Chapter 23
Willa
Carter’s little firefighting crew are hilarious. He would never admit it, but I can see why he loves them.
They’re his family.
“Carter and a bunch of the guys on the team were butt ass naked.” Mike regales me in his story. “They were freezing their asses off, and Carter, of all of them, slid across the frozen pond.” He laughs as he continues the story. “He had freezer burn from his thigh, up his ass, and on his back. Of course, the other stupid kids wised up, and no one followed him. They were all stuck naked across the pond, and Carter had to call for help.”
“Oh my god.” I cover my laugh up. “I will never look at any of those guys the same again.”
“It’s the reason the team doesn’t haze the freshmen like they used to,” Creed chimes in as all the guys continue to discuss the night the seniors dropped Carter and a bunch of other freshmen at the time in the middle of nowhere to walk home naked.
The team is always doing stupid stuff like that, but lately they’ve been sticking to laser tag or the Nerf War games that the seniors join in on.
Carter comes back out and they all crowd him to talk about that night. It’s adorable how he keeps checking on me, catching my eye across the small room with a rise of one or two of his eyebrows to question if I’m still ok.
“I haven’t seen him this happy in a long time,” Creed says as he takes the seat next to me.
“Carter? Happy? That’s unheard of.” I catch Carter looking at me again and see those tiny creases deepen at the corner of his eyes.
“Don’t let that scowl fool you. He’s smitten.” Creed winks at me.
“Smitten?” I laugh it off. “He is happier around you guys.” I make note of the room full of his comrades. I’m happy he has them. The hell he’s living in can’t be easy, but he gets through it by having these guys to escape to.
“Nah, it’s you.” Creed drapes his arm on the back of my chair. “He hasn’t smiled like that since his sister passed away. Here or anywhere.”
“His sister?” Carter has never talked about a sister. I never asked, but he’s never mentioned having a sister.
“Yeah, Janisa.” Creed lowers his head. “What happened to her is sad. Just sad. Carter was ten, and he looked up to her so much. No one saw it coming.” He shakes the thoughts out of his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
“What happened to her?” I ask to get him to tell me more.
“That’s a story for Carter to tell you.” He clears his throat and forces out a smile. “Honestly, I think she got her freedom.”
With that bombshell, he stops talking as Carter comes over.
“Do you want to get out of here? It’s getting late.” He looks so happy and I wipe that moment of sadness away. I don’t want anything to bring Carter’s mood down.
“First,” Creed stops us from leaving, “how did you get that shiner?”
Carter winces and touches his face, but it seems nothing can bring down the good mood he’s in. “Willa slapped me around in the back of my truck last night.”
“What?” I gasp and stare at him.
“Oh, really?” Creed laughs.
“She’s got a lot of strength in these tiny arms,” Carter says as he squeezes my bicep.
“I…” I can’t even lie and say I didn’t. “I didn’t cause that,” I quickly cover myself. I reach out and pinch Carter’s nipple through his shirt to get him to shut up. “And I don’t have tiny arms.”
“Ouch.” He rubs his chest, wagging his eyebrows at me. “Don’t hurt me, or the Loch Ness Monster may want to come out to play.”
My face warms to a fiery red.
Creed shakes his head at us. “I don’t want to know. Go. Get out of here.”
“Happy Birthday,” I call out as Carter drags me away. “I can’t believe you said that in front of him!”
He said that in front of his chief! The guy, as Carter told me, is like a father to him.
“I was only joking.” Carter grins. “I’m too exhausted to give you a real ride anyway.”
“No more of that.” I glare at him. “You’ve officially been bumped up to my best friend, and there is no sex between best friends.”
There can’t be. Not if I don’t want to hurt my other best friend. Sex makes things complicated, and if what Creed said is true and Carter is smitten, we need to stop this before he gets hurt, too.
The team has lost four games in a row since the start of the new semester.
They were tough teams to beat, but we really need this win.
Carter has been working so hard and showing such significant improvements, but he’s still being so hard on himself. The entire team is blaming themselves while the board is blaming me.
Coach Renan won’t tell me that, but I overheard a conversation he was having with the dean. They’re pressuring him to hire someone else and let me go, but this is all I have now.
My boot is gone, but I still haven’t put on a pair of skates.
“If we have a shot of getting to the Frozen Four, we really need to win tonight,” Coach Renan mutters over the loud warmup music.
“It’s not you, Tomlin.” Coach Greardon stands next to me with his tablet to review plays. “The team has been spiraling down for over a year now, but after last year”s loss, we were hoping for a win this year.”
“We can still make it.” I look out at the defeated faces on the ice. The team is already giving up, and the coaches are feeding into it. We can’t give up on them.
Jocelyn and some girls from the women’s hockey team came to watch tonight to give their support. I miss them. I miss my team and being out on the ice with them. They’ve been so busy, I’ve barely had time to hang out with them at all. But they came here and are cheering us on to get the win.
No one expects us to win tonight with the way we’ve been playing and the Sharks have always been a tough team for us to beat.
We can do it. We can beat them.
The anthems are sung, and the puck is dropped. So far, no one has scored, and the teams are getting frustrated.
