Chapter 23
C oach called for a time-out, and I took a second to just breathe. Although I’d forced myself not to look for her all game, I gave myself permission to peek over in the stands, my eyes scanning along until I found what I was searching for.
I knew my entire family was out in force, and although I was so grateful for that, I only had eyes for one person. She was hunched over, elbows on her knees, and her gaze was laser-focused on me. As our eyes met she flicked hers away and she asked Kate something.
Fuck knows how I’d managed to stay focused during the game. We hadn’t spoken in two days and that just felt all kinds of wrong.
Sleeping with her had only led to torture. Loving Jenna ate at me from the inside, but it was manageable because I’d had years to learn how to live with that ache.
Now I was in a fresh new world of hell.
Now I knew what it felt like to be surrounded entirely by her. I knew the sound of her moans and the way she tasted.
All those things, every second of our time together, haunted me. We’d had broken sleep during the last shift, and I’d dreamed about her every time I’d closed my eyes, waking up hard as granite and soaked in sweat, a white-hot need searing through me, and a loss I felt to my very soul.
All day, I was walking around in a fog. I replayed scenes of us over and over. And then when I really wanted to punish myself, I pictured her with someone else.
The heavy bag at work was going to need replacing if I kept it up.
Everyone, including Rambo, was steering clear of my snappy ass, and I didn’t blame them.
As soon as the tones went down, I was able to push it all to the back of my mind, but callouts only lasted so long.
I looked away from her and tried to zone in again. I just needed to get through this one game, and it was almost over. I’d only let one goal through and had been able to shake that off without missing a beat.
Maybe I was so unaffected because I had far more important things to worry about.
But Jenna was here, right? That had to mean something. My ribs seized and my heart thudded in my chest.
We’d get past this. We had to.
With only a few seconds left until the next face-off, I motioned to our most experienced D-man, Shea.
“Might wanna do something about 36,” I said, keeping my voice low.
We were playing well. Playing committed. Driven by pure hunger and the need to eviscerate this team.
We’d dominated the first two periods and were up by three, but PD had come out into the third looking like a pack of feral dogs, and from my vantage point, I could see every time those sneaky fuckers got away with murder.
He nodded. “He’s trying to draw Smithy out.”
“I don’t think he’ll take much more of his bullshit.”
“Gotcha.”
It was time for a little payback.
He skated backward and got into position.
I squirted water into my mouth and took my stance. I was ready for this to be over.
Danz won the face-off and passed off to Shea, he propelled himself down the ice at breakneck speed, but asshole 36 had been quick as lightning too. He’d be a really good player in time, once he let his ego take a back seat.
Cruz was open and Shea managed to poke the puck out to him, but it pissed 36 off and he butted Shea’s kidney with the end of his stick. Shea saw red and shoved his aggressor. They both dropped their gloves, and it was on.
The arena erupted, every single person up on their feet. An image on the jumbotron caught my eye and I looked up to see Knox and Jason screaming expletives. I couldn’t hear them, but it didn’t take a genius to lipread “ take that motherfucker down. ” And I couldn’t help it when my lips tipped up.
In the end, the fight was broken up with both players skating into the sin bin. It didn’t matter if the ice was even, we were down one of our star players.
The next face-off didn’t go in our favor, and their star forward came hurtling down the ice on a breakaway. He was closely followed by his linemate, but my guys weren’t as quick, and it left me at what to most would look like a disadvantage.
Knowing this was a play they would have worked on before, though, I was confident they’d skate safe. After all, for these few precious seconds, I was seemingly alone and vulnerable. They would do it exactly as they had practiced. Do what had worked a hundred times. It left them cocky and me at an advantage.
I watched as Rocher straightened up slightly and guarded the puck, blocking it from my view, but his body language told me everything.
He faked a pass and took his shot all at once, hoping to force me into the wrong position, but I’d anticipated the trajectory and was already rotating my torso and head and reaching to block the puck’s path. By the time it bounced on the rebound, six players were battling it out in front of me, but I kept my eyes on the puck at all times.
In a blur of skates, the puck sailed back down the ice and I watched as we attacked their net once again.
Terrins wasn’t good enough, and the lamp lit.
All we had to do now was hold the lead for another six minutes.
“Bro, that was epic,” Knox beamed.
“Thanks, man,” I said, squirting water from the bottle straight into my mouth.
It was a fight to the end, but we clinched the win.
The rest of our family were waiting to see me outside. I hadn’t even taken my skates off and my teammates were already filling the trophy with God knew what.
Knox, Troy, and Theo had managed to get into the locker room, which was wild and rowdy after beating PD into a bloody useless pulp. Well, not quite, but we did win, and I did get to beat on that fucker Terrins. The piece of shit he was.
