Chapter 16
Declan
I'm half into my gear, shoulder pads still hanging off one arm, preparing for Game Two on the road when my phone buzzes against the bench for the fourth goddamn time in ten minutes.
"Fuck off," I hiss without looking at it.
I don't have to. I already know the name sitting on that screen, glowing up at me like a bad omen.
DAD.
Missed call. Missed call. Missed call. Missed call.
I swipe it face-down without breaking stride, the way you'd flip over a card in Vegas that you already know is bad news.
Two stalls down, Mason's staring at his own phone with the exact same expression. Thank Christ he does the same thing and swipes it away too.
Beck, though. Beck's staring at his screen like it's a puzzle he's trying to solve.
"He's called me like six times," Beck says, frowning down at the display. "Should I just... I don't know, give him a quick buzz? Get it over with before puck drop?"
"No," Mason and I say at the exact same time.
Beck blinks between us. "Jesus. Okay. Didn't realize that was a two-person veto situation."
"It's not a good time," I say, tugging my jersey over my pads, buying myself a few extra seconds where I don't have to look at either of my brothers. "We've got a game."
"It's never a good time with you lately," Beck mutters, but he pockets the phone anyway.
Here's the thing neither of them knows.
I know exactly why Dad's calling. He's not calling to check in on the game, or to ask how the road trip's going, or any of the normal shit a father calls his sons about.
He's calling because Zoey told him she knows.
About Brianna. About the yoga studio. About thirty years of a marriage he treated like a hobby he could pick up and put down whenever it suited him.
And now he wants to get ahead of it.
After all these years, he finally wants to call his boys before Mom gets there first, before the truth arrives at their door dressed up as a rumor he can spin into something smaller. Something survivable.
Fuck that.
I've been carrying his damn secret since I was twelve years old, and I am not about to hand it over in a locker room forty minutes before a must-win game.
"You good, Cap?" Beck asks, and for once there's no joke riding underneath it.
"I'm good," I lie. "Get your skates on. We've got a game to win."
Coach Pearson claps his hands together from the center of the room before either of my brothers can push further, and the whole team falls into silence.
"Alright," he says, voice like gravel dragged over concrete. "Last night we played like a team that forgot how to play hockey. Tonight, we remember."
Nobody laughs. Nobody even breathes too loud.
Last night was the worst game we've played all season. So much for turning a new leaf.
Here's the thing about the last three nights I haven't told a single living soul, not even the idiots I share a locker room with.
I've spent every single one of them in Josie Whitfield's bed.
Not just sleeping beside her, her back curved into my chest, my arm slung heavy over her waist, listening to the soft, even rhythm of her breathing until I finally drift off myself.
But we've also had sex in places that, if I'm being completely honest with myself, we absolutely should not have.
In the hotel stairwell, because the elevator was too slow and neither of us could wait. I had her back pressed to cold concrete while I had to clamp a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet enough that housekeeping didn't hear us two floors down.
Then we couldn't help ourselves in the back of the team van at a rest stop outside Sacramento. The windows fogged up while both of us prayed to God that Tyler didn't decide now was the moment to come looking for his missing charging cable.
And last night, in her hotel bathroom with the shower running the entire time. I've still got the bruises on my shoulders from where I had her up against the tile, pounding into her until she was shaking.
It has not been subtle. It has not been careful.
But it has been the best three nights of my life, and I've spent every single moment since walking around half-hard and completely useless to anyone who tries to make conversation with me.
Which might explain part of why tonight, standing at center ice with the visitor's crowd roaring for blood, my legs feel like they're moving through wet cement.
"Move, Declan!" Coach's voice rattles me into action from the side of the rink. "Do something, for the love of God!"
I shake my head hard enough that my helmet knocks against my skull, trying to physically dislodge every single filthy, distracting thought currently occupying real estate in my brain.
Josie's mouth. Josie's laugh. The way she said my name last night.
Focus, Morrison.
It's not that I don't want to be here. God, that's the last thing this is. Two months ago I wanted nothing more than to disappear into an easy, meaningless season.
Now I actually give a damn, and somehow that's worse. Because giving a damn means there's something to lose.
We're down two-nothing by the second period, and it's not even that the other team's outplaying us. It's that we're not playing at all. We're a team scattered into six different men skating the same ice without ever actually being on the same page.
