Chapter 12 #2
Five minutes later, I’m surrounded by my teammates in the rink. Just being out here already has tension easing out of my shoulders. My neck feels looser, as do my legs, and I am more than ready to feel the cold air on my face as we get practice started.
“All right, listen up. We’re going to start with?—”
“Sorry, sorry! I’m here!”
To everyone’s surprise—but maybe especially mine—Hutch comes barreling onto the ice, looking like he barely slept a wink last night.
Fuck. I didn’t expect to see him today. I thought I had more time to figure out what I’m going to say to him.
My stomach churns at the idea of the conversation.
What am I even supposed to say? Hey, I slept with your stepsister who you hate, and now she’s moving in with me. No, that sounds stupid as fuck.
“What’d I miss?” he asks, coming to stand next to me.
Nobody talks for several moments, mostly just giving him stares of disbelief.
“What the hell are you doing here, Hutchinson?” Coach Smith finally says.
“Uh, practicing? Season starts in like four days, Coach.”
“I’m aware. I’m also aware that your fiancée just had a baby last night. So I’m asking again—what the hell are you doing here?”
“Uh, I’m…uh…I’m the captain?”
He looks around like he’s waiting for someone to step in and rescue him, but none of us speaks up because I’m pretty sure we’re all wondering the exact same thing. Practice should be the last thing on his mind.
Then suddenly, everyone talks at once.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Go home!”
“Get the fuck out of here!”
“Go be with your fiancée!”
“Leave!”
I have no idea who shouts what, but it’s hilarious to watch his eyes widen and him scramble to get off the ice. I breathe a sigh of relief when he’s out of sight, and Keller chuckles beside me. I don’t give him the satisfaction of looking at him.
“I fucking swear… You boys…” Coach Smith mutters, shaking his head and turning back to us. “Well, now that that is out of the way… Fox, you’re in net first. Whitlocke, Lawson, let’s run it.”
So we do. We run drills and we skate. We meet with the special teams coach and run some plays. We do all the things we need to do, and not once do I think about my captain or my new roommate or the shitty situation I seem to have gotten myself into.
Or at least that’s what I tell myself.
Even though he floods the Serpents Singles group chat with photos, Hutch misses the next day of practice, too, and I’ve never been so relieved not to see my captain.
Nessa is moving in today. In fact, I’m supposed to meet her at the penthouse after this to let her in.
I had a key made for her yesterday, and it’s been taunting me as it sits on my kitchen counter ever since.
I can’t tell if it’s a reminder that I’m making a mistake, that I should talk to Hutch, or that I’m jeopardizing everything I’ve worked so hard for. No matter what, it’s still happening.
But first, I have to survive today’s practice with Hutch back on the ice.
Not that I’ve given him much chance to since I’ve practically been avoiding him, but he hasn’t said anything about Nessa. This leads me to believe one of two things: he doesn’t know about her new living situation, or he doesn’t care.
I’m hoping it’s the latter.
“That’s good, that’s good, that’s good,” Lawson says.
The pass from Poldzkin hits his stick right on the mark. He skates it toward the net, and Fox tracks his every movement. Lawson drags his arm back and releases, and the goalie drops at just the right moment to block the shot, the puck thwacking loudly off his pads.
“Fucking nice, Foxy Baby. Very nice.” Lawson taps him on the pads that just stopped a beautiful shot.
The forward skates to the back of the line, and we all inch forward, watching as Thomas does the same thing, then Peirson. Fox blocks both shots, and it looks damn promising.
I get the puck from Poldzkin and rush toward Fox.
He follows me, shuffling his skates as I move.
And he’s good, really damn good, but I’ve been around this league a lot more years than he has, and I know exactly what to do next.
With just a quick flick of my wrist, the puck goes top shelf and hits the net before Fox even realizes what’s happened.
He chuckles when he looks behind him, like he can’t believe what just happened.
“Sorry,” I say, tapping his pads.
“I can’t even be mad about that one.” He smiles at me. “That was a nice shot. Keep doing that all season long, and you’re going to be our top-scoring defenseman once again.”
Fuck, I wish I could be. We made it into the playoffs last year, and with each game, I felt like I was losing more and more steam.
I didn’t even put up a single point. That’s a problem.
General managers aren’t just looking at what you do in the regular season.
They’re looking at how you perform when it gets the hardest it’s going to get.
