4. Russ
CHAPTER 4
RUSS
Over the next week, Emery proves herself deeply useful and very annoying at the same time. Peak little sister vibes, although I’m going out of my way to not treat her like that. It’s the least I can do when she’s embraced this party as if she truly is the hostess for it.
She’s the first guest to arrive, with a beat up national team hockey bag and a rental car full of groceries, even though I already did a big food order.
After I introduce her to the off-season trainer who will be working with the team this weekend, Foster Howard, he heads out to the converted garage gym and I help Emery with her groceries.
“How many kinds of peppers did you buy?”
“One can never have too many food platter options, Russell. And you’re going to be working these boys hard, right?”
“Don’t call me Russell when they get here,” I say absently, leading her into the kitchen.
“Just trying things other than Rusty on.”
“Rusty is fine.”
She gives me a look that reminds me of her insane plan. That I agreed to, of course, because I’m desperate.
“Or Russ. Russ is great.” I clear my throat. “Let me show you to your room.”
I have four separate guest spaces in this compound. And we need all of them, because it’s a packed house.
I list a bunch of names for Emery, and we joke that she won’t remember them all, so she records the list on her phone so she has a reference.
Above the garage is a double suite, which is where I’ve put my best friend on the team, future Hall of Fame first rounder Kieran Marsh, along with his new wife Harper, freshly returned from their honeymoon in Italy. In the same suite will be her best friend Kiley Forge—because where Kiley goes, so goes our hotshot centre, Ty Connor, who fell hard for her as soon as he was traded to our team at the end of last season, and their relationship spilled out into being public knowledge at Marshie’s wedding.
The walkout basement bedroom will be for one of last year’s rookies, Hayden Calhoun, and his fiancé, Becca Kincaid.
Our alternate captain, Jenson Hale, and his wife, Ani, are down at the boat house.
And everyone else will be in the main part of the house, which has two primary suites. I’ve got one of them at one end of the upstairs hallway, and Emery pokes her head into that as I give her the run down of where the couples will all be sleeping.
“Our team captain and his wife will be at the far end of the hall, in the so-called Primary Suite No. 2.”
“Is it exactly the same as this one?” She whistles at the size of my en suite, making me grin.
“Pretty much, yeah. It has a different seating arrangement in front of the fireplace, but otherwise furnished exactly the same.”
“And all of this came with the house?”
“Totally turnkey. The only thing I’ve added is hockey memorabilia.”
“Nice.”
I guide her back out into the main hallway.
In between the two deluxe rooms are a string of regular bedrooms, for the single, younger guys on the team, and Emery is in the room closest to mine.
She’s nodding along as I give her the run down of all of those names, but then she gets a little wrinkle between her brows. “Hiro Watanabe, Roan Dodaj, Gregor Sokolov, Malik Zondi, me… what about Talbot?”
“Jamie Mason?” I shake my head. “He’s not coming.”
She pulls out her phone and taps into Instagram, showing me an update from an hour ago where Zondi, one of our incoming rookies, lists the other guys in a story visible to close friends only about being on their best behaviour for the weekend.
“First of all, since when are you on a close friends loop with these guys?”
She looks delighted at my suspicion. “Jealous, Russell?”
“Overprotective. And I?—”
“Don’t be like that. I just followed a few people. And we might have DMed about training and food.”
“Well, the kid can sleep on a couch downstairs, because he didn’t RSVP.”
“No, don’t make him do that. That’s so close to rookie hazing.”
“Hazing? It’s a perfectly nice couch!”
“He can have my room.”
“You’re not sleeping on a couch .”
“You just told me it’s a perfectly nice couch.”
“For a rookie. Not my guest of honour.”
“Awww, that’s sweet.” She pulls on her lower lip, thinking. “These guys already think we’re together, so maybe I should just sleep in your room.”
“They what? ” I agreed that she could host a party with me. We never agreed on actually pretending she was my date.
I can’t tell her why that feels so fucking wrong my skin wants to turn itself inside out.
“I wasn’t going to tell them that you’re suffering from mid-life crisis ennui, Russell.”
“Russ.” I feel the start of a headache coming on. “What did you tell them, exactly?”
“Who can remember?”
I give her a murderous look. “You. You can remember. Now.”
She has the good graces to look slightly embarrassed, at least. “Ummm…” She taps on her phone, then hands over a DM chain between her and some of the rookies.
Emery: Hi all! Just wanted to introduce myself since we’re all going to Rusty’s cottage this weekend and I’ve self-appointed myself the Queen of the Charcuterie Boards. Any food sensitivities I should know about?
Malik: Granger…any relation to Camden or Wyatt?