“Don’t do it now, do it later?” I heard Troy mumble as he took in the dressing room. But Knox just shook Troy off and surged forward.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” he asked, his brow pinched.
“Uh-huh,” I said, burying my face in a towel. I could barely see through the sweat pouring out of me.
“So, like, where do you see yourself in the future?”
“Why?” I moved the towel so I could peek out over the top.
“Just humor me, man. I’m high on the win. You seem to be getting better, not worse, and I’m feelin’ like you could achieve anything you wanted. Have anything you want. So where do you see yourself in say like twenty years?”
I shrugged and started ripping off my pads. “I dunno, living back with Mom and Dad. Taking care of them and Aunt May,” I said, nodding at Theo.
Knox and Troy’s heads whipped to look at each other, their expressions unconvinced.
“Was that a trick question? What was I supposed to say? That in twenty-five years I’ll have lived out a crazy Vince Papale-style story only with hockey? Picked up by an NHL team in my thirties?” I shook my head; they were all fucking nut jobs.
“Ah, we should rewatch Invincible. Gotta love Mark Wahlberg.”
Knox nodded but held up his hand and eyed me.
“What’s your wife gonna say about moving in with Mama? What about your kids? Wouldn’t you?—”
I shot that right down. “I don’t see it.”
“Huh?”
What was this?
“I said, I don’t. See. It. And in any fucking case, who else is gonna be there for them when they’re older and need driving around and looking out for? None of you fuckers, that’s for sure.”
Can’t they leave me to shower and celebrate with the boys? What’s with the weird line of questioning?
“That is fuckin’ crazy.” Troy shook his head.
“Dude. What have you done?” Knox grimaced, shaking his head in tandem with Troy’s.
My eyes snapped to his. What did he know? Had he spoken to Jenna?
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it,” Theo said, pulling my gaze away from Knox.
“See what?” I gritted my teeth as I sat down on the bench to unlace my skates.
“The problem . . .” I just looked at him.
“I gave you too much credit. I knew you were an asshole, but I thought it was because you thought she was too good for you. She is by the way—they all are.”
“All are?” Wow, this conversation was painful.
“Yeah, they’re all too good for us. But, back to you being an even bigger asshole. You need to talk to my mama.”
Completely lost, I asked, “Why?”
“She has all the answers.”
Fuck my life. “To what?” I gritted out.
“Your deepest darkest questions.”
That’s it?
“Why are you being so fucking cryptic? I don’t have any questions.”
He stepped in closer and spoke quietly, “You wanna know if it’s worth the pain of losing you? If you should put her through it? Talk to Mama.”
“I—”
They all clapped me on the back.
“Enjoy this,” Knox said, looking around the room, “we’ll meet you in a couple of hours.”
They all strode off, never looking back at me, congratulating members of the team as they went. I stared back at them, trying to work out what the hell had just happened.
I shook it off though.
Why were they getting at me right now?
Did they all know something had happened?
Maybe, but they would have just come right out and said they knew Jenna and I had fucked.
Shit, even saying it like that made me angry. You fucked a girl you picked up in a bar, this was . . . me and Jenna . I couldn’t even find the right adjectives for what we had done the other night.
Blistering need, and scorching want. We’d burned hotter than any fire I’d ever fought.
We had been a wildfire. The combination of prolonged drought and extreme heat had reached epic proportions, charging everything we’d had, everything we’d ever known.
That’s the problem with Wildfires, though, they burn so intensely, everything changes around them. Even the air expands, creating its very own thunderclouds.
That’s where we were now, under the immense pressure of our own thunderclouds.
I’d hurt her. And for that, I’d never forgive myself. We should’ve never crossed that line.
The last ten years hadn’t been a joke. I hadn’t held off on some fucked up edging game.
I had wanted her, needed her the way fire needed oxygen. Loved her with everything I had, but I was trying to protect her. Protect her from me.
I was no good. I lived for my job. The adrenaline of screaming down the street on a truck that weighed 50,000 pounds, the snap-second decisions I made at every incident scene.
The saves.
The brotherhood.
She deserved someone who would be able to put her first. Love her wholly. I could give her all of me, every piece of me, but I’d still wake up and every shift walk out that door knowing the life we were going to build could be reduced to ash at any moment.
I’d seen it happen with my aunt and uncle. I may have been young, but there was no escaping that kind of devastation.
I still carried the scars those invisible flames had left when I was six years old. And I had been crushed by the weight of never being able to protect any of them.
Jenna was here, though, had been cheering the team on from her seat in the stands. Giving the refs what for when they made an unpopular call. Sent me the text I depended on just before the game.
But I could see she was hurting, hell, I was hurting too.
I’d managed to keep my focus zoned in on the game playing out in front of me though.
Jenna had disappeared once I’d met up with my family. She’d congratulated me and then slipped away after announcing she was heading to the bathroom.