13. Brody
Heats lie. Everyone knows that. Heats make you feel things that you wouldn’t ordinarily feel. Make you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do.
Like ask an alpha to claim you when you don’t want him at all.
I keep telling myself that. It gets less convincing every time I do.
The waves are coming hours apart now instead of minutes. We’re on the back side of it, and in the gaps he sleeps like he’s been shot, face down in the wrecked bed with one arm thrown over my ribs. He doesn’t ask. He just puts it there.
I lie still so I don’t wake him and let myself think about the things I’ve been avoiding. He said thank you in the dark two nights ago and meant it. He let me wash his hair. He’s called me Brody since the bathroom.
Maybe none of it survives the week. Heats end and people go back to being who they were.
His scent has gone quiet. Still orange, still the dark honey underneath, but low and warm now. It’s in the sheets and the towels and all down my chest, and I could stay in it all day.
Which is exactly why I get up.
He shifts when I slide out from under his arm, frowning at something in his dreams but stays asleep. I stand there one second longer than I need to. Then I go make coffee like a functioning adult.
The kitchen is bright and cold. I start the coffee and pick up my phone for the first time in days.
Four texts from JP. I lean on the counter and read them.
told the boys you went to your sister’s. family time after the suspension. very sad. everyone bought it
make sure you shave. you don’t want to look wrecked when you come back
also union rep was looking for you. hearing’s thursday. your agent has the file, all you have to do is show up and look sorry
linus is home and bored. he keeps sending the group chat photos of his neck brace. he looks like a puppy in one of those cones. lol.
Then, from close to midnight: you good?
Fifteen years I’ve played with the guy. He’s seen me concussed, benched, stitched up, and once, memorably, crying into a hotel pillow in Calgary over a pulled groin. In all that time I can’t think of one thing he’s ever asked me for, but he’s always been there for me.
I type: good. better than I’ve got any right to be. I owe you.
The reply comes back immediately.
you owe me nothing. also everything. tell Rourke he has terrible taste
I laugh out loud, alone in my kitchen. Then I text my sister — alive, will call this week, love to the kids — because she sent me three question marks after the suspension.
The coffee finishes. I pour two mugs and carry them up.
Everett’s awake, propped against the headboard with the comforter at his waist and his hair sticking up stupid again. There’s a mark on his shoulder that I put there. It’s a good look. I keep that to myself.
“Coffee,” I say, and hand him a mug.
“Thank you.” He puts both hands around it and takes a slow sip.
I get on the bed on top of the covers and we drink our coffee without making conversation. Neither of us mentions the upcoming hearing or anything about hockey. That’s probably a good thing.
Finally, he looks at me and says, “How come you don’t have any artwork on the walls?”
It’s not a question I expect, and not really an answer I want to give him because it’s kind of embarrassing.
I shrug. “I’m not good at picking out art. The one time I bought actual art the boys found out and they’re still laughing at me. I guess I could get a decorator in but I’ve just never got around to it.”
“What was the art?”
“A painting of a moose.”
He laughs so hard he nearly loses his coffee. I don’t tell him the moose is still in the garage. Maybe I’ll show him sometime.
Then it gets quiet again, and I bite the bullet.
“Can I ask you something?”
He looks at me over the rim of the mug. He hesitates, then nods.
“What’s the deal with your dad, anyway. I knew him years.
” I turn my mug a slow half circle on my knee.
“And I didn’t know he had a son. None of us did.
The Gordie I knew would’ve had your picture in his wallet.
He’d have shown it to strangers in airports.
What the hell happened between the two of you? ”
Everett stares at his coffee. I’m not sure if he doesn’t want to tell me or if he doesn’t know how.
“I mean if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine too,” I say, “I just can’t work it out.”
People have different sides to them sometimes. Gordie might have been a different dad to him than the proto-dad that he was to me. I just can’t see it. Gordie was the most open down-to-earth person I ever met.
I check myself. He wasn’t that open. I didn’t know about Everett so Gordie already isn’t the person I knew.
He takes a deep breath. “We used to be close. At least when I was little. Then he was the perfect dad. We used to watch tape of his old games together, the two of us on the study floor. He’d play with me, dress me up in his outfits.
