Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
ALEXIO
“Why the fuck did you call me back to your fucking shop?” I tempered my voice as best I could by shoving my hand into my pocket and twisting the old drachma inside between my fingers.
There wasn’t a lot of room to move it around since my jeans were impossibly tight, but the motion was soothing.
It was a habit I’d developed since finding it on the beach back home, and one that was subtle enough no one noticed or made fun of me for.
“I really don’t have fucking time for this, Nikos. ”
I preferred to swear at my brother in any other language but English.
I used to speak to my dad in Türkce when he was alive, and my teammates in either broken French or the drunk Russian and Finnish I’d managed to pick up over the years at the bar after long games and big wins.
In short, my head felt like about seven mixed salads most days.
But not today. Today, I shouted at my brother in my first language: Greek. The one our mum used at home. The one I’d never forget because of how often she yelled at me and Nikos for being little shits.
“What’s the big deal?” Nikos asked. “You help Peter all the time.”
“Yes, but you didn’t tell me his son was one of those hockey players.” And oh. I heard it there. I heard the way I said “those” in that tone that had pissed Jonah off beyond all reason. But I had every fucking right to be indignant and irritated.
When our ice time had been cut by a quarter the first time Boston announced that the blind PPHL team would be using our arena, I was irritated. Then when they announced it made more sense for them to share with us full-time since the sled team needed a different sort of rink, I was indignant.
How the fuck was I going to practice enough? How the fuck were my skills not going to atrophy for a team that no one goddamn watched?
And yeah, okay. I heard it there too. I knew when I was being a dick, and I knew when my irritation was misplaced.
In truth, I would have cared less, but the fuck-face commissioner of the NHL teams had gotten together with the fuck-face commissioner of the PPHL teams and decided there needed to be some sort of fucking ambassadorship outreach or something.
“They thought it would be a good idea,” Bernard Renault said in his weird nasal voice that sounded like he was sniffing the inside of some other dude’s asshole, “if we had a better understanding of…that type of hockey.”
He was allergic to the word “disabled,” which, on an average day, was kind of hilarious.
Though to be fair, I had no idea if I was allowed to use it. It felt like a slur, though I’d been corrected on that multiple times. But yeah. It felt wrong for it to come from me.
So I avoided it when I could. Just…hopefully not as obviously as Renault was doing it.
Everyone grunted and groaned at having yet one more pile of shit on our plates that went along with sharing ice time and having to restructure games and playoffs—though luckily, since we were older, they had to do most of the time changes. But it sucked.
And I was really hoping that idea would die.
In fact, for two years, it wasn’t brought up again.
Until today, when someone walked into the training room and pointed at me. “Him, right?”
The guy was very tall with broad shoulders and a mop of unruly curls. I had no idea who he was or what he wanted. Or why he was pointing at me.
“Zeki!” my coach yelled from across the room. Noah was wearing a hat with the word COACH across the front like a huge douche.
I walked over and cocked a brow at him. “What?”
“How long you been with the organization?”
I blinked slowly and pulled the drachma out of my pocket, turning it in my palm over and over. The motion was keeping me from cussing him out. “The fact that you don’t know is why you suck at your job.”
It was no secret I hated him, but in my defense, I hated most people.
He ignored me. “Ten years,” he told the guy. And of course, he was wrong.
“Thirteen.” It was automatic at this point. I’d gone ninth in the draft after spending two years in the Q, freezing my literal balls off in Quebec and missing Cyprus sands so much my stomach hurt. But it had all been worth it.
Until now.
This was worse than being traded to a town with even colder winters than fucking Boston.
“We’re going to name you the Boston Glaciers’ ambassador to the PPHL Blind Division.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“I know you heard me,” Noah said.
I shoved my drachma back into my pocket and folded my arms. “And what if I say no?”
“Then I smile and say it’s cute you think you have a choice. Now, get the fuck out of my office. I have shit to do.”
I could have punched something.
Instead, I walked down to the gym and ran on the treadmill for so long I nearly threw up, then called Noah in for a meeting to tell him that I didn’t care if he said I had no choice.
I couldn’t do it. He needed to pick someone else.
There were half a dozen guys on our team who did charity all fucking summer long while I sat with my ass in the sand and my hand down the front of my pants.
