Chapter 34 Fletcher
FLETCHER
“Well, well, well. Look what the Zamboni dragged in,” Zayne rasps, swirling a bottle in his hand.
I drop my bag on the floor and climb up to sit in the stands next to him. “We have a game tonight. Where else would I be?”
Zayne picks up the bottle, doesn’t drink it, just looks at it—the bright high bay lights reflecting off the bronze liquid inside. “Why’d you come back?”
I shrug. “It’s the NHL. It’s hockey. This is my team.”
“Huh. So not for Ellie?”
The name punches through my chest. “No,” I snap.
I think about Eddie on the TV. Eddie who we’re going to play tonight. I’m going to break Eddie’s face. And I’m not losing another hockey game.
“Ah, hockey.”
“Hockey is everything,” I remind him. “It’s all I have.
I want to be like you.” I sigh. “Always did—play in the NHL, get paid to play, to dedicate my life to being the best. Your whole life is just pure hockey, and it’s perfect.
Winning cups, the endorsements, everyone worships you.
” I wrap my arms around my knees. “If the team is moving, this is it. This is all the hockey I have left.”
“You know,” Zayne says after a moment, “I was engaged once. A long time ago. Was supposed to get married, have a family.”
“Oh yeah?” I squint. “I vaguely remember that. It was a while ago, right?”
“She wanted to get married immediately. I kept putting it off. There was another Stanley Cup to chase, the Olympics, Worlds. She waited and waited. I kept promising her I’d retire.
We’d start a family when I retired—that’s what I said.
” He takes another swig from the bottle.
“But every year, I thought, what’s one more season?
I’ll quit when I win four cups, when I win a second gold medal, just one more playoff. ” He trails off.
“I wasn’t ready to quit. And now it’s all I have.
” He swirls the bottle. “She finally left me. I didn’t even realize it for a week.
” He laughs bitterly. “Now she’s with another guy.
Pregnant with their second child. They go to Disney for family vacations.
Cute kids. Throw big holiday parties… You don’t want to be like me, Fletch.
I promise.” He lifts the bottle to his lips.
“Don’t sacrifice your life for hockey. Hockey doesn’t keep you warm at night. ”
“Maybe you should take your own advice.” I reach out gently and take the bottle from him.
I throw it. It lands in the trash can. Nothing but net.
“You have to find happiness where you can get it, when you can get it.” Zayne slaps me on the shoulder.
I think of Ellie. Think of the team, how this is it—not just the end but the epilogue. “I’m not sure I can get it anywhere. Might have blown it,” I admit.
Zayne gives me a knowing smile. “When you’re young, you think love just shows up when it’s convenient. But then you wake up, and you’re old. Don’t just give it up when you find it.”
“You’re not old. You’re not even forty,” I remind him.
“I’m an eldritch terror in hockey years.”
I sling my arm around his shoulders and haul him up. He’s surprisingly steady. “Come on, let’s find the boys.”
The locker room doesn’t seem as depressed as I thought it would be.
“One pretzel,” Ellie is saying. “Take one pretzel. Make sure everyone else gets one first before you have seconds, Jovi.”
I just stare at her, can’t believe she’s there—that there’s not some bald-headed, beer-gutted coach coming in with bluster and incompetence.
I want to kiss her in front of everyone. Not sure how that’s going to go over. Instead, I settle for standing in the doorway, drinking in the sight of her.
“Fletcher!”
“Aw, I wanted his pretzel.”
“Fletch!” Bramms jumps on me as the rest of the team crowds around, slapping my back, ruffling my hair.
“The prodigal son has returned,” Ren drawls. “It better not be to eat up all the food.”
I snatch the pretzel out of his mouth and take a bite. Then I sit under my name, still painted on the bench.
Ellie clasps her hands behind her back then crosses them. “What are you doing here?”
“Yes, what are you doing here, Fletch?” Carlsson demands.
