8. CONNOR
EIGHT
CONNOR
“I don’t think he’s going to make it,” Easton says. He sounds like he’s underwater, and when the room comes into view, it’s all blurry like it is when you open your eyes in a pool.
“Are we swimming?” I ask.
“Jesus. He’s still drunk,” my brother says. “How many times do you think a hockey player has been drunk during a game?”
“Plenty,” my best friend, the traitor, says.
“I’m not drunk,” I say, but it comes out exactly how a drunk person would say it. “I’m hungover as fuck, and it’s too bright, and why did you two let me drink so much?”
“Ooh, and he just lost any sympathy I had for him.” Easton disappears, and when I wipe the blurriness from my eyes, my best friend is staring down at me, arms folded.
I’m on Easton and Knox’s couch, evidently. Have no idea how I got here, and ain’t that the kicker? I drank so I could forget the conversation I had with Duchene, but the thing I can’t remember is how I got home.
Figures.
“I’m worried about you,” Knox says.
“Because I got drunk? Have you met me? ”
“Because you got drunk the night before a game. That’s not you.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
“Really?” Knox sounds skeptical. “Connor Kikishkin is having a massive existential crisis because his brother told him to stop meddling and someone from high school called him a bully?”
Knox doesn’t get it. I’m not sure anyone will. Hell, I barely understand this new sense of … pointlessness.
“It’s more than that,” I say.
“How so?”
“Repeatedly being called a terrible person means I have to believe it at some point.”
“I’m going to morning skate,” Easton says, coming out of his bedroom with his gear bag ready to go.
“Wait, I’m coming with you.” I try to get up, but nope, that’s not going to happen without Easton’s entire town house spinning.
“You should skip it and rest up for tonight. Unless you get a call in between now and then telling you to stay home because you’ve been benched.”
My eyes widen. “Did Coach see how drunk I was?”
“No,” Easton says, and I relax in relief. “But Parker did.”
Fucking fuck fuck shit. “Where’s my phone?”
“Why?” Easton asks.
“I’ve probably already got the call to say I’m being released from my contract.” But when I find it in my pocket, battery almost dead, there are no notifications, no nothing.
Easton rubs his chin. “If Parker was going to say something, he would have last night. If he was going to fire you, he would have after you attacked him in the locker room.”
“It sounds like he’s keeping you around on purpose,” Knox says.
“Considering he says he hates you so much, it doesn’t make sense,” Easton adds .
“Except it does.” I run my hand through my hair. “He says he didn’t buy the team to ruin my life, but he’s sure hell-bent on doing so.”
“Stay here and hydrate,” Easton says. “I’ll tell Coach you got food poisoning and hope Parker hasn’t told him otherwise, or I see me taking your punishment for you, and I don’t want to puke on the ice this year if I can help it.”
“The season’s still young,” Knox says.
“Will you be here when I get back?” my brother asks. At first, I think it’s to me, but then I remember Knox has to leave today to fly to Austin to ref an AHL game.
“No, but I’ll be home tomorrow,” Knox says.
They kiss goodbye, and I turn away at their affection. It’s still weird for me to see that, but I’m not mad at it like I once was. I don’t have a right to be because it’s not my place.
It’s not.
My place isn’t with my brother or my best friend.
I used to think it was on the ice—no, I was certain of it—but now, I can’t help thinking my place is in the woods, away from everyone I’ve ever unknowingly hurt. I could become a hermit and have rocks for friends.
Though Miles Olsen says his pet rocks hate me too. Mainly when me or Easton score on him, but still. Even the rocks hate me.
I flash back to last night, to Parker shoving me and the disdain in his voice as he told me I’m experiencing the same thing he did all the way back then, and as much as I want to lay blame on me being young, stupid, and everything he says I am, I think it’s time I own it. Properly.
I need to stop putting the blame on everything else, accept that I was an asshole—no, still am an asshole—and then take steps to change those behaviors that seem to come naturally to me. And I should start by forcing my dumb ass up and get it to the team’s morning skate. If I vomit on the ice, I vomit .
This time when I sit up, the room still spins, but at least it rights itself before I have to lie down again.
I stand, and it turns out I don’t have to wait until I reach the ice.
I run to the bathroom and vomit up the entire contents of my stomach.
Usually after a puke, the hangover goes away, and I’m all good. Not this time. If anything, I feel worse.
Okay, becoming a better human can come later today. No matter what, I’m going to be there for the game.
I’ve made it. I’m at the arena.
Sure, I’m in the bathroom throwing up for the tenth time today, but I’m here. I’m also starting to think I might have food poisoning on top of the hangover because I shouldn’t still be throwing up.
