4. Mads
FOUR
Mads
I took his number. I went to make a note of it on my phone’s notepad, but Ten tutted and took it off of me and thumbed one-handed through options.
All the time, I couldn’t stop looking at his bent head, and when he handed the phone back to me I was disappointed that I couldn’t stare without being noticed.
His dark hair had this intriguing swirl in it that meant he rocked the style he wore.
Me, I kept my blond hair short—nothing fancy for me.
I bet Ten spent a long time in the bathroom in the morning.
Don’t go there.
“Tell him you have it, right?” Ten said to me.
I nodded, pulling myself back from the very start of an interesting fantasy. Good job, too, as I didn’t like the idea of an inappropriate hard-on in a public corridor.
“Okay, then,” he said, and left me standing.
I felt like I should be thanking him, or reassuring him that I would pass the information on to Ryker. I did neither. The best thing all around was for me to stay well away from Ten.
And that was mostly how it went. If I saw him heading to the quiet space, I avoided it.
If I needed a forward to work with my guys, I chose someone other than Ten, and Ten never called me on it.
Why would he? I was a coach; he had to do what I said.
Thing was, I couldn’t take my eyes off his flicky hair, and the brightness of that stupid tattoo.
In fact, everything about how I was reacting to Ten was ill-advised.
It was the morning of checkup day, the bi-monthly poke-and-prod that kept my health insurance intact and the Railers happy.
I’d inherited this shit from my dad, much as I’d inherited his blue eyes, and my blond hair from my mom.
When I’d researched Brugada Syndrome I’d seen straight away that I didn’t even fit the criteria; Brugada Syndrome is more common in Asian men, but by no means exclusive to them, and I’d had no symptoms before the dramatic collapse out the back of a game.
Still, if any late-twenties white guy was going to have this thing in them, it would be me.
I didn’t do anything by halves, and it seemed even my heart was special.
It had stopped me playing. Dead. Done. But it wasn’t enough to stop me living, or coaching.
“How are you feeling?” Doc asked, and I gave him all the usual answers—that I was good, and positive, and hadn’t continued to think that maybe losing hockey was reason enough to take my own life.
A year of therapy and knowing I needed to live for my son had put paid to that completely.
“Caught young Ryker on YouTube,” the doc said with a grin. He was in his sixties, an expert in heart conditions, and he watched YouTube—go figure. “He has a wicked slap shot.”
“He does.”
“You must be proud.”
“I am.”
And I was. So damn proud. With the all-clear and some more chat about hockey, Ryker, and a prescription for meds, I left. As soon as the cold air hit me, I breathed deeply, imagining the ice freezing inside me like it did when I stepped onto a rink.
I wasn’t done with this imperfect/perfect life of mine. I wasn’t done with any of it.
“Coach Madsen?” I turned on my skates at the sound of my name, and recognized Deidra from the office.
She always looked so small, but then five-two in a room of six foot plus men on skates would make anyone look small.
She also appeared nervous whenever we met.
Evidently my reputation preceded me, but what that reputation was, I didn’t know. “There’s someone here.”
“Who?”
“Casey Everett,” she said, and stared at me.
Casey? What was she doing here?
“Give me five,” I told Gagnon, who nodded and waved me away.
Was something wrong with Ryker? I unlaced my skates at top speed, and slipped on running shoes, jogging through the corridor and down to my office.
By the time I got there, in my overactive imagination, Ryker had been involved in an accident, and I had even pictured myself driving out of there to get to him.
But it wasn’t Casey I saw first. It was Ryker himself.
And he didn’t look hurt physically, but boy, my son sure looked like a stereotypical teenager—sullen, pissed, his shoulders slumped.
And Casey was stone-faced, ashen, her eyes red where she’d clearly been crying.
I pulled her in for a quick hug, then closed the door behind me.
“What’s wrong?” I began. No one said anything. “Why isn’t Ryker at school?”
He was in Shattuck-St. Mary’s in Minnesota—prestigious, expensive, and destined for greatness in all things hockey.
And why wouldn’t he be? His grandfather was the respected Jimmy Everett, left wing and alternate captain for the Red Wings until retirement.
And his dad? Well, I was his dad, and until that hit and the resulting news, I’d been a damn good hockey player. Ryker had hockey in his blood.
“Tell him, Ryker,” Casey snapped, clearly at the end of her tether.
