15. Gideon
GIDEON
Game-day suits were the most expensive piece of clothing I owned.
Six foot seven is custom suit territory.
My last tailor had to get a stepladder to take my shoulder measurements.
Now, the dark navy suit was speckled with cat fur, forcing me to add a new step to my pre-game ritual: lint rolling.
One of his favorite things to do was to treat my legs like a moving cat tree and climb them.
“You’re a menace.” I dodged C.C. as he lunged at me.
The situation with Owens was eating at me. It was only yesterday that I told him pre-game skate was at nine, and he didn’t correct me. When he figured out I had the time wrong, why did he call Jameson and not me?
I tried to sit and meditate—visualize the plays—but cat claws on my calves interrupted me. I wasn’t superstitious, but I was methodical. My beliefs were science-based, and visualization was proven to trick your brain into thinking that the plays were real.
The thing with Owens, then the cat interrupting my mental priming, stacked with the constant thought of “Will she show up?” running on repeat, had left me feeling… off. That’s the only word I could find to describe how I felt. And I didn’t like it.
I straightened my tie and ran my hand through my hair. “Don’t you dare.” I dodged C.C. one more time and ran down the stairs. The four-pawed menace bounded behind me. I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe I wasn’t off. Maybe the cute distraction would actually help, not hinder, my game.
I grabbed my cell phone and tucked it into my suit pocket. “Wish me luck, C.C.” The kitten wiggled his butt, crouching into his attack position. “Oh no you don’t.” Running, I managed to get out the door before C.C. got to me. I had literally been chased out of my house.
“Back to your scheduled programming,” I muttered to myself as I reversed out of the garage and put on my pre-game classical music.
There were a few reasons I drove to games alone.
One was that I wanted to be… alone. The second was that most of the guys on the team blared Metallica or something heavy and upbeat.
Symphonie Fantastique might not be considered pump-up music to most, but most people hadn’t listened to it cranked at high volume through the speakers of a Cadillac Escalade.
The familiar piece shifted me into hockey mode.
I narrowed my gaze on the road and stomped on the gas pedal.
No one was going to get me off my game tonight.
Not a fluffy kitty, a pretty girl, or an asshole teammate. No one.
The energy in the fishbowl was electric.
One surprising thing about Miami was that its fans were way rowdier than Toronto’s.
In Toronto, season tickets were really fucking expensive.
I hated the fact that ordinary families couldn’t afford to go to the games, especially in cities like Toronto.
Miami’s seats, on the other hand, weren’t bought out by big corporations.
There were more ordinary people, real fans, in the stands.
Floridians were their own breed of wild—and I loved it.
The place was almost full when we went out for our warm-up.
I tried not to look, and hated that I did, especially since the two seats beside Goldie were vacant.
Now, standing in the cavernous hallway, the Toronto Tigers’ team had taken the ice, and we were waiting for our entrance music.
We exploded onto the ice through the open mouth of a fish, surrounded by rows of sparkling jagged teeth lit with LED lights, to the classic rock song “Barracuda.” I got a running start and burst onto the ice, following Stevens.
We were pumped up. My blades dug into the ice as the b-b-b-barracuda section of the song filled the stadium.
Before the puck dropped, I refused to let my gaze track past the plexiglass above the boards.
By the time the game started, I was in the zone.
I won the opening faceoff, and we were off, our defensemen following close behind.
The crowd was on their feet. I passed to Stevens, who circled behind the net.
He was known for a wraparound. It was what the Tigers would expect and why he passed to Owens instead of taking the shot.
It worked. While Owens stickhandled, the Fridge crushed one of the Tigers players into the boards.
The player hit the boards hard and dropped to the ice but managed to recover.
It was a fair hit, but I was glad it wasn’t Ace who was on its receiving end.
Owens passed the puck to me. I deked one of the Toronto defensemen, skidded to a stop and turned—but instead of passing back to Owens, who was skating into the perfect position, I narrowed my focus on the goalie, wound up, and launched a clapper over the goalie’s right shoulder.
