Chapter 2
TATE
“Good evening, everyone.”
In the dressing room at our home arena, minutes before the game starts, the Vancouver Storm falls silent. The players are in their uniforms, warmed up and ready to play, and I’m at the front of the room in my suit.
“We win this one and we’re at the top of the division.”
Anticipation sparks in their eyes. The captain, record-setting goal scorer Rory Miller, and right winger Hayden Owens exchange a grin.
Professional hockey players are all the same: We’re competitive as hell, and we love to win.
“I have a challenge for you tonight,” I tell them. “Slow the plays down. When you get the puck, take a moment. Can the other team predict the play? Where’s the goalie looking? Where are your guys?”
“Is this the time to take a risk?” Miller asks, running a hand through his dark blond hair. “Why not try it out on an easier team?”
Alexei Volkov, a veteran enforcer who retired last season to become my assistant coach, asked me the same thing this afternoon. It’s a fair question, and it shows me that Miller is strategizing the way a great captain should.
“We’re second in the division,” I tell the team. “We have three months until playoffs. I’m challenging you because I know you can do it, and because it’ll make the win that much sweeter if we have to work for it. If it doesn’t go well, we have time to recover.”
“Now’s the time to take risks if it means stronger development,” Volkov adds.
“Exactly.” I look to Miller. “You’re the captain, Miller. If you don’t think tonight’s the night to try, we won’t do it. We’re a team. Everyone has to buy in.”
Miller considers this before his mouth pulls into his trademark roguish grin. “Let’s do it.”
“Good man. Okay,” I say to the rest of the room, “let’s get out there and do what we love.”
That’s the great motivator—that we love this game, we love our teammates like a family, and we love the way our hearts race when the puck hits the back of the net.
We love the roar of the crowd and the flashing lights, the way the fans pound their fists on the glass in enthusiasm, celebrating the goal with us.
We love to win, but we love the challenge.
It doesn’t matter that an injury forced me into retirement. It doesn’t matter that I wear a suit instead of a jersey. I will always be a hockey player.
The opening music plays in the arena, the lights go down, and the crowd cheers as the players hit the ice. Volkov and I step onto the bench and I scan the crowd behind us.
A couple rows up, the world’s cutest, funniest, kindest nine-year-old waves with enthusiasm. I can see the gap where she lost her front tooth the other week.
I grin at Bea, my daughter. On either side of her, her mom, Holly, and Holly’s husband, Jeff, wave. Bea stands and turns to show me the name on the back of her child-sized jersey.
WARD.
My smile stretches ear to ear, love and affection for my kid expanding through me. She always wears my jersey at games.
Beatrice Huntington-Ward is my whole world.
Beside me, Volkov’s gaze follows mine before he turns back to the ice, where the guys are doing their last warm-up loops before the anthem.
“Cute,” he admits begrudgingly. Even a surly grump like Volkov isn’t immune to Bea’s charm.
“The cutest.”
Something about the way his expression softens has me lifting my eyebrows at him with a silent question.
“Not yet.” He glances to his wife sitting behind the net, wearing his old jersey, and an affectionate look passes over his brutal features. “But eventually.”
Volkov and his wife, Dr. Georgia Greene, used to be at each other’s throats, even after they married suddenly at the beginning of last season.
I always had a feeling about them, though.
Maybe it was the way he stared at her shoes, or that she asked to transfer him to another doctor because she couldn’t be impartial.
My mind wanders to Dr. Greene’s best friend, a moody, sulky bartender.
Her dark hair was up in a ponytail today, swishing as she walked around the bar.
I think about her delicate hands, nimble and confident as she mixes drinks.
I think about the color of her eyes. The most interesting shade of blue.
A ring of violet around the outer edge of her irises.
“The room off my office could be converted to a baby room,” Volkov says, and I force inconvenient thoughts of an unforgiving, heartless woman from my head.
“Volkov, getting married has made you downright sappy.” He gives me a flat, unamused look and I chuckle. “Happy for you two, though. The day I found out Bea was coming along, I found a new purpose.”