Ryker looked up at me, defiance in his blue eyes, so much like mine. “Grandpa said…”
Now any sentence that starts with the words “Grandpa said” leads to trouble.
Jimmy Everett, or Ev, as he was known to his thousands of adoring fans, liked nothing better than telling his daughter and grandson all kinds of shit.
It had started from day one. Literally the morning after the night before, or some mornings later, when she’d told him she was keeping her baby at fifteen.
He’d nearly killed me when he’d found out it was me who’d gotten her pregnant.
He’d found out because I’d told him. I’d stood next to her, as frightened as any kid could be, and I owned up to what we’d done.
Yeah, I still have the scar from where he punched me. It’s faded, but it’s right under my chin where I hit the corner of his desk on the way down.
I don’t blame him for that. I was stupid, I got carried away, but I was responsible, okay, and I stood by her.
I wasn’t allowed to go to the house, but I sneaked into the hospital and held Ryker for a few seconds when he was only hours old.
Just that tiny touch was enough for me to have him in my dented heart for the rest of my life.
Not that Ev had been happy about that. He’d had me sign everything over, the life of my kid, and I’d gone along with it.
Because Casey had looked at me and she’d been crying, like she was now, and I’d just been done.
She didn’t want me in the baby’s life, I wasn’t a fit father, I was a kid.
So, I’d buried myself in hockey, third round draft to the Sabres, and I’d made money for my child.
Ev, the fucker, had always been there, always knowing best, and even when Casey and I had come to a private arrangement to share custody of Ryker, he’d got high-priced lawyers to check it over. Any small loophole in the arrangement, and I’d known it would be the last I’d see of my little boy.
Yes, it was a fucked-up situation, but Ryker was mine and Casey’s.
“Grandpa said I don’t have to stay in school if I don’t want to, and he’s right.”
Casey wiped her eyes and looked at me like I could solve this. “Casey, you want to get us Cokes?” I picked up some change from my desk and handed it to her, and she took it with a wobbly smile of thanks. As soon as she was gone, I went into dad mode.
“You’re not leaving school.”
“I can and I will,” Ryker said, and the defiance was so damn clear. “You don’t have any kind of schooling.”
“And look at me now,” I snapped. “You think I wanted to be a coach? What if I’d wanted to do something else?”
Ryker narrowed his eyes. “You’re a millionaire, Jared, and you love this job.”
He had me there. I really did love this job, as much as you could love a career that wasn’t playing hockey when hockey was all you’d ever wanted. And yeah, I had money stashed away. I wasn’t one of those players that had flashy anything—after all, I had a kid to support. Right?
“My name is Dad, not Jared, and that is not the point. Your grandpa is not responsible for you, and you will go to school. Education is important.”
“I could be a millionaire by the time I’m twenty-two,” Ryker began, and I cut him off.
“If you don’t get injured, if you make the draft, if you get selected by a decent team. Those are all maybes, but an education is important.”
“I’m not sitting here listening to this,” Ryker snapped, and he stood up.
Suddenly he was all up in my face and not the sullen teenager he appeared.
Right there and then was the blood he’d gotten from me, the enforcer, the one who didn’t back down from fights.
Hell, his fists were clenched at his sides.
“You want to hit me?” I asked. Because he freaking well looked like he did. “You can hit me all you want, but you will respect me, you will not make your mom cry, and you will finish at SSM.”
He stared at me with fire in his eyes, and I watched and waited him out.
Something I’d said in that sentence had softened his anger, and I knew what it had been.
It certainly hadn’t been the line about respecting me; hell, I’d done very little to earn any respect from him, except being there for a few dad kind of things.
It had been the part about his mom. More than me, and certainly more than his interfering grandpa.
“I didn’t mean to make her cry,” Ryker bit out, his fists relaxing, his eyes bright, “but Grandpa said…” He stopped again.
Okay, I could handle this now. “Compromise here; finish up to draft eligibility at least.”
“I could be playing now,” Ryker said, a hint of hostility back in his voice.
I wasn’t letting this go. “And you’ll have matured as a player, put on some muscle, honed skills, the hockey program at SSM is insanely good, and you’ll come out a better thinker. Strategies, angles, that kind of thing—you could be a captain one day.”
“Grandpa says I have instinct and that I have skills that can’t be learned at school.” The words appeared measured and uncertain, and sounded just like the kind of shit Ev would come out with.