Perfect little mini-me. I mean, I was smaller than he was at the same age, but he used to just say to me that as soon as I presented as an alpha, I’d bulk out.
There was a shelf in his study for the trophies I hadn’t won yet. You know he played, of course.”
“Yeah.” Everybody knows. There’s a banner with his number hanging in the rafters and a photo in the concourse of Gordie at nineteen, holding a cup over his head, back when he had all his own teeth.
“Then I presented as an omega.” He says it flat. “And everything stopped. He just lost interest. I was twelve. Suddenly, he just wasn’t ever around anymore.”
I don’t say anything. There’s nothing good to put there. I could tell him fathers don’t need a reason to quit on you — mine never even bothered to start — but this isn’t my story, so I keep it.
“My mother took me to London two years later. He didn’t fight her for it.
” A sip of coffee. “I saw him sporadically after that. My mother tried to keep us in contact. I’m pretty sure most of it was her suggestion.
Then when I was seventeen, he invited me to dinner at his club.
He was warm. Charming. You’d have recognized him. ”
I’m starting to understand that I don’t want to hear the rest of this. I hold still anyway.
“With dessert, he put a folder on the table. Profiles. Five alphas, lab work he’d paid for privately. All five were hockey players.”
“Everett.”
“He had a theory.” The mug goes down on the nightstand.
“His bloodline, plus the right sire, and eventually, the perfect hockey player. He used the word stock. At dinner. To his own son. He was excited. He figured if he couldn’t get the son he wanted, he could at least make sure he got the right grandson. ”
“Jesus, Everett.”
“He suggested you, actually.”
I put my coffee down.
“You’d have been twenty-two, twenty-three. The finest young alpha he’d ever drafted, he said.” He snorts. “He’d be loving this, you know. The Bureau finishing his project for him.”
I knew Gordie Rourke for fifteen years, and I’m trying to fit the man I knew around the man in this story. On the one hand, I don’t want to believe it. On the other, I know how much Gordie was obsessed with the game. Maybe unhealthy obsessed.
“That’s why you stayed away,” I say.
“That’s why I stayed away. I kept in contact.
When he had the stent put in, I came back to see him, but he was my father, not my dad, if that makes sense.
” The words stay even but the orange doesn’t; a thin sour line runs through it and fades.
“I’m not a brood mare, Brody. Not his and not the Bureau’s. ” A beat. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I say, automatically, which is insane, because how would I even take it.
He watches me a moment longer, and his shoulders come down half an inch.
We sit with it. The coffee’s gone lukewarm in my hands. The heating clicks on over our heads.
“How’s the coffee?” I ask, because I need to land us on easier ground and it’s the only thing in reach.
“Good.” He looks down into the mug. A pause. “Good, but I am wishing I brought some syrup with me.”
“Syrup?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“Probably.”
“There’s a place on Fifth. Rosie’s. I found it my second week back, between meetings.” He runs a thumb along the rim of the mug. “They do a pumpkin spice latte. Year-round. It’s mostly syrup and it barely qualifies as coffee. They sell the syrup there. I wish I’d bought some.”
“A pumpkin spice latte.”
“With an extra shot. It’s sickly sweet but I love it.”
I’m already off the bed, hunting for my keys. “Rosie’s on Fifth. I’ll go — it’s the least I can do. You’ve had a rough week, and I’m a free man until further notice.”
He opens his mouth, looking surprised, then closes it again. “Thank you,” is what he ends up saying.
I pull a cap low and take the truck.
Rosie’s is a skinny storefront between a dry cleaner and a phone repair place.
I can smell the cinnamon from the sidewalk.
The kid at the register doesn’t look up when I order.
One pumpkin spice latte, extra shot. One black coffee.
I keep the cap low, wait at the end of the counter, and think about the look on Everett’s face when he said “breeding stock.”
No wonder he balked at matching with me. I’d have done the same in his position.
The door opens behind me, and under all the cinnamon I catch a scent I know from a hundred faceoffs.