If I’m not putting up numbers, there’s an issue somewhere that needs to be addressed.
It’s a hell of a lot easier to pinpoint what it is with younger players, but with the older ones, there’s usually only one thing it can be—we can’t keep up.
I don’t want to be the guy who can’t keep up. I want to win. I want to lift that Cup over my head and have my name inscribed on it for all time.
“Fucking nice,” Hutch says as I join him in the back of the line. We’ll probably go through this a few more times before swapping out goalies and running it again. “Feels good to be back out on the ice again, yeah?”
“Always does. Can’t wait for the season to start.”
“Same. It’s going to suck being away from Auden and Alana, though. I can’t believe how much I already love her. It’s only been a few days, but I’d lay my life on the line for her.”
I grin at him. He seems happy. A bit tired, but happy, which is why this is so hard, standing here talking to him like I’m doing nothing wrong.
Like I’m not hiding something huge from him.
I’ve had this knot in my gut since Nessa first showed up, and all it does is get heavier and heavier as time passes.
“How are the girls doing, by the way?”
His smile is so big it’s almost unnerving. “Amazing. I’m so damn in love with Alana already. I don’t even know how it’s possible, but I am. And Auden is great too. You should see her as a mother. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever witnessed.”
I laugh. Seeing him so happy is such a one-eighty from where he was two years ago.
“Oh, by the way, I don’t know if I said it—these last few days have been a bit of a blur—but thanks again for driving Vanessa home the other night.”
“Oh, uh, yeah. It was no problem. How are things with your sister? I mean, with the baby home now and all?”
Yeah, that’s it, Gavin. Ease into it.
“Great. She told me a few days ago she found a place and is moving out. Shit, that’s today, actually.”
Okay, here we go. We’re doing this.
“Anyway, I offered to help her, but she laughed and told me she has like three bags, so that would be pointless.” He shrugs. “I’m happy for her. She seems to have had a weight lifted off her shoulders, and Auden gets to settle into a routine with the baby. It’s a win-win as far as I’m concerned.”
And that’s it. That’s all he says about it. He doesn’t cuss me out or lay into me about moving his sister into my place, which tells me what I suspected: she didn’t tell him. Hutch doesn’t know Nessa is moving in with me in a matter of hours.
That knot tightens even more, and it’s so damn taut I might puke.
Or maybe that’s all the skating I’ve done today, I don’t know.
All I know is the second Coach cuts us for the day, I get as far away from Hutch as possible.
I don’t sit by him like I normally would during our meeting or when we watch tapes from other preseason games.
I don’t even say goodbye to him before I race out to my car.
I avoid him at all costs because I don’t know what to say to him.
Twenty minutes later, when I step out of the elevator, she’s there, and fuck is she a vision.
Her hair is pulled up into a bun that looks intentionally messy, showing off a pair of small hoop earrings.
She’s wearing a simple navy t-shirt and a pair of jeans that hug her in all the right places, and she looks like a fucking knockout.
Just as Hutch said, she has three bags sitting by her feet, and that’s it.
This time, when my stomach aches, it’s for a totally different reason.
She had a life at one point. A big, beautiful life. She had a house and a car and a future.
Now, all she has is this.
“Did you find it okay?” I ask as I approach, cursing myself for not thinking about giving her the code to get in.
“Kind of hard to miss the gigantic glass building, but yes.”
Oh, so she’s sassy today. Got it.
“Is this everything?” I nod toward the stuff by her feet.
“For now. It’s all I brought with me to Seattle. I technically have a few boxes of things back in storage in New York, but it’s nothing I need right now. Or at all, maybe. I haven’t decided just how far I’m willing to go with this whole starting-over thing.”
I get it. Sometimes you have to purge it all to really be free of whatever haunts you. I enter the code into the door, then grab all three bags and push into the penthouse, Nessa right behind me.
“I had a key made for you,” I say as I set her stuff down just inside the entryway. “It’s on the kitchen counter. But there’s a code for the door too. It’s 4646.”
“So just your jersey number twice?”
That makes me smile. “You know my jersey number?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “It’s literally stitched into the towels in your bathroom.”
I wince. “It’s a tradition from my parents. Whenever I get moved to a new team, they buy me towels with the team and my number on them. Cheesy, I know.”
“Incredibly cheesy,” she agrees. “But also incredibly cute.”
“That’s my parents for you.”
“They’re still together, I assume?”