Chapter seven #2
“I feel better this morning,” I admitted, making my way to an empty seat between Morozov and one of the younger defensemen whose name was Declan Porter.
“How’s the head?” Keegan asked. His voice was careful, the way people’s voices got when they were trying not to make a big deal out of something that was clearly a big deal.
“Fine. Mild concussion, nothing serious.”
“Those guys got arrested,” Varga said. “Security footage was clear. Cops picked them up at some bar in Wrigleyville around two AM.”
Cole snorted. “They had help finding them,” which everyone seemed to think was funny.
“Good,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. “Will I have to speak to the cops?”
“Let the team lawyer’s handle it. They’ll let you know,” Max advised.
Morozov pushed a plate of scrambled eggs toward me. “Eat. You need protein.”
“I’m not sure I can chew,” I said, touching my jaw experimentally.
I picked up a fork and started working through the eggs in careful, small bites.
My jaw protested, but it was manageable.
Around me, the conversation gradually returned to its normal rhythm—game talk, chirping, the cadence of a team that had spent enough time together to develop its own language. It was good to be included.
Cole slid into the seat across from me, Phoenix materializing beside him like they’d been attached by invisible string. Cole’s eyes went to my face, cataloged the damage with that same unhurried assessment everyone seemed to be doing this morning, then moved on.
“You visiting your mom today?” he asked.
I blinked. I’d mentioned it once, maybe twice, in passing conversations over the last week. The fact that he’d remembered felt significant in a way I couldn’t quite believe.
“Yeah,” I said. “Supposed to head over around eleven.”
“Where’s she live?” Phoenix asked.
“Bridgeport. South Side.”
Taz materialized at the end of the table with a plate piled high enough to feed three people. He sat down without ceremony and looked at me with those dark, evaluating eyes. “You shouldn’t go alone.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then realized I didn’t actually have an argument. Three guys had jumped me in a bathroom last night. The fact that they’d been arrested didn’t mean their friends weren’t still out there, still looking for someone to blame for their friends getting arrested.
“I’ll be fine,” I said anyway, because that was what you said.
“We’ll come with you,” Cole said, in that flat, decisive way he had when he’d already made up his mind about something.
Phoenix nodded his agreement. Max looked up from his coffee and said, “Good idea.”
“I don’t need—” I started.
“We know,” Keegan cut in. “We’re coming anyway.”
Cinder leaned forward. “Your mom cook?”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Your mom. Does she cook? Because if you’re showing up with five extra hockey players, she should probably know.”
“Six,” Taz corrected with an eyebrow lift at Ash who nodded again.
“I’m not asking my mom to cook for—”
“Call her,” Max said. It wasn’t quite an order, but it had that ring of inevitability that Max’s suggestions always had. “If she’s like my grand-maman, she’ll want to. Tell her you’re bringing friends. See what she says.”
I pulled out my phone and stared at it for a moment, trying to figure out how to explain this.
My mom had been asking about my teammates since I’d arrived in Denver.
Asking if I’d made friends, if people were treating me okay, if I felt like I belonged.
I’d been giving her carefully neutral answers for two months—yeah, they’re good guys, yeah, it’s fine, yeah, I’m settling in—because I hadn’t known how to explain that I’d been living in a kind of professional purgatory where people were polite but distant and I’d spent sixty-three days wondering if I’d ever actually be part of this team.
I called her.
She picked up on the second ring. “Dante! Are you okay? I saw the game last night, those hits you took, and then I just heard something about a fight—”
“I’m fine, Ma. Little banged up, but fine.”
“Little banged up,” she repeated, in that tone mothers used when they knew you were fobbing them off. “Define little.”
“Bruised cheekbone. Sore ribs. Nothing serious.”
Silence on the other end. Then: “Sore ribs can be serious, Dante Michael Russo.”
The full name. “I know. I’m being careful. Team medic checked me out, I’m good to travel, and I’m still coming over today if that’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay. Are you sure you should be—”
“I’m sure. But, uh, there’s a thing.” I looked around the table at five faces watching me with varying degrees of amusement. “Some of the guys want to come with me. To make sure I’m okay. And they, uh, they want to know if you cook.”