Volkov grunts, folding his arms over his chest, but his expression is a fraction softer than before.
After the anthem, the game begins. Miller and Owens approach the other team’s net, passing back and forth. The fans start cheering.
“Come on,” Volkov mutters under his breath as the energy in the arena rises.
Miller’s about to take the shot, but pauses. The other team’s goalie is ready—but so is Luca Walker, a younger defenseman. Miller passes, Walker snaps the puck at the net, and it sails past the goalie.
The arena errupts with noise. The goal horn blows, lights flash, and the players on the ice celebrate as the guys on the bench jump to their feet, hollering and slapping each other on the back. Walker and Miller skate past, bumping gloves with their teammates as Volkov and I applaud.
Volkov’s gaze lifts to the game clock with a wry look. “Thirty-two seconds into the game.”
“There we go.” Pride bursts in my chest, warm and sharp.
“Great game tonight,” I tell the team in the dressing room after. “Not just the guys who put points on the board. All of you. I saw some great plays out there. I saw you accepting my challenge. Nice work. Proud of you.”
I head to the door, but Miller calls my name.
“Coach, we’re heading to the bar to celebrate.” His eyebrows lift. “Join us.”
Jordan’s pretty indigo eyes appear in my mind and I think about the confident, practiced way her hands move at the bar, mixing drinks and tidying the counter. Her nail polish is always a dark shade—wine red, forest green, navy blue, black. I bet her hands are soft.
I’ve subjected myself to enough of her for one day, though. For another few weeks, my responsibility to Ross Sheridan has been fulfilled.
“Thank you for the invite, but not tonight.” I nudge my chin to the ceiling. “I need to talk with Ross for a few minutes.”
Besides, the team doesn’t need their coach hanging around while they celebrate.
Miller and I say goodbye and I head upstairs to the top floor of the arena, to Ross’s office.
When I arrive, the team owner stands at the windows, overlooking the rink.
Two photos hang on the wall beside him, one of him when he was a Storm player, hoisting the Stanley Cup above his head while his teammates celebrated around him.
The other is of us years later, when he coached the team, with me lifting the Cup and him beaming.
“Hi, Ross.”
He turns, a conflicted frown fading from his expression as he heads back to his desk. “Tate. Thanks for stopping in, I know it’s late.”
I take a seat in one of the chairs across from his desk. “It’s fine.”
I won’t fall asleep for hours, anyway. I never do.
He leans back in his chair, his eyes flicking to the framed photo on his desk. It’s facing away from me, but I can see it in my mind’s eye—his late wife and the daughter who won’t give him the time of day. Jordan’s about eighteen in the photo.
I wish I knew what happened between them. Ross has never volunteered the information, Jordan would die before confiding in me, and I’ve never felt it’s my place to pry.
But Jesus, I want to know. Ross is like the father I never had. It kills me to see his callous daughter treat him like this.
“How’s my girl?” he asks.
“Good. Fine. The usual.”
He hums, glancing out the other windows, the ones that look over Vancouver, bustling with lights and traffic and people heading out to celebrate the win.
“She seems happy?”
“Happy enough.”
Have I ever even seen Jordan Hathaway smile? She’s so serious all the time, mixing drinks behind her bar and giving Luca Walker unimpressed stares when he tries to flirt with her.
“Is she seeing anyone?”
Something twists in my gut. A few years ago, some guy followed her around the bar like a puppy and sang thinly veiled songs about her while she barely noticed him. Were they together? I haven’t seen him in a while.
What would that be like, to date Jordan Hathaway? She may be stunning, but she’s so guarded and cold. It would be like dating a painting in a museum.
Not that I would know what dating is like. It’s been years.
“You don’t like her, do you?” Ross asks with a little smile, interrupting my thoughts.
I clear my throat. “What makes you think that?”
“You’re uncomfortable.”
I take a deep breath. There aren’t a lot of people who tell Ross the truth, but I know he relies on me to be honest.
