Omega’s Forward (Prime Match #8)

Brody

Warmup is my favorite part of a game day. Nothing has gone wrong yet. No score, no penalties, nobody’s night ruined. We haven’t won but we haven’t lost either. Tonight might be the best of my career. I just don’t know it yet. I love the sense of pure potential.

The building is half full this early, and it sounds bigger for it. Everything echoes. I can smell the cooking popcorn drifting down from the concourse.

I’m stretching at the blue line when I hear a knock on the glass behind me. I turn around even though I already know who it is.

Gordie Rourke is seventy-one years old, owner of this team for thirty of them. His thick white hair is combed back and there’s a team pin crooked on his lapel. He’s wearing a perfectly knotted tie in our colors of silver and green.

He’s the only man in this building who dresses up to watch hockey.

I skate over and press my glove flat to the glass over his knuckles.

“Big one tonight, Callahan.” His voice is muted through the glass and the sound of the crowds flowing in. It doesn’t matter that I don’t catch every word. He says the same thing to me every game and I respond the same way I always do.

“They’re all big ones, Gordie.”

He grins and jabs a thumb toward the box upstairs. “I’ll be watching. You gonna keep the gloves on tonight?”

“No promises.”

He laughs and raps the glass twice, and then he’s off up the stairs, shaking hands with two ushers and stopping to sign a program for a kid in a Callahan jersey. Gordie is a local legend, almost as big a star as any player.

He drafted me when I was eighteen and a big slow kid, all shoulders and bad haircut.

He shook my hand on the draft floor and said, “Welcome home, son.” Fifteen years later I’m still here.

Captain, now. He tells people I’m the best decision he ever made.

Out loud. In front of cameras. It’s embarrassing, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything on this earth.

The man is the closest thing to a father I ever had.

JP glides past on his way to tap both posts, which he does before every game. Yeah, JP is a big hairy French-Canadian alpha but that doesn’t mean he’s not superstitious. I’ve never met a player who wasn’t.

“Was that Gordie? He didn’t come say hi to me.”

“He likes me better.”

“He likes your pretty face better. It’s the tragedy of an old man’s taste.” He whacks my shin with his stick and skates away to commune with his goalposts.

Down at the far end, Linus Berg is putting on a show, snapping pucks into the top corner one after another.

Linus is the latest addition to the team. He’s nineteen years old and a first-round pick out of Sweden, all wrists and knees, and one of the fastest skaters I’ve ever come across.

He came over in September barely speaking English and grinning at everything, and the room adopted him inside a week.

He’s the future of this franchise. Everybody knows it, including the man watching him from across the red line.

Between drills he taps the crossbar twice with one glove, some private superstition he thinks nobody has clocked. Yeah, like I said. Superstitious.

Back in the room, Coach Sacco gives us the last word. Marty Sacco has been coaching since before visors. Sacco doesn’t do speeches. Tonight he holds up a printout instead.

The room before a game is all ritual. Tape, menthol, somebody’s terrible playlist argued over and endured. JP sits in full gear with his eyes shut, lips moving.

Linus re-tapes a perfectly good stick blade. I check my shoulder pads twice. Nobody talks about why.

“League memo,” he says. “Reminding you princesses to all be on your best behavior. It’s our regular reminder to keep it clean.

I’m guessing it’s the usual case of one of the lily-livered sponsors getting nervous and threatening to leave for a sport with a cleaner image.

League will be looking for someone to make an example of so they can look tough.

It will not be one of mine.” He looks around the room, stall by stall.

“Best behavior. Whistle to whistle, gentlemen.” He pins the memo to the whiteboard with the heel of his hand.

The first period is fast and mean.

We come out flying. Linus splits their defense seconds in and rings one off the post so hard it sings.

I win my first three draws, block a point shot with the meat of my calf, and take an elbow that the referee pretends not to see.

Fast and mean, like I said.

Dorn takes his first run at Linus not long after. It gets a groan from the crowd but not a whistle out of the referee. Linus pops back up and skates away.

