Chapter 3
ZANE
See what I mean? I told you Jakob Martin and the truth aren’t exactly on speaking terms, and I wasn’t kidding.
I did not look like I was in the middle of making a snow angel after he punched me.
And I sure as hell didn’t wear a deer-in-headlights look at any point.
Though the brawl was sudden, I was ready to fight and have my teammates’ backs one hundred and ten percent.
When you think about it, the punch didn’t mean much.
Jakob’s fist only packed the wallop it did because…
well, he was lucky. Why don’t we just tell it like it is.
Even Jakob has admitted he’d never been in a real fight before, including on-ice scuffles, which seems like heresy for a hockey player.
Maybe you think I should feel embarrassed, but I don’t.
I told you it was dumb luck and I’m sticking to it.
He knocked me off my feet, I’ll cop to that.
And yeah, I told you the lights went out, but that only lasted for a second.
He didn’t score a knockout win over me. It wasn’t Tyson versus Frazier here.
Think of it more like a standing eight count in which the ref stupidly calls for the bell and awards the decision to the other guy.
Here’s a little something Jakob didn’t tell you: the Lions took off the moment they scored a couple of wimpy little punches on us. Seriously. Rather than stick around and finish what they started, they fled like the bunch of pussies they are.
I grabbed a hold of a bar stool to help me climb back to my feet, but it tipped over and landed on top of me. Wasn’t that just my luck? So, I reached up and latched onto the bar to pull myself back upright.
I staggered at first, honestly expecting to fall flat on my face (good thing Jakob and the gang hadn’t stuck around to see that, huh?) and found blood on my hand and shirt. Turned out my nose had been spouting crimson ever since Jakob’s fist had connected with my face.
Instead of running, I glanced around, trying to find the Larkin Lions, but they’d vanished like a fart in the wind.
Son of a bitch, I thought.
Then I found Jax Echlin who actually was laid out on the floor. See? I can admit that much. Jakob’s story wasn’t complete fabrication. Besides, the punch that sent me to the deck must’ve been a cheap shot from the Larkin Lions, I’m absolutely sure of it.
I dropped to my knees, slapping Jax’s face with my hand.
“Come on, goddamn it,” I said. “Wake up, would you?”
His eyes stayed closed, and he seemed worse than the sleepyhead that keeps hitting the snooze button.
“Jax! Wake up, would you? We’ve got to get out of here!”
Still nothing. Oh my God, this seemed so fucking hopeless.
Moments later, Jax’s eyes fluttered. He opened them half-way, and I think he recognized me, but I couldn’t be totally sure. Then he lifted his head part way, but it looked like it must’ve weighed a half ton, because his head dropped and his eyes closed.
My heart quickened. I worried for a moment that Jax wouldn’t come to (in a reasonable amount of time, at least), and getting us the hell out of there would prove impossible.
How about another admission? I’d never lost a fight before, on-ice or off.
No judge’s decisions either—all victories.
Not that I would concede defeat in this little bar scuffle, oh no.
I’m just saying I didn’t know the feeling of landing on the wrong side of a fight for any reason, and I didn’t know how to act.
Usually it was the other guy(s) that had to revive their friends from unconsciousness while I strutted away victorious.
Oh, who am I kidding? I did a triumphant turkey trot anytime I laid someone out flat.
This was the first way that Jakob Martin proved to be the exception to a crucial rule.
Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t the last.
Finally, Jax’s eyes widened plenty, as the rest of the team staggered over to help me return Jax to his feet and keep him steady. I wished the Lions had stuck around. I wanted more of them. No fucking way could I let the altercation end like this.
And then I saw red and blue lights flash in the window, sweeping over us.
Oh, shit.
“Come on, man,” I told Jax, “We’ve got to get a move on here.”
Jax tried to answer, his words slurred like he’d downed half a bottle of vodka in record time. He still couldn’t stand fully under his own power, and we had to prop him up.
Only then did I notice the overturned tables, the bar stools, and the crystal field of broken glass scattered all over the floor.
The flashing lights nearly blinded me, quickening my heart even more.
I should’ve known something like this would happen.
I’d just lost myself in the heat of battle and reality had escaped me.
Most of the bar had cleared out by that point, I saw. Those customers who’d left probably would’ve done so to avoid getting caught up in someone else’s police trouble. The ones that’d stayed might’ve been the type to suck as much marrow out of the drama as they could.