“Ross, she’s . . .” I shake my head, searching for the words. Jordan Hathaway is a closed book. I can usually read people, but she gives me nothing. “It’s been a decade and she still doesn’t want a relationship with you. She’s thirty years old. She doesn’t need you checking in on her.”
He looks down, pain washing over his features, and I hate giving him the hard truth like this.
I swallow. Ross Sheridan was the best coach I ever had.
He made me the best player I could be. When my life fell apart after my injury, and I was in the pit of alcoholism and depression and found out I was going to have a daughter, he hauled me into rehab.
After, Ross got me a job coaching women’s hockey at UBC.
He’s the reason I’m the coach and father I am today. And that’s why I owe him the truth.
“It’s time to let go and move on,” I say as gently as possible.
It’s what I wish someone had told me.
He lets out a short laugh. “You’re telling me to move on?”
“I know.” It’s my greatest weakness, that once I see the potential in someone, I can’t give up on them, and it’s bitten me in the ass more than once. “Some people are emotionally unavailable, though.”
You can hope and wish someone will come back, but sometimes they never do. Look at my own father. Emotionally unavailable people will leave you every time.
“You’re right,” Ross says quietly. “It’s time to move on, and that’s why I called you here tonight.” His eyes meet mine, serious and sad. “Tate, I’m selling the team.”
My heart drops. Seconds pass, and I’m speechless.
“What?” I shake my head, confused. “No.” This team is his life’s work. He was a player, a coach, and now the owner. “You love this team.”
“I do, but I can’t own the team forever, and Jordan’s not—” He cuts himself off. “It’s time for me to move on.”
Jordan’s not interested in taking over, he was going to say.
When he bought the Vancouver Storm, he confessed years ago, it was his dream that his daughter would come work for him and eventually own the team.
Like that’s going to happen. I recall her at Volkov’s vow renewal ceremony in September. Ross said hello to her, and she left. She won’t even talk to him.
And now he’s giving up.
“I’ll find the right person,” he adds. “Someone who has the team’s best interest at heart.”
This does nothing to reassure me. These billionaires have egos, and they like to put their mark all over the organization. They have their own people; their own coaches, staff, analysts, scouts. They have their favorite players. Everyone’s jobs will be on the line.
A new owner is going to rip this team to shreds.
An awful taste fills my mouth. “A new owner could ruin everything we’ve worked so hard to build.”
It’s not just we as in he and I. It’s we, the team.
Players like Jamie Streicher, who could have gone anywhere but took a risk and a pay cut coming to Vancouver.
The team hated Rory Miller when he joined but he stepped up as the captain and leader they needed.
Hayden Owens moved from defense to forward and became the star I knew he could be.
Alexei Volkov found a new purpose as my assistant coach after retiring from the NHL.
“It’s not just the guys.” An uneasy feeling settles through my gut as the full impact of this hits me. “We have a robust staff of incredible people supporting the team.” Physios. Analysts. Medical staff.
A sharp realization hits me—if the new owner fires me, I’ll need to either go back to coaching a lower level or, if I want to stay in the NHL, move.
Moving away from Bea isn’t an option. Not happening.
I don’t need to work. Having been one of the highest-paid players in the NHL, and now the highest-paid coach, I’m set. It’s not about money, though. It’s about purpose.
Coaching and being a father is my purpose.
He gives me one final sad look. “Nothing’s forever, Tate.”
None of this makes sense. Ross Sheridan is devoted to the Storm. He’d never rip apart everyone’s lives unless he had to.
Something I teach my guys, though, is that the game isn’t over until the final buzzer goes off. That’s what’s beautiful about hockey—things can change in an instant. At the last moment.
There’s too much at stake for me to give up.
“What can I do to change your mind?” I ask, and he shakes his head with a resigned expression.
“Nothing. I’m sorry, Tate.”
That part of me that made me a great hockey player, the part that won’t let me quit, digs in deeper. The conversation is over for tonight, but I’m going to think of a solution.
I say goodnight and head to the door.
“And Tate?”
I pause in the doorway, looking over my shoulder at Ross.
“Let Jordan know for me, would you?”