2. Rhett
RHETT
The stadium fell silent. The shrieking of blades against ice brought everything to a grinding halt.
The puck flying through the air bounced off Moose’s mask, sending our goalie flying to the ground from the force of the impact against his helmet’s bars.
Sweat and fury saturated the air. Pads clanked together as Moose leapt to his skates, staring down the body gripping the stick that sailed the puck in his direction.
But when he took off his gloves, I pushed off from the wall. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Moose!”
“You did that on fucking purpose, Jett! God damn it!” Moose exclaimed. “What the fuck have I told you about going for my fucking mask in practice, asshat?!”
Jett cackled as he thrust his fists into the air. “I did it! I hit it again! Langley, you owe me twenty fucking—holy shit!”
“Fuck you, Jets!” Moose bellowed.
I slammed right into Moose before he got his arms around Twiggy Jett.
I left my stick somewhere on the ice behind me, throwing the whole of my body weight into our massive goalie.
Jett kept laughing from somewhere in the background, with Langley yelling above the cacophony about how he doesn’t understand how Jett makes those damned shots every single fucking time.
It wasn’t until Coach’s whistle chirped that I knew we were fucked.
“Get off me! Let me at him!” Moose grunted from beneath me as I pinned him to the ice.
I knew if I let that bear of a man up, he’d fucking kill my best friend.
“I can’t leave to take a shit for five minutes!” Coach bellowed before he chirped his whistle again. “Places! We get to end this practice with sprints until your legs dissolve!”
“Quit being a bitch, Jett!” Brynn called out from the stands. “Or I’ll break your nose before this championship game!”
“Only if you can reach my face, Short Stack!” Jett bellowed out as he skated around us.
“Let me at that string bean motherfucker!” Moose roared beneath me.
“Hey!” I barked as I grabbed the bars of his goalie helmet and tapped it against the ice, shaking his head. “Moose! Snap the fuck out of it!”
His wide, furious eyes landed on me, but not before Coach grabbed his jersey and practically yanked him off the ground.
It sent me flying, stumbling to get back up onto my skates as Jett kept skating around the outside of the rink like he was some fucking playboy in an ice magazine somewhere.
Like the ice version of Tony Fucking Stark.
Hate to break it to him, but he’d need some damn muscle on him for that.
I grabbed my stick and stuck it behind me just in time to hear Jett curse beneath his breath before his skate hit my stick and he collapsed into the ice.
Coach looked furious as he shoved Moose away toward the goal.
“Is this how undefeated champions conduct themselves before a game against the rival team?!” He drew in a deep breath, and it only served to bolster his voice.
“What?! You lookin’ at me like a bunch of cocky fucks who know exactly what they’re getting into, so tell me, Jett!
” Coach barked as he whipped around, grabbing the man’s stick and yanking him forward.
“Huh?! You think it’s cute, breaking our fucking goalie only days before a game with our rival team? You think that shit’s funny?!”
Jett shook his head quickly. “No, Coach.”
“What?!” Coach bellowed into his face.
Jett raised his voice. “I said NO, COACH!”
Coach shoved him away. “Get in your fucking sprint formation. You’ve got fifteen seconds. Go!”
When his whistle rang out, I’d never seen this team move quicker to one side of the hockey rink in the months we’d slaughtered our opponents.
It was true, we were a couple months into the season.
Each and every game up until this point had been ours.
We fought tooth and nail for every win. We blew no one out of the water.
We left it all out on the ice with every game, earning us more and more patrons filling those empty stadium seats.
Now we were only nine days out from our biggest game of the season: our game against the Detroit Pirates.
Who were also undefeated this season.
SHHHHINK!
SSSKERSH!
FWOP FWOP FWOP FWOP FWOP FWOP!
We flew around the bends of the ice rink, wrapping around its outside over and over again.
I shouldered some of the guys out of the way.
It was clear who had trained their legs seriously and who hadn’t been.
I’d ride those fuckers hard during gym hours.
I had finally convinced Coach that we didn’t need him in the weight room every single time the guys got together.
It was nice having that time to break away from the formalities of practice so that we could bond as the team Coach groomed us to be over the last several months.
But with how some of the guys lagged behind in laps, it made me wonder if Coach needed to creep back into our gym time.
His whistle chirped. “Reverse!”
I stuttered my skate across the ice, and in a heartbeat, with the pick on the tip of my blade, I shoved myself backward. I weaved through the crowd of men behind me still trying to move their trajectory forward while I soared between their bodies.
I led the charge with the guys skating backwards around the outside of the rink.
That was until I heard the clicking of those heels.
Thank fuck, Coach bellowed into his whistle again. “That’s enough!”
The slicing of skates across the ice gave way to the heaving and coughing of my team, but my eyes followed that succinct little sound. Tick, tick, tick, tick. A familiar cadence to which my ears had grown accustomed.
Only her shadow emerged, however, before I felt someone grab my shoulder and whip me around.