“Dude.” Easton appears behind me. “You’re still going? How do you have anything left in your stomach?”
“I don’t,” I croak. All I’m throwing up is the Powerade I’ve been drinking to try to rehydrate.
“Still not good?” Coach Macklin’s voice comes from the door to the restroom.
I tense and then try not to dry heave again. Guilt shoots through my body, stabbing me in the gut and making me want to vomit again.
Coach asked me to go to the benefit because I’m not supposed to be like the other idiots on his roster. I’m the levelheaded one.
Or, supposed to be. Maybe all my levelheadedness comes from the need to be. The need to look after my brothers. Maybe I’m naturally as big a dumbass as Lachie.
“Roberts,” Coach says .
I look back at Easton, who puts his hand to his ear to gesture that Coach is on the phone.
“Get your ass down to the arena. You’re up.” In the next second, I hear, “Kikishkin, rest up. You’re scratched tonight.”
I’m part relieved and part freaking out that this is going on the long list of things Parker can hold over my head.
As if the mere thought of his name summons him, his voice appears next. I’d be embarrassed about being on my knees in the middle of a restroom, but apparently, he already saw me like this last night in a restroom much more disgusting than this private bathroom for the team.
I’m guessing the charade is up now. No more food poisoning excuses. He’s about to tell Coach every?—
“You got the food poisoning too, huh?” Parker asks. “It had to be something at the benefit last night. I was sick earlier but am okay now.”
I turn and land on my ass, meeting his eye.
“Same with me and Knox,” East adds. “Nothing says romantic like vomiting and shitting all over the place.”
I am so fucking confused.
Why are the two people who hate me most in the world covering for me?
Easton, I get. He might say he hates me or how I behave, but deep down, I know he still loves me. You know, being brothers and all.
But Parker?
I’m hoping that even though our conversation went terribly last night, maybe he is beginning to accept my apology, but the cynical voice in the back of my head is telling me he’s only doing it so he can add this to his torture log of how to hold my position on the team over me.
“Easton, you go get ready to hit the ice,” Parker says. “Coach, get everyone in hockey mode. I’ll take care of Connor.”
I silently scream at Easton not to leave me, but we don’t have a telepathic bond. When he and Coach disappear, leaving me completely alone with Parker, I can’t help but ask, “When you say take care of, you’re not meaning in a take him out back and shoot him kind of way, right?”
“I feel like that would be giving you mercy, and I’m taking enjoyment from seeing you so miserable.”
For whatever reason, that makes me laugh.
“Come on. Up you get.” He moves toward me, and I flinch. “I’m not going to hurt you. I was going to help you up.”
I frown. “So you can push me back down again?”
“Only in my fantasies.” Parker’s tone is dry, almost detached, when he holds out his hand, and I take it this time.
His palm is warm and soft, and when he helps me to my feet, our hands linger until he drops his quickly, like I zapped him with an electric shock.
“You can come watch the game with me in the owner’s suite.”
I have no clue what’s happening, but the anger and hatred he was spewing at me last night seems to be missing.
My gut lurches. Fuck, don’t think of the word “spewing.”
Parker’s at the door of the bathroom when he says, “Coming?”
“I have one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Why?”
“Why, what?” He’s losing patience with me. “Why is the sky blue? Why is hockey? Why is life? How philosophical do you want me to go here?”
“Why are you being nice to me when last night you looked like you were willing to murder me and pay off every single person at the benefit to help bury my body?”
Parker’s lips look like he’s trying to hold back a pitying smile. “Again, that was just another one of my fantasies. I …” He glances away. “Other than saying I bought this team so I could get some petty high school revenge, you made a good po int last night. You said I shouldn’t waste my bitterness and anger on you, so today, I’m going to try not to.”
I narrow my gaze. “You’re going to poison me in the suite, aren’t you?” I gasp and step back. “You already did poison me, and that’s why I’ve been sick all day.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fine. Stay in here and miss the game.”
I have a choice here. I could stay here and feel sorry for myself, go home and feel sorry for myself, or go up to the owner’s suite with Parker and try to get on the right path with him. If all of this being nice shit is legit.
“No, I’ll come up. I’m just going to make sure you eat and drink everything before I do. Just in case.”
This time, his smile does come out properly, and my gut swoops. It’s the same smile he wore back in high school, talking to Easton, and I don’t think I’ve seen it again since. All the air is pushed from my lungs, and I’m frozen for a moment in time, asking how something so simple can steal my breath.
Or maybe that’s still the hangover.
Before I can take a step toward the exit, I’m hunched back over the toilet and throwing up some more.