Two cops lumbered toward the front door.
You heard that right. Let me tell you; these guys were enormous, not the stereotypical flabby, donut-eating police officers you see on TV or in movies.
I felt pretty sure either of them could’ve used a parking meter for a toothpick.
They shined flashlights on us and commanded us to stay still.
And we would’ve had to listen to them. After all, we had nowhere to run, right?
I’d visited the Colter Bay Grill tons of times (it was our turf, remember?), and I knew the place inside out and backwards. Actually, I didn’t need to know the place that well to realize it had another exit.
“Come on, guys,” I said, “let’s get out of here!”
“How the fuck are we going to do that?” Axel Moore, our left-winger asked.
“Just shut up and follow me, would you?”
Moore and I dragged Jax Echlin along the far side of the bar, but he collapsed onto the floor after only a few steps.
Wasn’t that just how these things always work?
We scooped our team captain off the floor and continued past the bar and into a dining room type of area beyond the bar section.
Bystanders watched us march through from their tables like they’d never before been subjected to such a scene.
I didn’t give a shit what they thought. I didn’t give a shit about much of anything else, truth be told.
All I gave a shit about was escaping the Colter Bay Grill with no cuffs clamped onto my wrists.
I found two glass doors in the restaurant’s back corner. When I pushed down the metal bar, it refused to budge.
“Son of a bitch!” I said.
Wasn’t that just my luck in this situation?
I couldn’t give up, though. I threw my body up against the second door, expecting it to be as much of a bastard as the first, but I got it wrong. The door flew open, and I landed on the concrete, which seemed just lovely after the time spent getting acquainted with the barroom tile.
Worse, the still half-conscious Jax Echlin landed on top of me, knocking my wind out.
Good thing Moore pulled him off me, so I could regain my feet quickly enough, but we took another spill over some tables and chairs in the patio area outside. Jax Echlin wound up on the ground yet again. We scooped him up once more before running again but met an iron fence after only a few steps.
Thank God this was only a small fence, probably meant to separate patio diners from sidewalk traffic.
I hurdled it with no trouble. Jax, on the other hand, presented plenty of trouble.
Moore scooped him up and I helped haul him over the fence.
Then Moore hopped over, and we raced up Delaware Avenue to my car.
Not that we were out of the woods or anything. Hell, no. The cops would’ve met us at the other side of the restaurant had they really wanted to. Or more of Buffalo’s finest might’ve arrived on the scene. No surprise given the nature of the situation.
When we crossed the street, we narrowly avoided being struck by not one but two oncoming cars.
At that moment, I found the silver lining in having a car flatten us.
Don’t laugh. I didn’t exactly feel like a million bucks after that incident.
You face the humiliation we did and see if you wouldn’t rather have a Chevrolet logo stamped on your chest than live with it.
Anyway, we scrambled up the opposite sidewalk until we reached my car.
We poured ourselves inside, and I fired up the engine right away.
I didn’t hang a right onto Allen Street, though.
The cops would see us for sure—and you know how that would go.
They might’ve caught us anyway. I didn’t know.
I’d never run from the cops before. I’d never taken a motherfucker of a punch like that either.
Anyway, I pulled a ginormous U-turn, dodging an oncoming car, and floored the gas pedal as my car rocketed toward North Street.
“What the fuck happened in there?” Jax Echlin sounded his most coherent yet but still slurred his words a little.
“We got our asses kicked,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Don’t worry about it, Jax. Just chill out, okay? I’ve got to get us out of here first and then we’ll talk.”
Our team captain fell silent, thank God. Any more of that and I would’ve had to explain that he’d gotten his ass kicked, not me. Yeah, I’d taken a motherfucker of a fist, and almost certainly broken my nose, but I hadn’t needed to be carried out of the bar, for Christ’s sake.
A sharp turn through a roundabout at the end of Porter Avenue threw Jax and Moore against the door because none of us had taken the time to buckle up. Soon, I merged onto the Interstate 1-90, bound for Buffalo’s Westside.
When I glanced into the rearview mirror, I saw my nose had swollen like crazy. Jax still sounded like a zombie, and Moore’s shirt had nearly been torn right off. This had been a rivalry before, but the Colter Bay Grill incident escalated our animosity to the next level.
This meant war.