“Keep your heads cool,” I warn them when they start cursing each other out. The last thing we need is a penalty for fighting. “You should get baby Pierce off the ice,” I yell to Coach, noticing Braydon becoming more sluggish.
The coaches and team on the bench look at me.
“Baby Pierce?” Carter is the first to question me, as Coach Renan calls for Braydon to take the bench.
“I didn’t mean it condescendingly.” I wave him off, but he smirks up at me. “We’ve had sisters on our team and usually refer to the youngest as Baby. I wasn’t thinking.”
Braydon glances at me for the comment, but says nothing. I think I gained a little bit of his respect over the past couple of weeks. He’s actually starting to listen to me.
“Watch the deke,” I shout, but it’s too late. Our opponent fakes a pass, shoots, and scores. A perfect shot that sails right up the middle in-between the pipes, passing our goalie’s face. “Damn.”
Our team slumps over to the bench, feeling the loss already even if we still have fifteen minutes of play left.
“You got this, guys.” I clap to encourage them. “Keep skating fast. Drive those pucks.”
Carter jumps the wall for the change. He looks back and nods at me. A quick gesture that gets lost as he skates quickly past the blue line to get to the puck that Hines has held behind the net. He passes to Carter, and Carter breaks off.
“Go, go.” I pray he makes a play or gives our team some kind of momentum.
At center ice, he passes to Gentry. Gentry, one of our fastest skaters, moves past our opponent and passes the puck behind their net to Alex. Alex passes to Finn, and they keep control of the puck. Finn passes back to Alex. He shoots, but it’s saved, deflected to Gentry.
The crowd shouts “shoot!” behind us, but he doesn’t have a clear shot to make it in.
It’s passed up the zone to Hines.
Carter taps his stick down to get Hines’ attention, and Hines quickly passes back to Gentry. He shoots, but it’s deflected off the pipe. This is their chance. This is the best opportunity they’ve gotten and if they don’t get a goal, the game is done.
Any morale they have left would be stripped away.
Alex has the puck. He starts to shoot, but fakes it back behind him to Carter at the top. Carter is quick with a wrist shot, giving the other team no time to react. The puck sails up, and it’s too high, but Gentry raises his stick, deflecting the puck behind the goalie and past the crossbar into the net.
“Fuck yeah,” I shout and quickly cover my mouth.
The team celebrates around Carter and Gentry, and our spirits are lifted.
Carter eyes me and makes a motion of rowing a canoe while still standing with his stick.
It’s not a win yet. We’re tied with ten minutes left, but feeling the adrenaline of the goal, the team is playing faster and harder than they’ve been the entire game.
And to top it off, Alex gets a breakaway with a minute left to make the game winning goal.
Jocelyn waited for me to come out of the arena. It’s been forever since we hung out, and she finally has some free time.
We drove to O’Hallorans Pub for a quick drink to get out of the house. She’s been talking about Coach Higgins and the team to fill me in on everything I’ve been missing.
“How do you know that guy?” Jocelyn stops mid sentence to see who I waved to.
“Oh, it’s Mike. He’s a local firefighter.” I turn away from watching Mike and his wife dancing on the dancefloor to pay attention to her story.
“Since when do you hang out with the local firefighters?”
Another one, John, I think, walks past and winks at me.
“Oh, I went to their chief’s birthday party with Carter once.” I wave it off. “What did he say back to her?”
“So, now you’re going on dates with Carter?” Jocelyn ignores my question with her own.
“No, it wasn’t a date.” It was definitely not a date. “It was his friend’s birthday party. We hung out with a bunch of old men.”
“From the fire department?” Jocelyn questions me.
“You know, Carter is a volunteer firefighter and a paramedic. It was at the firehouse.” I raise my hands out to my sides, not understanding why she’s angry at that.
She uncrosses her arms from her chest and nods. “Oh, I forgot that.”
“I asked if I could invite you, but he didn’t think it was a good idea.” Shit, I’m digging myself a bigger hole.
“Why not?” She scoffs, fixing her long hair.
“Because it was a small party, and he didn’t want to seem like he was inviting random people.” I roll my eyes as if his reasoning was ridiculous. It was, but that technically wasn’t the reason.
“Oh ok.” She sighs. “When are you hanging out with him again?”
“I don’t know, but we can all plan something together.”
“Oh!” She jumps in her seat excitedly remembering something. “I forgot I need a favor. Technically, it’s not a favor because you’ll enjoy it.”
“Enjoy what?” I laugh uncomfortably, already hating this idea.
“My cousin Kenny is coming for a visit again, and I may have mentioned that you”re single now.” She shimmies her shoulders up and down.
“Jocelyn, I… I don’t know.” Her cousin Ken or Kenny was cute. He flirted with me the last time he visited, but I was still with Vic at the time.
“He really likes you, Willa. And it’s one date. Who knows? Maybe you’ll really hit it off with him. You guys were very friendly last time he was here,” she adds to make her point, but another light bulb goes off in that smart brain of hers. “We can make it a double date! If you think Carter will go for that.” She tilts her head and bats her eyes, pleading for me to say yes.
“Ok, yeah.” I agree and laugh awkwardly. “Why wouldn’t he?”