Chapter 9
NINE
Ryan
Okay, I know I said I’d keep an eye on Brandon, but at no point do I remember agreeing to room with him on road trips.
This is entirely unfair. I haven’t had a roommate on a road trip since I was a rookie.
It’s easy to forget how complicated it can be to transition a new guy onto the team.
It’s a bit like adding another cat into the house. You have to ease them in.
But, honestly, with the way he’s pacing the room, walking back and forth between the bathroom and his bed, what I think he needs is a scratching post. Something to help him expel this weird pent-up energy he has.
We’re supposed to be taking naps, banking our power reserves for tonight’s game against the Chicago Broad Wings. We’re going to need it.
Coach Chris’s return is sure to add an extra layer of challenge for us against the team whose playoff spot we’re gunning for. I just hope Kennedy Sr doesn’t make an appearance. I doubt he will. After all the shit he pulled at the Olympics, he’s lucky he still has a job. For now.
I roll onto my back and open my eyes to stare at the ceiling. “Brandon, what are you doing?”
I hear his footsteps stop and I turn my head to look at him. His hair is a mess and he’s chewing his bottom lip, fretting. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
My lips quirk to the side. “I would have needed to fall asleep first in order for you to wake me.”
He winces. “Sorry.”
“What’s your deal, dude? There’s no way you can be this energized after all those meatballs and pasta you just ate. That was a proper food coma-inducing feast.”
Finally, he sits on the side of his bed facing me.
He wrings his hands, then places them between his thighs and uses his legs to hold them steady.
I can see his quads straining through the fabric of his sweatpants.
“Sorry,” he says again. I’m starting to notice a pattern.
“I get too nervous before games to take a nap.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “Okay, well, that needs to change.” It’s a matter of fact, and not just because he’s disrupting my highly valued nap schedule.
NHL seasons are long. He’ll wear himself out and risk getting injured if he doesn’t learn how to get some rest and let his body recover from the meat grinder that is a professional hockey season.
He hangs his head, then frees his hands from between his thighs to run them through his hair. He manages to smooth it back but a few loose pieces of blond fall forward again over his eyes.
I can’t help but shake my head and smile as a laugh bubbles through my chest. I sit up and face him. “Alright. Today’s nap is obviously a lost cause. But you can’t stay in here pacing this room. You’ll drive both of us crazy. How about we go on a walk?”
He lifts his head. The expression on his face is bewildered. “In Chicago?”
“No. Winnipeg,” I deadpan.
His lips lift, cracking his confused and worried state.
“Obviously Chicago.” I rise off the bed and go to my suitcase to grab a change of clothes. “There’s no better place to take a walk.”
Brandon
Ryan wasn’t wrong. Chicago, it turns out, is a great place to take a walk. It’s also exactly what I needed to calm my pregame jitters.
The city hasn’t fully thawed, but the crisp air keeps me alert and fills my lungs.
It is way better than the recycled air that was circulating throughout our hotel room, making everything feel stuffy.
I have no idea why Ryan likes it in there so much.
I should feel guilty for disrupting his nap, but he does seem to be enjoying himself right now while we stroll down Michigan Avenue with a huge park on one side of us and large skyscrapers on the other, even if this goes against his normal routine.
“Thanks for this,” I tell him as we weave through the flow of people going about their day. “You could have just kicked me out of the room, but I appreciate you coming along.”
“I can’t just kick you out,” he says. “That would be considered a dereliction of duties.”
“I’m pretty sure babysitting the team rookie isn’t your job, though.”
“Eh. It’s not not my job.” He shrugs and slips his hands into the pockets of his down coat.
I chance a longer glance at him. He’s wearing a bright blue toque with a Mules logo on it that brings out the silver gray of his eyes.
And his cheeks, which are exposed to the cool air, are rosy in an enticing way.
As for me, like a true northern Midwesterner I’m wearing my beat-up UDub hoodie and long, loose athletic shorts. I fit in perfectly with the locals.
I bump my shoulder against his. “I guess even making it to the NHL still doesn’t get a Texas boy like you used to the cold.”
“No.” He laughs. His breath leaves him in a cloudy stream. “The only time I like the cold is when I’m on the ice. And it’s only because I’m working so hard I’m no longer cold.”
I shake my head at him. “Then why did you suggest this walk?”
“Two reasons,” he says, and bumps me now, mimicking my move earlier.
“One, you were driving me nuts pacing around the room.” He bumps me again.
“And two, if you think we’re spending this entire walk outside, you’re dead wrong.
” He points forward towards a white building with two bronze lion statues posted sentry out front.
“What’s that?”
“The Art Institute.”
Ryan
Bless this glorious warm building filled with endless works of art.
Inside here I can take my hands out of my pockets.
But also inside here I’m feeling a weird urge I can’t quite wrap my head round.