“Well, look at that.” It’s Cade Dorn, in a hoodie with a splint across his nose. The bruising under his eyes has turned green at the edges. “Callahan, in the wild.” He’s grinning already. “They let you get your own coffee? I figured your fancy new owner had people running around after you.”
“Dorn.” I turn back to the counter.
“Don’t be like that. We’re practically coworkers this week.” He steps up beside me, close enough that his scent crowds into mine, sharp and wrong. “They’ve already flown me in for the hearing. You believe that? Half the league hits like that and mine’s the one they pull the file on.”
“It was a dick move, Dorn.”
“And you came the length of the ice and broke my nose, so here we both are.” He shrugs. “Mine’s a fine, most likely. Yours, though.” He sucks air through his teeth. “Six games. In the playoff push. That’s rough, big man.”
I watch the kid steam the milk and say nothing.
“You want to know the funny part?” Dorn leans against the counter. “The league wanted two.”
I keep my eyes on the espresso machine.
“Two games and a fine. Standard instigator rate, everybody knows it.” He waits, and when I don’t bite, he sets the hook anyway. “Then I hear your owner called. Don’t go light, make it stick, make it an example. Pushed for eight. They settled on six as a courtesy.”
“You’re lying.”
“Sure I am.” He collects his cup and salutes me with it.
“Ask anyone upstairs. Guy does a nice little video about how the old owner had your backs, and a week later the new owner’s on the phone asking the league to bury him.
You do the math.” He backs toward the door, delighted with himself.
“See you at the hearing, Callahan. Wear the suit. They love the suit.”
The door swings shut behind him.
The kid calls my order. I carry the two cups out to the truck and sit behind the wheel.
Did you even try? I asked him that, standing in the basement, and he looked me in the eye and said no.
He said the league was right and it was long past time an example was made — his exact words. He’d been on the phone all evening by then. The league office, then the league office again.
It’s possible that Dorn is just doing what Dorn does, sticking his blade where it’ll hurt most and skating off.
But I don’t think it is a lie. Rourke has made it clear how he feels about fighting.
I drive home with both hands on the wheel. The latte steams in the cup holder and the whole cab fills up with cinnamon, and I hate it.
The house smells like the two of us.
He’s showered and back against the headboard with his laptop, wearing one of my T-shirts. Yesterday that would have finished me off completely. He looks up and closes the laptop.
“You found it.”
“I found it.” I hand him the cup.
He gets both hands around it and takes a sip, and his eyes actually close. “God. That’s the one.” He looks happy. Openly, plainly happy, over syrup in a paper cup.
“Good,” I say.
He glances up at that. “Everything all right?”
“Fine. I need a workout. Been working you the last few days, but those aren’t the muscles I need to work. Everything’s seizing up.”
“By all means.” The eyebrow goes up. “Go and lift your weights.”
I go down to the basement and shut the gym door behind me.
Nothing down here smells like him. Good. I don’t want it right now.
I load the bar and get under it and push. It doesn’t help, so I add a plate and push again.
I should just ask him. That’s the whole answer and I know it.
Walk upstairs, put it in front of him plainly: Dorn says the league wanted two and ownership pushed for six — true or not?
He’d tell me. Whatever else the man is, he doesn’t dress things up.
He stood in a locker room full of my teammates and told them he’d sell us.
He stood in my basement and told me he agreed with the league. He’d tell me this too.
That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.
I rack the bar and sit on the bench with my elbows on my knees, breathing.
It’s one thing to stand back and let the league take its shot at me. I hated it, but I understood it.
He doesn’t like fighting or the code, he never asked to own a hockey team, and he told me where he stood before the suspension ever came down. Fine. That’s a man with a position.
It’s another thing to pick up the phone and ask them to hit me harder.
Because if he did that, it had nothing to do with player safety. Gordie is dead.
There’s no punishing him now. But he loved this team, and everybody in this city knew he loved me — he said it out loud, in front of cameras — and if you want to hurt a dead man, you go after what he left behind.
Upstairs, faint through the floor, I hear him cross the guest room and come back. An hour ago I’d have gone up.
I chalk my hands and get back under the bar.