7. Brody
I tell myself that I’m not going to think about it, so of course, I think about it all through practice.
Sacco has us running the neutral zone because Saturday was a mess, and I do the drills, and I do them properly, but the whole time there is a loop going in the back of my head that I cannot switch off.
His hands in my hoodie. The noise he made. The way he said “Make me.”
Stop it.
I get through the skate. Nobody says anything to me about it so I must look normal from the outside. Inside I am a kid again and completely useless.
Afterwards, I stand under the shower for too long and think about him again.
Not even the good part. The bit before. He was shouting at me about his father. Something about Gordie really had him riled. And then he was on my counter with his legs round me.
I cannot stop thinking about him. Or about the fact that he will be waiting for me when I get home.
That is the situation. I towel off and get dressed and try to be a person who knows nothing about Everett Rourke.
The other thing that I saw in my kitchen was that he was not cold. Everett Rourke has been pure ice at me since the day he walked into Gordie’s office and told me to get out, but in my kitchen he was not ice at all.
He was pure fire against me. Nothing but fire and passion.
I can’t work him out at all.
“Hey, Callahan.”
JP is in front of me with his bag on his shoulder. “We’re going to McNally’s.”
“I’ve got things to do at the house.”
“No you haven’t.”
He is right. All I have at the house is Everett Rourke behind a shut door.
“Linus is coming,” JP says. “Come on.”
“Fine. One drink.”
“Sure.”
He sits down on the bench next to me instead of leaving. Here it comes.
“You smell like an omega,” he says.
I keep doing my laces. “I smell like a rink.”
“Brody.”
“Leave it.”
“It’s in your gear. It was in your gear on Tuesday as well.” He is not enjoying this. That is the worst part. “I’m not being a prick. I’m asking.”
“I know you are.”
“So?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He looks at me. I have played with JP for fifteen years and he knows the difference between me lying and me not being able to say something. He gets up.
“Drinks,” he says. “You’re paying.”
He goes. I sit there with one skate off and keep thinking about Everett and Gordie. The whole thing is weird.
If I’d known that Everett even existed and that father and son were estranged, I’d probably not have any questions. Fathers and sons argue all the time. Hell, if my dad was ever around I’d almost certainly be arguing with him.
But his name never even came up.
“Come on, Callahan. I told you you’re buying.”
“And I will be. Give me ten. I’ll meet you there.”
I wait until they are gone before I go find Sacco. He’s in the equipment room with a clipboard.
“Coach.”
“Callahan.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask.”
“Rourke. Him and Gordie. What was the story there?”
Sacco stops writing. He turns round and looks at me and does not say anything for a while, and I stand there and let him.
“Why do you want to know?”
“The room’s upset. I’m the captain.”
“The room being upset doesn’t need Gordie’s family history.”
“No.”
“So why do you want to know?”
I have nothing. I stand in the doorway of the equipment room with nothing to say and Sacco watches me have nothing to say.
“He’s a cold little shit,” he says eventually. “That’s all you need to know.”
“That’s it?”
“What else do you want.”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“There isn’t any something.” He puts a stick in the rack. “That’s the story. Go and have your drink.”
So I go. I don’t know why I care. I get in the car.
McNally’s is two blocks from the arena and has been the team bar since before I got here.
Everyone is there by the time I arrive. JP, Linus sitting stiff and careful around his taped ribs, Lewis, the two young defensemen, Tuck, and Marchetti who never drinks and comes anyway.
I get a round in and sit down and let it go on around me.
It takes about forty minutes to get to Everett.
“I’m just saying it out loud,” Ozzy says. “Two years. He said two years and then he sells. He said that in front of all of us.”
“He did say that,” Tuck says.
“So what are we doing? What is the point of any of this if the guy who owns us doesn’t give a shit?”
“We’re doing our jobs,” JP says.
“For a guy who thinks we’re animals.”
“He didn’t say animals.”
“Pretty obvious.”
Linus is going red. He does that. “He said he wouldn’t appeal,” he says. “If the league does one of us. He said he wouldn’t pay for the appeal. That’s—” Linus looks around the table. “That’s not allowed, is it? That can’t be a thing an owner just says.”
“It is now,” Ozzy says.
Lewis leans in. He has been here eleven years. “Gordie flew to the league office,” he says. “When they did me for the Kessel thing. I thought I was finished. He flew out and sat in the hearing all day and never told one reporter he did it.”
“That’s what I mean,” Ozzy says. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“He paid for my mother’s flights,” Marchetti says. “Four years. He never mentioned it once.”
“So there you go.”
“At least Gordie had our backs,” Tuck says.
That goes around the table and everybody agrees with it and I drink my beer.
Yeah, the guy might be hot as fuck and smell better than any omega I have ever met, but he has the power to fuck any of us over completely.
And he has made it pretty clear that he doesn’t care if he does.
I don’t say it. Instead, I sit there and listen to them talk.
“Callahan’s quiet,” Ozzy says.
“Callahan’s always quiet.”
“No he’s not.” Ozzy points his glass at me. “You met with him. Didn’t you? Sacco said you did the captain thing.”
“No, didn’t get the chance.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“What’s your take?”
Everyone is looking at me. Linus has stopped fidgeting. This is the bit where the captain says something and the room feels better, and I have been doing this job for six years and I know exactly what the line is.
“He’s new,” I say. “Give it a bit.”
There is a silence of about two seconds.
“Give it a bit,” Ozzy says.
“Yeah.”
“That’s it? That’s the speech?”
“That’s the speech.”
JP is watching me over his glass and not saying one word, and I would rather he shouted.
The talk moves on to Dorn, and then to Ozzy’s contract, and then to something Tuck’s brother did at a wedding, and I get another round in and drink faster than I usually do.
Around ten some people in Barons shirts come through from the front bar. Four or five of them come over.
They are fine at first. They always are. Ozzy does the photos because Ozzy loves it, and Linus signs a kid’s sleeve, and I do three pictures and say thanks for coming out.
They’ve got their phones out, filming. Thrilled that they get to show their buddies that they had drinks with the team.
Then one of them says, “Captain. Quick one. How’s the new Rourke?”
I have done a thousand of these. There is a thing you say. You say he is getting up to speed, or you say ask the front office, or you say nothing at all and smile at the phone until they get bored.
I have had five beers and I have been sitting in that room for two hours listening to my own teammates be right about Everett fucking Rourke, dickhead owner.
“At least the old Rourke had our backs,” I say.
JP has his hand round my arm above the elbow. “All right,” he says to them, cheerful as anything. “That’s us. Thanks, boys. Big game Friday.”
He gets me out through the side door into the parking lot. Oh, I have had way too much. I’m staggering.
That’s dumb too. I’m not normally a drinker. But I needed to let off steam.
I leave my truck in the lot and let JP drive me home.
He pulls up at my gate and does the code. He drives me up to the door.
“Go to bed,” he says. “Drink some water.”
“JP, I wanna tell you something.”
“I know, bud. I love you too. Go to bed.”
I let myself in. The hall light is off. There is a line of light under the guest room door at the far end and I stand in my own hallway for a bit, looking at it.
His scent is all through the house.
I get a glass of water and drink half of it. I do not go down that hallway.
I go up to my own room and get my boots off and lie down on the bed in my clothes, and the ceiling moves a bit, and I think about his hands in my hoodie until I go under.