The second time, it’s after the whistle and a glove is shoved in the kid’s face, Dorn’s mouth going the whole while. I’m too far away to hear it. I don’t need to hear it. Linus shakes his head and skates to the bench.

“He’s doing it on purpose,” Linus tells me over the boards, careful and accented. “He wants me to fight him.”

“You don’t fight him. Not tonight, not ever. That’s not your job.”

“I don’t want to fight him.” He says it simply, no shame anywhere in it. God, I like this kid. “Fighting is stupid.”

“Stay near me when you can.”

Here’s the thing about this sport that never makes the broadcast. There’s a code.

Nobody writes it down, but every man on that ice knows it.

You don’t touch a goalie. You don’t hit a man from behind. You don’t take runs at teenagers who can’t defend themselves.

The referees can’t catch everything, and the league office is a thousand miles away. The only enforcement that happens in real time is us.

I don’t mind a scrap on the ice, but I’m getting older. Fifteen years in, my hands ache on cold mornings and my nose clicks when I breathe too hard. I’d retire happy if I never had to drop the gloves again.

But I’m captain. The team is mine to protect and if you go soft, the other team smells blood. Alphas like Dorn smell blood.

I don’t start fights, but I make them cost. Anyone causes shit with my guys, I’m going to make sure they’re sobbing for their mommies on the way home.

We score late in the first, our second line banging one in off a scramble, and the building roars.

One-nothing.

Midway through the second I line up across from Dorn and say it plain. “Leave the kid alone.”

“Or what, grandpa?” He grins around his mouthguard. “Gonna read me the memo?”

So he’s heard about the league’s little image instructions too.

I roll my eyes at him. “If you have to be a giant asshole, at least pick on someone your own size.”

I can handle Dorn, but he doesn’t like going for me. I’m not easy to take down. He prefers easier pickings. Dick.

The puck drops. I win the draw clean and we spend forty seconds in their end just to annoy him.

It happens with four minutes left in the period.

Linus rims the puck around the boards and the whistle goes. Icing.

Play stops and everyone is coasting. And Dorn takes three more strides and puts his shoulder hard into the back of the kid.

I hear it crunch. Linus’s helmet tips forward over his eyes and the glass shudders where his shoulder catches it.

Linus goes into the boards and folds onto the ice, and eighteen thousand people make a low ooh.

For three seconds Linus doesn’t move. Then he gets to his knees, and by the time our trainer reaches him he’s up, bent double. He’s in one piece but his breathing is ragged.

Linus doesn’t argue when the trainer steers him toward the bench. He disappears down the tunnel, still bent over his ribs, and Ozzy hops the boards to take his shifts. No announcement, no ceremony. The game doesn’t wait for anybody.

The referee gives Dorn two minutes for roughing. Two.

I look down the bench at Sacco. Sacco looks back at me, jaw working. I know exactly what he’s thinking.

That damn memo. Damned sponsors getting all jelly-livered. They’re not the ones down here on the ice.

I raise my eyebrows at Sacco. He doesn’t shake his head and that’s how I know I’ve got his approval.

It’s one thing to play nice. It’s another to let someone like Dorn know he can do what he wants to us and we’ll just take it.

I need to take him down so hard that he doesn’t think about it again. There’ll be a price, but I’ll just pay it. I’m Captain. It’s part of the job.

Dorn steps out of the box two minutes later, grinning.

I catch him before the linesman gets between us.

“Right now,” I say, and drop my gloves.

His are already half off. He’s been waiting for this all night. That’s what people don’t understand about guys like Dorn. Most of us fight because the job sometimes asks for it. Dorn took the job because of the fighting.

A split second and we’re on each other.

He’s fast and he’s filthy. His first punch opens the old scar over my eyebrow. The blood runs hot into my eye. Fine.

I’ve got four inches and thirty pounds on him. I’ve also got fifteen years of knowing exactly how this goes.

I get a fistful of his jersey, pull him off his base, and hit him three times, short and hard as I can.

