Out of Play (The Toronto Blaze #5)

Prologue

We’re Not Going to Make It

Justin

Eleven years ago, August

My phone pings again and I groan. Mia and I don’t get a lot of time together, just the two of us.

Most of the time she’s helping her family and I’m working out or training for hockey, especially since New York drafted me a couple of months ago.

Time like this, when we have the house to ourselves? It’s precious.

Another ping. I don’t want to answer it, but… “I’ll just check who it is.”

She would do the same, worried that something had happened to her family, so she nods. I press one last kiss to her belly then grab the phone.

There’s a text. The annoying message is from Dad. It’s important to talk to me. In person. Right away.

I show it to Mia. “I don’t know what his problem is, but I’d better go see him. I’ll drop you off. Sorry.”

Mia straightens her T-shirt. I wanted to do more than make out today, but I bite back my frustration.

I hope we’ll still find time to meet like this once university starts in the fall.

But in four years we’ll both head to New York, if I’m playing there.

Or wherever. We’ll have all the time together we want.

It’s what I dream of, more than playing in the NHL. Me and Mia. Forever.

“I hope everyone is okay.”

For a moment I worry about my twin, Jess, still vacationing in England. I double-check messages on my phone, but nothing from her.

“If it was something about Jess, he’d want Grandma too.” I’m reassuring myself as much as Mia.

“Maybe they want you to go to New York.” Ever since the draft she’s been worried.

“Mom and Dad don’t care. I told New York that I was going to college before I was playing. You, me and Jess are all going to be freshmen at Simon Fraser, so we’re good.” I kiss her. Quickly, or we’ll never leave. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

I pull on my shirt and tug her up from my bed. Even if we didn’t get to have sex, my sheets will smell of her tonight, so I smile. We head downstairs.

Mia looks around the empty house. “Do you think your grandmother knows what we do when she’s out?”

I shrug, but she does. She makes a big deal out of letting me know when she’s going to be away for a few hours. If I tell Mia, she’ll be self-conscious. She worries about her own family so much, I want coming here to be relaxing for her.

I drop her at the Bailey house, with a few more kisses, and then head to the condo Mom and Dad have in Vancouver. It’s a penthouse with a water view, but Jess and I stay with Grandma. Mom and Dad travel so much that the place is empty most of the time anyway. It’s not home. Grandma’s house is.

I send Jess a quick text while I ride up in the elevator. It’s probably too late for her, but I want to make sure she’s okay.

Mom and Dad are waiting for me, and I stop in the doorway. Dad’s hair is a mess, like he’s been running his hands through it, and Mom is chewing her fingernails. I’ve never seen her do that. They both look panicked.

“Come in, Justin. Something’s happened.”

No shit. Mom doesn’t comment on the sweats I’m wearing, so that also tells me she’s really worried.

“Have you been listening to the news?”

I shake my head, now positive something happened in England. What’s wrong with Jess? But I don’t ask, as if these few extra seconds before I find out will somehow mean she’s okay.

“The Denbrowskis have fled the country with all their clients’ investments. They were running a Ponzi scheme.”

It takes a moment for that to work through my head—I was so focused on my twin. “So nothing is wrong with Jess?”

Mom frowns. “Why would anything be wrong with Jess?”

“Because…” And then I let it drop. “So these Denn-whatevers ripped people off. Did they steal some of your money?” Mom is rich, and she’d freak out about that, since they might have to cut back on some expenses.

“Not some. All.”

All? They’re exaggerating, right? How the hell could someone steal all of their money? “How much did you invest with them?”

“Your mother said. All. They had documents, referrals. The return was better than what we’d been getting…”

Mom and Dad had been greedy. “But you didn’t touch our money, right? Not mine and Jess’s?”

Mom chews on a fingernail again before standing up and walking to the windows. Dad watches her with furrowed brows, then answers me. “We wanted you two to have as much as possible as well.”

Fuck. “So the college fund? The money we were supposed to get when we’re twenty-one?”

“All gone with the Denbrowskis.”

Math has never been my strong point, but I try to figure out what this means and what we can do.

“I have my scholarship at SFU for hockey, so that takes care of me. Can you maybe sell this place and get something smaller?” Jess doesn’t have a scholarship—she never considered applying, since we have money.