Jett was lucky I didn’t break his fucking hand for ruining my morning view.
“All right!” Coach bellowed over our heads as he clapped his hands.
“We’ve got nine days until our game with the Pirates!
They’re undefeated, like us, but unlike us, this isn’t the first undefeated season they’ve had.
Third in the PHL overall standings. These are the men that give the Canadians a run for their money! These are the men that…”
While Coach jabbered on with one of his many speeches, my eyes found their way back to the edge of the ice.
I watched as Victoria clip-clopped along in her heels with one of her silken, ruffled blouses tucked into one of her impossibly tight pencil skirts.
I swear to hell on high, someone had the privilege of painting those damned things on her.
I wanted to wring the neck of whoever had such a privilege.
“That means,” Coach exclaimed as I whipped my attention back to him. He shot me a look before he went back to addressing the team, “that you will follow the schedule I have set out TO THE LETTER on my office door. Write it down. Get out your calendars. Tell your parents—”
Jett chuckled. “Tattoo it on your dick.”
Coach blew his whistle. “Sprints! Now!”
Brynn cackled from the stands. “Get those chicken legs going, Jett!”
He cackled as he skated to one side of the rink like someone just bestowed a crown upon his head instead of a punishment. “Better than the ham hocks you’re runnin’, Bry!”
“JETTSON!” Coach bellowed.
I heard Brynn’s stunted laughter from the stands as we all watched Jett grin before he kicked off the ice. And while he ran sprints behind us…
“TELL! YOUR! PARENTS!” Coach practically roared above our heads while Jett continued his huffing and puffing behind us.
“Do whatever it is you have to do in order to memorize this schedule. Because if you miss even one practice—even one weight session—between now and that game, you’ll be benched for the rest of the fucking season.
This is where we lay it on the line, boys.
This is where we show everyone exactly what we’re capable of. ”
Langley chuckled. “Haven’t we been doing that all season, Coach?”
He turned his eyes toward my teammate. “No. You’ve earned your paychecks all season, that’s what. But this game? With the Detroit Pirates? This is where we show our city that their support has a purpose.”
I felt the conglomerate rise of every chest around me, and I couldn’t help but join. Even Jett mindlessly stopped his sprinting, just to shove his way beside me with his head held high.
Coach nodded as Jett, standing there, huffing and puffing and drenched with sweat, still partook in the pride he earned. The pride we all earned with our first undefeated start to a PHL season as a team.
And fuck, I needed this game.
I was twenty-seven years old, and twenty-seven was either the start of a man’s prime or the start of his decline, depending on whose ass you asked.
Hockey wasn’t a forgiving sport. I’d watched guys get cut at thirty.
I’d watched guys get cut at twenty-eight.
I’d watched a center two seasons ago, a man who could read the ice like Bea Arthur read a punchline, get traded to a minor league team in Saskatchewan because his knees couldn’t take the hits anymore. He was thirty-one.
So when Coach said this is where we lay it on the line, what I heard was: this is your fucking line, Stone.
Right here. The Detroit Pirates and the championship behind them and the league that had spent three years calling us a charity project and a disgraced coach’s roster of castoffs.
This was the game that said whether I was a man who got to keep doing this, or a man who got traded somewhere cold and forgotten when the next captain signed for cheaper.
I’d ridden the bench my first year in Vegas.
Second-string at best. I’d dug myself out of that hole one practice at a time, one weight session at a time, until our old coach gave me a shot at center during a lucky scrimmage my second year on the team.
And I’d earned the captaincy with my goddamn teeth.
I wasn’t giving any of it back.
Not the C on my chest. Not the team I’d bled with for three years. Not the city that had started showing up to my games. And not the chance to walk into the Detroit Pirates’ rink in nine days and prove to forty thousand people that the Vegas Vipers were not a fucking joke.
But I couldn’t have told you what Coach said next, because a movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. And I darted my gaze toward the shadowed movement just in time to see Victoria sashay those broad hips of hers down the hallway back toward her office.
A couple months. That’s how long it had been since the PHL season started.
Since I changed out that tire at Victoria’s place.
Since I felt the curve of her thigh against the outside of mine, or heard her laughter as she giggled at a Golden Girls episode.
A couple months of cold showers that never quite got the memory of her out of my head.
Those curves beneath that soft, plush robe she wore that night.
God damn it, I had it bad.
I barely registered Coach dismissing us from practice.
I hardly remembered getting out of my shit in the locker room.
Jett said something and everyone laughed, so I managed a chuckle, even though I had no clue what the fuck we were laughing at.
Metal locker room doors slammed closed one by one as dirty jerseys and sweaty ass gear got tossed into the massive roll-away laundry totes.
Brynn came striding in, her smile practically in all caps as she made a beeline for Coach.
The second their lips smacked, I knew my time had run out in the locker room.
But instead of turning right down the hallway with the rest of the team to make my way out of Caldwell Arena, I turned left.
Heading right for Victoria’s office.