“You’re my team,” I tell them simply as Zayne sits down next to me. “We’re about to play hockey in the NHL. Where else would I be?”
“Hell yeah!” they whoop.
“Fletcher Sullivan.” The rookies huddle behind Ren in his bulky goalie gear as Dana, in impossibly high heels and a skinny pencil skirt, saunters into the locker room like she owns it—which she does, although not for long.
“Fletcher’s playing,” Ellie tells her defiantly, stepping in front of me. “We need him to win.”
“Fine,” Dana says after a moment, staring down at Ellie. “But I’m not paying you to be here, Sullivan.”
“That’s fine. I’d lose with these guys for free.”
Dana’s perfectly arched eyebrows slant. “You better not be losing. Those idiotic Svensson brothers think they can back me into a corner, think they can make me look weak.”
“Ma’am”—Ren takes off his goalie helmet—“I don’t believe any man of average intelligence would ever make that mistake.”
“Well, I think they might make it, but they’d only make it once,” I say.
Dana smirks. “I’m not going down without a fight.
But I’m not spending money to do it,” she warns.
“Yes, I was going to take the massive tax write-off on this team. But you can obviously play, so I’m willing to pivot if it makes me a profit.
But you have to win. I want results in this game.
Win, or else I’m selling this team tonight. ”
Her phone rings. “Belle, you better tell your husband to tell his brother to fuck off,” we hear her snap as the door slams behind her.
I look at the team. My team.
“We play the Eastern Conference champs from last year,” Carlsson says quietly.
“We’re going to get slaughtered,” Bramms adds.
“No, we won’t,” I say automatically.
The rookies don’t seem convinced. Cookie looks like he’s about to hurl.
I pick up my stick and throw it against a wall, making it crack. Bramms jumps. Several rookies yelp. The Finn swears in Scandinavian.
“The fuck we are,” I snarl at them. “We beat last year’s Stanley Cup champs.
That means we’re the best goddamn hockey team in the league.
We came from nothing, and we blew through the Orcas, the Mammoths, and now we’re going to slaughter the Boston Harbor Hawks.
And I’m sending Eddie to the hospital while I’m at it.
” My eyes lock with Ellie’s wide ones. “The stadium is packed full of people waiting for a miracle, and we’re going to give them one.
Cookie,” I address him, “I need you to play tonight.”
“The whole game?” he squawks.
“More than five minutes of it, yeah.”
“Um, okay?”
“All of you need to play.” I survey them. “We’re a team. We’ve done a lot of losing together. Now we’re going to do a lot of winning. I don’t care what it takes. Who’s ready to give the crowd a show?”
Carlsson blows out a breath. “Hell yeah. Let’s do it.”
“You damn better.” Ren slams his palms on his goalie pads, stands up, and points his stick threateningly at the players. “’Cause I’ll tell you one thing, as I live and breathe—I ain’t moving to California.”
“You better listen to him. He has a gun in the trunk of his car.” I smirk at the players.
“Someone get this man a jersey,” Bramms calls.
Granny Murray comes in with the burgundy-and-gray jersey with my name on the front and the number 25 on the back. She holds it up, grinning.
“What’s that?” I point to the C on the chest. “You’re the captain,” I tell Zayne, frowning.
He claps me on the shoulder. “No, son, you are. You got this. I’m proud of you.”
“Yeah, you do it right as we’re losing.” I sigh.
“You all are complete morons.” I can’t figure out who said that until the Finnish giant stands up and crosses his arms. “Ellie, could you please give us a rundown of the plays for this game? Some of us are actually here to win and not waste time.” He says this in perfect English with a British accent.
“You speak English?” Jovi hollers.
“My mum’s British,” Heikkil?inen says simply.
“Why weren’t you speaking with us? We had to use Google Translate,” I demand.
“Because you all are brain-damaged idiots and I wanted you to leave me alone.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Ren throws down his glove. “Shiftless Europeans. Ain’t that just the way.”