The urge to stroll hand in hand with Brandon while looking at paintings, sculptures, and ancient artifacts.
Like I said, weird. I barely know him. He’s practically a stranger and yet I’m feeling myself drawn to him more and more each day we spend together.
Which is every day. Because hockey is a fulltime, 24/7 job.
A non-stop endeavor with rare days off, that we almost always spend with, you guessed it, more hockey players.
But not once in all these years, not even before I made it to the NHL, have I ever wanted to hold one of their hands.
I put my own hands back into my pockets. Better to be safe than sorry.
“So,” I say, looking over my shoulder to check out Brandon.
He really has gotten quite good looking in the last eight years.
His eyes are bright, his cheeks are rounded, but his jaw has filled out well with new, defined angles.
Yes, his hair is a mess, but it’s also kind of cute the way it curls and flips around the edges.
There’s something forever youthful about him that I think will be with him for his entire career.
It’s not innocence. It’s more that he’s wholesome.
Yeah. That’s it. He’s like every Midwesterner’s dream son.
A good boy. The type of guy who shovels the elderly couple next door’s driveway without asking and refuses to take any money.
He stops studying a centuries-old Japanese tapestry to look at me. “Were you going to ask me something?”
I swallow. How long have I been staring? And now I have to think of something to ask. Scrambling, I land on the one thing I know we can talk about forever. Hockey. “Err, yeah. What was your draft day like? I know your mom and dad had to have made the biggest deal.”
“Oh, God.” He shakes his head and laughs. “You have no idea. Well, I guess you do have an idea, but they were worse than you could even imagine.”
“I doubt that,” I say, remembering how Momma B and Big Mike were there when I got drafted. Sure, Ander and I were in the same draft class, and we got selected three picks away from each other, but still. They were there. More than I can say about my own family.
As soon as the Bouchards realized my parents weren’t there, well, to say that they treated me like I was their own son would be an understatement. They even included me in the celebratory dinner they’d booked for Ander, making it about the both of us instead of just him.
My face falls at the memory. I should have kept in touch with them better. I should have made more effort. Outside of the Mules, the Bouchards are the closest thing to family I’ve had since I left home at sixteen, and I’ve completely ignored them.
“What’s that look for?” Brandon asks.
“Nothing.” I shrug, then put a smile back on my face. “Just thinking about your parents.”
“They went so overboard for my draft, treating me like I was going to be a first-round pick instead of a late third rounder. I mean, seriously, we could have just stayed at home and waited for a call from the comfort of our couches with coffee in our hands, but instead, they insisted we fly to Las Vegas for it to be there in person when my name was called.”
“That’s sweet, though.”
“I mean, yeah, it is. But they also spoke over me the whole time, and no one listened to me when I explained to them I wasn’t going to get drafted in the first round like Ander.”
“He did set the bar high.”
“Too high,” Brandon says. He stops walking again and turns to look back at me. His eyes are huge and full of delight. “Oh God, and the worst was when Ander said he wanted me to be drafted by the Blizzards.” He shakes his head, laughing. “Could you imagine anything worse?”
I tip my head at him. “Could have been Toronto.”
He shudders.
“And you’d be a Stanley Cup champ had you gone to the Blizzards.”
“Yeah, right.” He laughs some more. “I’ve barely cracked into the Mules lineup. Do you honestly think I’d have a chance to get on theirs? Hell no.”
“Fair point,” I say. Even though I don’t necessarily think that it’s fair. Brandon has proven to be a great player. He’s already elevated our team. We’re crushing it. Having won six of our last seven games.
“Besides,” he says with a sigh in his voice. “I love my brother. You know I do, but I had to get out of his shadow. Being drafted by the Blizzards would have kept me in the shade for my entire career.”
“You’re not the first set of brothers to ever make it to the league.”
“True,” he says, stopping near a large set of windows that look out to the city’s train tracks that run underneath the building.
“But Ander and I have been playing against each other our whole lives, even if it was only in our driveway. I’m not sure we would make good teammates.
Plus…” He turns his gaze to look at me. A conspiratorial grin spreads across his face.
“No one knows my brother’s weaknesses as a goalie better than I do. ”
A wave of excitement flows through me. “Well, haven’t you turned out to be a wicked little thing.”
His face falls. “I’m not that little.”
My excitement is quickly replaced with guilt.
“I’m five eleven,” he continues.
Despite my guilt, I can’t help myself, and my eyebrow raises.
He tips his head. “Fine. Five nine.”
I dip my chin towards him and lift my other eyebrow.
“Five eight and a half.” He lightly laughs.
“I knew it.” I loop my arm over his shoulders, pulling him close so I can rub the knuckles of my other hand into his scalp. This time, his laugh is so loud it echoes across the quiet, cavernous space.
Everyone in our vicinity turns to glare at us.
I let go of him, and he steps away, smiling and breathless.
“I think it’s about time we got out of here.”