I was not the man for the job.
But then my brother called, and now I was here, missing my meeting, all worked up and pissed off and watching Peter, who was snoring gently on the couch.
I couldn’t hate him for it. I’d spent the last few months hating his entire family, only to learn—assuming that Jonah and his smart, annoyingly pretty mouth wasn’t lying to my face—that only Peter’s wife knew about his condition.
I knew he had three sons. I knew they were mostly estranged. I knew they were blind.
I did not know two of them were fucking hockey players until today.
It was my fault for assuming they’d be just regular guys with regular jobs and maybe a couple of cute guide dogs I could pet. Fucker didn’t have a guide dog at all, which was yet one more tick in the column of why he sucked.
I took a deep breath and turned my attention back to my brother, who was breathing heavily on the other end of the phone. “Did you know who Peter’s son was?”
“Not before he came in. I know now. I looked him up.”
“Fantastic.”
“He’s a goalie for the Legend.”
I knew that, of course. All the weird ones were goalies.
Vanya had been on the Glaciers for the last two years.
He was my friend, but he was also the strangest motherfucker I had ever met in my life.
The other day, I caught him putting whole avocados in his gym bag because he said when they ripened, they smelled like come, and it attracted lovers like flies to honey.
That was one conversation I walked away from.
“His brother plays for the Fury.”
“What the fuck?” I said like I didn’t know that.
“Prodigies,” he said. It sounded a little like a question, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Doubt it.” Though Jonah did seem very flexible, and…fuck no. I was not thinking about that, god damn it.
I set the drachma on its side on the table and flicked it, watching it spin in a circle, then shudder and fall.
It was ancient and not very round, so it didn’t spin well, but the motion was still soothing.
I did that three more times before putting it back into my pocket.
The last thing I needed was to lose the damn thing.
Then my season would be truly fucked.
“The Legends have amazing stats,” Nikos said.
“Yeah, but they also have different rules.” I wasn’t going to say they were easier. I had no fucking idea. But the mouthy little shit tried to claim he could beat my ass on my ice playing my game, and I’d like to see him fucking try. “What about their third brother? I know he’s not in the PPHL…”
“Jonah talked about him on an interview a few years back when he was first drafted. I watched it on YouTube a few minutes ago. His little brother is a metalsmith or blacksmith or something.”
“That sounds dangerous. Especially if he can’t see.” I shut my mouth after that, but I didn’t think I was wrong. Though I was pretty sure that shit was dangerous for anyone.
“I think you should probably take a beat before you speak,” Nikos said. He was always the more reasonable one. The fact that he followed me to America was the best and worst decision of my life.
He definitely cramped my style, but he also definitely kept me out of jail. Listening to him was never a bad idea.
“Well, I still don’t buy his story that he didn’t know about Peter. I mean, three sons, and none of them knew he was on his own like this?”
Nikos let out a slow breath. “Maybe. I don’t know. He seemed really shaken up.”
I really hadn’t noticed. I’d been too distracted by the blood running down his face, then consumed with guilt because that had been my fault. Then I was pissed off because he had a smart fucking mouth and gorgeous lips, and…
No. Fuck.
I had to stop.
“Well, whatever. I’m going to hang up now.”
“Is your coach going to be—”
I ended the call before he could finish his question. I did that a lot though, so he was used to it. I had room to be a better brother, but that was a future Alexio problem. Walking into the kitchen, I started Peter’s kettle, then dropped into the kitchen chair and looked at my missed calls.
Noah was four of them.
I debated about leaving him on delivered, but that was only going to delay the inevitable. I hit his name and waited as it rang. And rang. And rang.
And rang.
“Zeki.”
Damn. I was hoping it was going to go to voicemail. “I can’t make it tonight.”
“So you dragged my happy ass down to the arena on a game night—”
“PPHL game. Don’t tell me there’s not enough parking.”
He sighed into the phone. “You don’t need to be such a dick about it, Zek.” I hated when he called me that, but it was better than him using my given name. “They’re a good team.”
I wouldn’t know. I’d never watched out of protest that we lost so much of our ice time. Last month, I’d had to skate out my sprained ankle recovery at the kiddie rink thirteen miles from the arena. Like I had that kind of time to spare.