.
I stared at the blank screen, tasted smoke in my mouth because my dragon liked the news as much as I did.
I didn’t need to admit how fast my heart was pounding.
Jacket on, key card, wallet. Lobby empty, desk clerk buried in paperwork.
I slipped out into the roar of the city, the wind biting.
Old instincts pushed me forward, urged on by my beast. Only four blocks down Michigan.
I speed-walked every step because a cab would take longer, mind locked on Russo’s name, on that bathroom floor where a kid half my size had been beaten for walking into the wrong place.
ER lights blinded me when I walked in. Security guard gave a curt nod and let me through. Renaud stood at attention as I approached. “They’re with him. That’s Nurse Jacobs.” He pointed.
I cut across. “I’m Kincaid. Dante Russo’s coach.”
She checked her chart. “Dr. Patel has him. Laceration on the cheek, swelling, possible concussion. Maybe a cracked rib. Lots of bruising.” I nodded. Didn’t need her to fill in the blanks. I’d seen bodies like this before.
Back to Renaud where Keegan, Ash, and Cole were. “Keegan and I found him,” Renaud said. “He was out maybe three minutes. Cole saw them leave—Grizzlies fans, loud in the bar. Cops have CCTV. Doctor wouldn’t let Dante talk to them yet.”
I exhaled. Dante just got his shot back. Now this. “Think they got a good look?”
“Camera footage is clear. Security’s on it.” I didn’t ask Max how he knew. His dragon had a persuasive quality to him that went further than being the guy everyone was drawn to.
We stared at the doors. Time slowed. My chest felt tight. Renaud never sat. He didn’t need to—his patience was harder than steel.
After what felt like forever, the door cracked open and Nurse Jacobs waved us in. Russo was on the exam table, shirt off, blood drying on his jaw and up one side of his face, turning dark at the edges. He looked at me, then away, as if embarrassed to be found like this.
The doctor was young, efficient. “MRI’s clear. No major damage, but he took a good hit to the head. Mild concussion. Bruising, laceration on the left cheek, and bruised but not cracked ribs. He’ll be sore, but nothing more.”
“Not my first time,” Russo said. His voice was flat. “I’m fine.”
He wasn’t fine. His eyes were glassy, and one hand shook a little when he tried to sit up. I could see the blood on his fingers, ground into the skin in uneven streaks.
I nodded at the doctor. “Thank you.”
She left.
Renaud stepped in first. “You need anything? Water. Food.”
Russo shook his head, then winced at the movement. “Just want to get out of here.”
He looked at me then. Eyes dark, wide, a little unfocused, but steady. “Coach.”
I didn’t smile. The moment didn’t warrant a smile. “I’m glad you’re all right,” I said.
He blinked once, like that was an answer that didn’t make sense. Renaud said something quiet to Russo about getting him a shirt and stepped back to give him space, and I used that moment to look away.
I walked to the narrow window at the end of the examination bay. It looked out on a service alley—a loading dock, a dumpster, a single sodium light turning the concrete the color of old bone. Not much of a view. I looked at it anyway.
The thing I was not going to do was examine what had happened in the four blocks between the hotel and this building.
The way the city noise had been present and irrelevant, the way I’d moved through it with a single fixed point somewhere ahead of me that had nothing to do with a hospital address and everything to do with a face I’d seen go into the boards twice tonight and come back up twice, and then he’d gotten hit in a hotel bathroom where he hadn’t come back up.
I was his coach. That was the complete and sufficient accounting of my interest in this room, in this outcome, in the specific relief that had moved through me when I’d walked through that door and found him conscious and upright and characteristically determined to pretend he was fine.
Coaches cared about their players. That was not a complication.
That was the job. It could never be more than that.
The problem—and I allowed myself the word problem, because refusing the word didn’t make the thing it named any less real—was that what I’d felt in those four blocks hadn’t felt like the job.
It had felt older than the job. It had felt like something that predated coaching, predated this franchise, predated the version of myself I’d constructed in this century and inhabited with the practiced ease of a man who’d had a long time to get comfortable in borrowed clothes.
It had felt like the part of me that didn’t have a job description. It had woken my dragon.
And I had no idea what to do about that.