How can we work this so that she can still come to SFU this fall?

Dad’s lips pinch. “We mortgaged this place. And the place in Palm Springs.”

My jaw drops. “When you say you’ve lost everything, you really mean everything?”

Dad nods. “Your mom’s a wreck. We’re trying to put together how much, and what we can salvage.”

“You have a plan?”

He looks at Mom, then back at me. “We have something, if you’re willing to help.”

“Of course.” We aren’t super close, the way some families are, but we are family.

“We’ll be listing the properties, hoping to sell for enough to cover the mortgage. If we don’t have the funds for a smaller place, we might have to move in with my mom.”

His mom. Grandma. He’s talking about the house in Port Coquitlam.

Holy. Shit. Things are bad if that’s an option.

Mom and Grandma do not get along. And it’s a three-bedroom house.

Right now, there’s a room for Grandma, one for Jess, and one for me.

Maybe I’ll move into the basement? The couch isn’t great, but I didn’t ask SFU for student housing since I could commute.

And what will Jess do for school? It’s too late for her to get a job, and she’s counting on her college fund.

“So you want me to move into the basement?”

Suddenly Mom speaks. “No. We want you to go to New York.”

The room starts to spin around me and I drop into a chair. “What?”

“We need everyone to help. Your dad and I can do something with the travel agency—that wasn’t touched. If you can get a hockey contract, then your expenses are covered. And maybe you can help us out?”

“But—”

New York wants me at prospects camp next week and training camp in September, they’ve already said.

They lost their best defenseman to retirement over the summer, and a couple more to free agency.

It isn’t likely that I’d play with the NHL team right away but it’s a pretty sure thing that I could make the farm team.

The money isn’t as good on the AHL level, but it’s more than I can make anywhere else.

But…as much as I love playing hockey, I have other dreams. I want to go to university and learn something.

With hockey, I might get injured, not make the big league—I need a backup plan.

And I want to be with Mia, not on the other side of the continent.

She can’t leave PoCo, not now with her siblings so young and her mother unable to handle things on her own.

Mom crosses to me, gripping my hands and swallowing hard.

“They’ll be caught, the Denbrowskis, before long, so we just need to get through these next months.

Maybe a year. I know you have plans, and I hate to ask, but if you could put them off for a year.

Jess won’t be able to go to university with you anyway, and your girlfriend will understand—she takes care of her family. ”

I want to say no. It isn’t my fault, so why do I have to give up everything?

But to stay here, going to school when Jess can’t, everyone packed in at Grandma’s…

Can I really do that? If I ask Mia to wait for a year, she can still go to school, and maybe I’ll do three years of hockey with SFU after, if they’ll let me.

Finish my degree in the offseason, if I end up playing.

And Jess—Jess would give up her plans for me. We’ve always been close and we’d do anything for each other. It’s a lot to give up, but for one year?

I hear my voice saying “Yeah, if you really need me to.” It’s the first time they’ve ever actually needed me. When they ask if I’ll call New York, I agree.

What else can I do?

Mia

Justin won’t tell me what’s wrong, just asks me to meet him at the park at the end of the block.

The sun’s set, so not many people are here.

A few preteens are hanging out at the swings, but other than that, the place is quiet.

Justin is sitting on the bleachers at the baseball diamond.

My heart gives a lurch when I see him. Every damn time.

He looks up when I sit down beside him, and something is wrong. Really wrong. It looks like he’s been crying.

I take his hands, ready to support him any way I can. “What’s happened? Is it Jess?”

He shakes his head and swallows. “Have you been listening to the news?”

Horrible images start rushing through my head. His grandmother, hit by a car. A worldwide financial crash. His parents are secretly Russian assets and have to return—

“Some people were running a Ponzi scheme and left the country with a lot of money.”

Why would we care about… But then it clicks. His parents have the kind of money that gets stolen in Ponzi schemes. “Your parents lost money?”

He nods. “All of it.”

Whoa. It blew me away when I found out how rich his parents are because Justin and Jess live so normally with their grandmother. Though it’s obvious in the way they don’t worry about money running out that they’re in a different place than my family is. “What are they going to do?”