Finn takes a lazy penalty. Sawyer lets in a shot he should've had easily. I miss a check I would've made in my sleep back before I was drafted to Beachside.
"Dammit," I grunt as the opposing player skates away with the puck.
When did life get so fucking hard?
Not the hockey. Hockey's the easy part.
It's everything sitting behind it. My father's endless calls, my mother's tears, Zoey holding the whole family together.
And don't even get me started on Josie's mother. I know that cruel woman's voice is still echoing behind Josie's eyes even when she smiles at me.
Yeah.
It's a lot to carry onto the ice and still expect your legs to move right.
Midway through the third, with the game slipping fully out of reach, Beck's on a rush, two-on-one. I burst forward, trying to meet him, and for half a second I think he's going to make the pass, the smart play, the one he's made a hundred times without thinking.
Instead he tries to beat the defenseman himself.
It's too much alone, but that's what Beck does when he's drowning and doesn't know how to ask anyone to throw him a rope.
He loses the puck and it squirts free, straight onto the other team's stick. Thirty seconds later it's in our net.
Three-nothing.
The whistle blows. The building roars.
I skid to a stop, cursing into the cold air of the arena, watching my little brother skate back to the bench with his head down. Darcy is there, tapping furiously on her tablet like she's taking notes of the disaster she's just seen.
I don't need to see her stats. I know we've been shit tonight.
The final horn sounds four minutes later. Bears lose. Three-nothing.
We hit the locker room, but thank Christ, Coach doesn't yell. He just stands in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, and looks at every single one of us like he's trying to figure out where we all went.
"Pick your heads up," he says finally. "We fly home tonight. Lucky for you, the second we land, we've got a function to attend. So we can forget this game even happened for a few hours."
"A function?" Sawyer groans.
Coach glares across the locker room at him. "You got a hearing problem as well as a leaky five-hole, Stone?"
The entire room goes dangerously quiet for exactly one second before it detonates.
Beck's the first to break, laughing so hard he nearly falls off the bench, clutching his chest like he's been shot. "Leaky five-hole. Leaky five-hole, Coach, come on—"
"Christ," Mason mutters beside me, dragging a hand down his face, fighting his own grin and losing.
Finn's practically wheezing into his stall. "I've heard that phrase before, lad, but never directed at a man's goaltending."
Sawyer, to his credit, doesn't even blink.
"Coach, with respect," he says, voice flat as still water, "my five-hole's been tight all season. Ask anyone."
"For fucks sake. No wonder you can't win a fucking game of hockey.
You're a bunch of children!" Coach's eyes flick, just briefly, toward me.
"Now Colin has put this thing together. Some charity gala at Salt & Neon.
A jersey auction for the youth program. Full turnout expected. Owners, sponsors, press."
Why the hell is he looking at me?
"So basically," Beck mutters from his stall, not looking up, "we get to go smile pretty for photos the same night we got our asses kicked twice."
"That's exactly right," Coach says. "Welcome to professional sports. Now get your five-holes moving out the goddamn door."
We land back in Beachside just before sundown, and Salt & Neon looms at the edge of the boardwalk.
I've only ever seen the rooftop nightclub, which is the 'Neon' part where I've dragged Beck away from one too many times.
Tonight we're funneled through the ground floor instead. Salt. The room is filled with white brick and candlelight, with the backdrop of the ocean pressing black against windows.
The ground floor restaurant has been cleared for the event, white linen tables replaced with high cocktail rounds. In the corner of the room, a string quartet plays something that sounds vaguely like a hockey anthem slowed down until it's romantic instead of aggressive.
There's a bar along one wall, with towers of oysters on crushed ice and tiny shrimp cocktails served in individual glasses. There's a whole roasted sea bass being carved by a chef in a tall white hat who looks entirely too serious about fish for a room full of drunk hockey fans.
I would rather be literally anywhere else on earth.
My phone buzzes in my jacket pocket as I'm signing my third program of the night for a woman who introduces herself as "the Assistant Deputy Mayor's wife" like that means something to me.
ZOEY: Just talked to Dad. Has he called you too? Did you pick up?
I read it twice. Then I swipe it away and shove the phone deeper into my pocket.
Not tonight. I can't do this tonight.