Another silence. Then she squealed in excitement. Then laughed—that full, delighted laugh I hadn’t heard in months. “How many guys?”
“Six plus me.”
“Seven,” Taz mouthed and I knew he meant Cinder.
“Six hockey players are coming to my house.”
“Seven if that’s okay. I can tell them—”
“Don’t you dare tell them no. What time?”
“Eleven?”
“Make it noon. I need time to cook properly.” I grinned, then winced as my jaw hurt.
“I’ll make the lasagna. And the chicken. And probably the tiramisu because I’m not letting your friends leave my house hungry. You tell them to come hungry, Dante. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“And you take it easy today. No pushing yourself. Those ribs—”
“I know, Ma. I’ll be careful.”
“You better be. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
I hung up and looked around the table. “She’s thrilled. She’s cooking everything. We should probably show up hungry.”
Morozov grinned. “Your mother sounds like my mother.”
“Italian mothers,” Max said knowingly. “Like the French, they feed you until you can’t move.”
“Hungarian mothers too,” Varga added.
Max stood up, draining the last of his coffee. “Eleven-thirty meet back here. Russo, finish eating. Everyone else, we’ve got video session at nine-thirty. Don’t be late.”
The table dispersed.
My mom’s house looked exactly the way it had looked for the last fifteen years—a narrow brick townhouse, the kind of place that had been in the neighborhood since before the neighborhood decided it was trendy.
The front steps were swept clean. The window boxes had pansies in them even though it was only March, because my mom had opinions about when spring started and winter could go to hell.
I stood on the sidewalk with six professional hockey players behind me, and a team medic, and felt the specific anxiety of bringing your entire life to meet your mother.
The door opened before we reached it. My mom stood there in her apron—the good one, the one with the embroidered flowers that my grandmother had made—and her face did that thing it did when she was trying not to cry but was going to cry anyway.
“Dante,” she said, and then she saw my face and her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, baby.”
“I’m fine,” I said, for what felt like the hundredth time in twelve hours.
She pulled me into a hug that made my ribs scream, and I didn’t say anything because this was my mom and she needed this. When she finally let go, she turned to the small army of hockey players on her front porch and her face transformed into something that could only be described as delighted.
“You must be the team,” she said. “Come in, come in, all of you. I’m Gina Russo, and you’re all too skinny.”
“Ma’am, I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of being too skinny,” Taz said, with that dry delivery of his.
“Too skinny,” she repeated, ushering us all inside. “Dante, introduce me properly.”
I did the introductions while my mom memorized names with the efficiency of someone who’d spent thirty years teaching middle school.
Max got special attention when I mentioned he was captain—she shook his hand with both of hers and told him he had kind eyes, which made Keegan snort and Max go slightly pink.
The house smelled like garlic and tomatoes and bread, the smell of every Sunday of my childhood. My mom had set up the dining room table with the good dishes, the ones we only used for Christmas and Easter.
“Ma, this is too much,” I said.
“Sit down and let me feed you,” she said, in the tone that meant arguing was futile.
We sat. Taz somehow ended up at the head of the table, which seemed to amuse him. Max sat to his right, then Cinder, then me. Cole and Phoenix took the other side with Keegan and Ash. My mom presided from the kitchen doorway like a general surveying her troops.
The lasagna came out first—two massive pans of it, layers of pasta and cheese and meat sauce that made Taz close his eyes on the first bite like he’d found religion.
“Mrs. Russo,” he said seriously, “this is the best lasagna I’ve ever had.”
“It’s Gina, and you’re sweet,” my mom said, beaming. “There’s more in the kitchen.”
The chicken came next—roasted with lemon and herbs, falling off the bone.
Then the salad, then the bread, then more bread because apparently my mother thought we were training for an eating competition.
I watched my teammates demolish two months’ worth of groceries in about twenty minutes, and my mom looked happier than I’d seen her since before the trade.
She’d been horrified the first time I’d taken over the bills.
All my signing bonus had gone toward all the repairs on the house she refused to leave, even though it would have been cheaper to start again.
Not that my brothers didn’t help where they could, but I was the only one who could afford the new roof, windows, and the rewire.