He had been expecting the shot to come from the left winger, and my slapshot had caught him off guard.
Even with an impressive reach with his glove, he wasn’t fast enough to beat me and my (whatever-mile-per-hour slapshot).
The crowd was on its feet. Stevens gave me a fist bump, and the Fridge did the same. I rarely celebrated; it was too flashy. Ignoring Owens, I headed to the bench to hydrate and prepare for the next play. He shook his head as he skated past me.
So what if I didn’t follow the play? We were up one nothing in the first two minutes of the game. It was a great fucking start.
“Nice work, Bailey.” Coach patted my shoulder as he walked behind the bench. “Good instinct.”
Coach approved. Any guilt I had over usurping the play dissipated.
It was only then that I allowed myself to look. My eyes tracked along the red line, up the boards, past the plexi, to… empty seats.
She hadn’t come.
Air escaped my lips. Was I relieved or upset?
Ace flew past the bench, his hair flowing from beneath the Tigers helmet.
His skating style was aggressive and fast but also light.
He was often described as floating on the ice.
He dodged our defense and crossed the blue line into our end.
His focus was on the net. “He’s going to fake and go low,” I whispered to Jameson.
As much as I hated the idea of a tie game, my chest puffed with pride as I watched my little brother dance around our defensemen.
I held my breath as he wound up his fake shot.
He was a good player but getting a little too predictable.
But instead of dangling the puck and tipping it in low, Ace dropped the puck back to a Tiger defenseman.
The slapshot echoed through the rink like a gunshot, and a collective breath-hold sucked the air from the fishbowl as the puck rocketed to the net.
The stadium exhaled as our goalie snatched the puck out of the air.
“I thought you said he would take the shot?” Jameson’s eyebrows were raised behind the plastic protection of his helmet.
The pass was a surprise. I shrugged, not bothering to take out my mouth guard to reply. I would’ve bet my Porsche on Ace taking the shot—and I would’ve lost it. If Ace had taken the shot, it would’ve gone in, I knew it with all my heart.
At the end of the first period, the game was still one nothing, for us. My rogue play had benefited the team. It wasn’t a team player thing to do, but maybe the team player thing was overrated. Look what happened to Ace.
Like ripping off a Band-Aid, I had looked at the seats, and now I was relieved that I didn’t have to avert my gaze.
I could focus on the game. But… I was also disappointed.
The first thought that had gone through my mind when the goal light lit red and the foghorn sounded was “I wonder what Piper thought of that.”
Shaking my head, I followed the team into the dressing room. For the rest of the game, my focus was going to be where it should’ve been the entire time—on hockey.
The team was still pumped, but something had changed in the dressing room. The only guy who spoke to me was Jameson, and Owens wouldn’t even look at me. Coach came in and went over the plan for the second period.
“It’s early in the season; we need to solidify our team dynamics.
This is a team, not a lone wolf with backup.
” If there was any doubt whether the team comment was directed at me, it was cemented with the wolf comment.
Coach ended his speech with the line, plan the play, play the plan , while staring directly at me.
He was right. But would we have gotten the goal if I hadn’t taken the shot?
We would never know. I hadn’t wanted to let Owens get the goal.
It was stupid—I was letting a trivial thing eat away at me.
So what if Owens didn’t call me? I’d started the season with the Barracuda with the intention of being a team player.
My actions in the first period were a play from the old Gideon playbook—and I knew how my career was going to go if I kept reading from those pages.
Animosity would kill this team faster than any of its players could skate.
I stood and walked over to Owens, taking a seat next to him.
I didn’t have to look up to know that all eyes in the room were on me.
I could feel them. “Hey, buddy. Sorry for not executing the play like we practiced. I saw an opportunity and—”
“Took it.” Owens smiled. “It was the right move.”
My shoulders relaxed. I hadn’t realized they had been so tense I could’ve worn the damn shoulder pads as earmuffs. “Thanks, man. I know that you would’ve sniped it.”