On the third one something in the middle of his face gives. He tries to jerk free and duck inside, and I feel the seam of his jersey tear under my grip. My helmet’s gone, I don’t know when.

He’s trying to get away but I’m not letting him. I lean forward and mutter close to his ear so he can hear it. “This ends now. Try this shit again and next time I’ll kill you.”

I punch him in the face again and again. Somewhere under the roar I can hear our bench pounding the boards flat-handed.

The linesmen let it run a couple of seconds longer than they have to. Even they’ve had enough of him tonight.

They pull us apart with the whole building on its feet. I taste copper. My knuckles are burning. Dorn is dripping red onto the ice. He blinks at me. He got exactly what he came for.

Dorn gets five. I get five plus two for instigating and a ten-minute misconduct stacked on top, because I dropped my gloves first and the refs have all read the same memo we have. Fine. I knew the price going in. But that’s not going to be the last of it.

The game goes on.

On my way into the box, I look up. Gordie is on his feet in the owner’s box, applauding, both hands over his head, beaming down at me like it’s opening night.

The attendant hands me a towel and a water bottle without being asked. I sit down and press the towel to my eyebrow and try not to smile.

I take stock. Hands aching. Eyebrow open again. The false tooth held on, which is good; the team dentist and I already see too much of each other.

Up in the crowd, I hear someone shouting my name. There’s an omega up there I don’t recognize. She’s got a big sign that says “Marry me, Brody.”

I grin and wave, and I hear her squeal in a pitch that’d set dogs barking.

Some of the guys love the hockey groupies. There’s always someone willing to throw themselves at you. I had a few one-nighters early in my career when I was still green and didn’t know any better.

It’s never been worth it. I tried dating too but I play eighty-two games a season. No one sticks around for that. These days, my life is the game. It’s perfect.

Across the ice, Dorn sits in the visitors’ box with tissue twisted up one nostril, blood drying on his chin, and he isn’t watching me.

He’s watching Linus. He catches me looking, taps two fingers on the glass, and mouths something I’m glad I can’t hear.

Cold crawls up the back of my neck. For fuck’s sake. What is wrong with the guy?

Men like Dorn don’t stop. They test and they test, and one night the whistle will be late and the kid won’t get up. Somebody is going to get badly hurt before this season is over.

My five minutes end and I’m back on the ice, watching Dorn closely. He behaves himself. Maybe he’s done for the game. Got the bloodshed he wanted and now he’s just playing.

We hold the lead through forty minutes and take it into the third.

There’s six minutes left on the clock when the night goes wrong. I’m bent over the circle, stick down, watching the linesman’s hand, when the sound of the building changes.

It isn’t a goal sound or a fight sound. When I look up, a whole section of the crowd is on its feet facing the wrong way. They’re not watching the ice. They’re looking up at the owner’s box.

I straighten and follow their eyes.

Up in the box, people are moving fast. A chair goes over. Somebody’s palms are flat against the glass, and between the bodies I can see Gordie’s gray suit. Then people close around him and I can’t see anything at all.

“Gordie.” I hear myself say it out loud, to nobody.

A long whistle sounds and the music cuts off mid-song. In the quiet that follows you can hear one voice up in the box shouting for someone to call 911.

The arena medics are already on the move. Two of them take the stairs at a run with their bags, a third wheels the equipment in from the tunnel. They’re fast.

Linus appears beside me, white as his jersey, muttering something in Swedish. JP has come the length of the ice with his mask shoved up on his head. Coach crosses himself twice.

The jumbotron goes dark. Eighteen thousand people fall so quiet I can hear the medics’ radios crackling two hundred feet up.

Through the glass of the box I can see them working. Somebody starts compressions. I’ve taken the first-aid course every summer since I was a junior. I know the rhythm when I see it.

They bring a stretcher in through the owner’s entrance. When they finally carry him along the concourse there’s an oxygen mask on his face and his suit jacket folded under his head. One arm has slipped loose of the blanket, and it swings with every step.

The whole building stands in the quiet, all of us watching the empty doorway.

My gloves are on the ice behind me. I don’t remember dropping them.