He explains about losing their properties, and Jess and Justin’s college funds. Then he talks about his parents moving into his grandmother’s place, and the fallout starts to hit me Things are going to change.

“So what are you going to do?”

He bends over, pulling out of my hands, looking at the ground. I’m not going to like this, whatever it is, and I’m starting to feel nauseated.

“I need to help.”

“How?” He’s eighteen. What can he do?

He draws in a long breath. “If I go to New York, I can probably play on the farm team.”

My ears—they’re not ringing, but it’s like waves of sound are passing by. I might fall down if I wasn’t already sitting. Justin going to New York? That’s my nightmare!

More words make their way through the weird bubble around me. “Just for a year, at most. They’ll catch the Denbrowskis and we’ll get our money back and I can come home and it’ll be like we planned. Just a delay.”

It takes long moments to piece together what they mean. A year. He’s saying he’s only going for a year. For a moment, I’m hopeful. I trust our love. A year will be hard, but we can do it.

“Mia?” Justin has reached for my hands again and he’s leaning down, staring at my face. Who knows what it looks like.

“A year? Just a year?”

He nods, but my brain is back online, the regular sounds around us returning to normal.

Justin, as sweet as he is, has always lived in a bubble.

Bad things don’t happen to his family. They don’t get sick, don’t struggle to pay bills, don’t have things go wrong.

Just look at him and hockey—fairy tale on ice, with him getting drafted in the first round.

They’ve never had to face hard times, till now.

But I’m a realist. I have to be.

“What if they don’t catch them? What if they’ve already spent the money?”

Justin jerks back, and again we’re no longer in physical contact. “Why would you think that?”

“Are you saying it can’t happen?”

He gets up and starts pacing. “It can’t. That’s just not right.”

His obliviousness hurts. What about what’s happened to my mom, some days hardly able to move with arthritis? That’s not right either. Is it just the Johnsons who get everything perfect? “But what if it does?”

What if he goes to New York, and his family depends on him, and then…

it just keeps on? Justin plays hockey in New York for what, the next twenty years?

And I’m here, stuck for the next four with no chance to visit him, or go to his games, while he’s surrounded by money and beautiful women with no ties to keep them away from him?

He stops, jaw set. “Then we’ll figure something out.”

We should do that. Immediately. “How about we think of something else for now? Your parents have their travel agency. Did they lose that?”

“It doesn’t bring in much money.”

Because it’s more of a hobby for them. “Maybe it can, if they work hard.”

“It won’t right away. And it won’t help Jess go to school.”

It might be good for Jess to have to get a job and pay for school like the rest of us. But I don’t say that. “There’s got to be another way.”

He shrugs. And I get angry. He’s just going to give up everything? School, BC, and me? He’s not going to fight?

“It’s their own fault. Why do you have to give up your life for them?”

Now he’s angry too. He crosses his arms. “They need me. We’ve lost everything. But you and me, we can still make this work.”

“Long-distance?”

He bites his lip. “Come with me to New York. You can go to school there.”

He’s so out of touch. Like I can apply now, to get into a school. And somehow pay for living expenses in one of the most expensive cities in the world. And leave all my responsibilities behind. “I can’t. I have to help Mom take care of the kids.”

“How is that different than what I’m doing?”

Doesn’t he see? “I’m not giving up my dream to take care of people who can take care of themselves.

Your family are perfectly capable. My mother physically can’t do a lot of things.

The kids are five and seven—they need someone.

Bruce is on the road half the time. I have obligations that mean I have to physically be here. ”

He shrugs his shoulders in a way that makes me want to hit him. “Then we’ll do long-distance until they catch the Ponzi people, or till I can get traded back here.”

“How likely is it that you can do that?” I researched very extensively after the draft.

The chances are basically nil. “I’m not going to wait around for some vague time when you might be playing here.

I’m not going to watch you give up everything you want for people who don’t even appreciate what you’re sacrificing. ”

Like me. Don’t I count in his calculations?

Justin swallows. “This is all I’ve got. There’s no time to come up with something else.”

He reaches his hand to me, but I don’t take it. I just know that if he does this, we’re not going to make it. I need him to know what it’s going to cost if he doesn’t try something else. So I walk away.

He doesn’t stop me.