Emery: And Forrest, too, yes, I’m their little sister
Emery: And I’m bringing my skates, btw
Malik: Nice. Looking forward to meeting you
I stop reading and scowl at Emery. “I’m not sure I like how he says, looking forward to meeting you .”
“Good, that’s good. Channel that energy into pretending to be jealous.”
I skim past Hiro and Roan answering her questions about food, and then stop again when I get to the part where Malik assumes she’s my girlfriend.
Malik: Rusty’s been keeping you a hot secret this summer, huh?
Emery: Maybe you’re just not on the need to know list yet, rookie!
Roan: LOL Malik got told
Hiro: Real
Roan: See you this weekend, Emery…keep that blade sharp!
“So…” Emery takes her phone back from me. “Maybe it would be for the best if I shared your room.”
It’s not the rebound plan I wanted. But if anyone else were in my shoes, I’d tell them to grab the girl and make the most of it.
But I don’t want to.
Outside, there’s a crunch of wheels on gravel.
Fuck.
Time’s up.
I take a deep breath. “You sure about this? I can take the floor, or maybe I can head to the outfitters later and grab a cot.”
She follows me to the front door, stopping me as I open it. “I have four older brothers,” she says. “I know how to construct an impenetrable pillow barrier on a king-sized bed.”
Great. Just… excellent.
“And during the day?” I gesture at the door, and my teammates on the other side of it. “How are we supposed to act during the day?”
She smiles, far too bright and bold and confident for my liking. “It wouldn’t be a hardship to pretend I’m your rebound girl, would it, Russell?”
Ah, fuck me. “This can’t get back to your brothers.”
“They aren’t on Instagram,” she scoffs. “And I don’t want your tongue down my throat. You can just hold my hand and be respectful.”
To prove her point, she weaves her fingers through mine and squeezes.
I take a deep breath. “All right. On one condition, though.”
“Anything.”
I try to ignore the stab in my chest. “Don’t call me Russell.”
Being in love with another man’s wife used to be a sharp, agonizing pain, a self-inflicted injury of the worst sort—preventable.
More recently, it has often felt mundane. A fact of life.
Today, though, it feels pretty fucking dangerous.
It doesn’t help that Max and Shannon are running late. It’s like a countdown to running a gauntlet. Everyone else has arrived, the spouses setting up by the pool, my teammates and Emery already in the gym with Foster.
All the young guys are eager for Max to arrive, giving him all the credit for this coming together. And I have to give him the nod for the original idea, but the rest of it? Ensuring that Foster could come up to cottage country as well, kitting out the gym with everything we need…hell, I even hired a skills coach Foster recommended, a former Olympian named Thea Brown who lives up in this area in the summer and runs clinics for all the NHL players who flood Muskoka in the off-season.
Foster is even staying with her since I’m so full up.
There has been a lot of thought and effort that has gone into this being everything we need to start the season right, and Max Fucking Tilman didn’t do anything beyond the initial decree to make it happen.
Ever since I arrived in Canada at the age of twelve, it has been drummed into me that hockey is a fraternity, a brotherhood. Being a part of a team is doing something bigger than one’s self. All wins are team wins. All losses are team losses. And no matter what, differences are left outside the dressing room.
The higher I went with competitive hockey, the more intense that code got. By the time I was drafted into the NHL, it was a rule I felt in my soul: whatever team I was on, that was my family.
And some people might say, yeah, but families don’t trade you away for business reasons.
Mine did, though, so that part was never a problem for me.
All of these connections are temporary and transactional, but when we’re in, we’re all the way in.
Right now, Max Tilman is my captain. My brother.
Coveting his wife is an easy ticket to being traded away faster than I can say third line nobody , and the thought of never seeing Shannon ever again is a hundred times worse than seeing her regularly but never getting to call her mine. So…I mostly lock it down.
But deep down, I have to admit I’m not inspired by him the way my younger teammates are. And that’s my own damn fault. By every observable metric, Max Tilman is one of the league’s best players. Dangerously fast, he’s a sniper from afar and a bully in the blue paint. But he’s also calm and cool under pressure. He’s the guy you want to talk to the refs when they keep calling penalties against your side and your side only.
When I’m being uncharitable, he can be manipulative. It’s like he’s constantly assessing the balance of power, trying to keep it on his side.
But again, even at my most uncharitable, I have to admit that’s a great characteristic in a hockey captain.
I don’t always love being on his team, but I never liked playing against him, either.
A roar of an engine through the trees tells me my uncomfortable wait is over—and that Max has decided today is not a day for subtlety or respect.
I open the front door as he brakes sharply in the driveway, then take a deep breath in and square my shoulders just in time for the woman who glides from the passenger side to give me a bright, effortless smile.
The last time I saw Shannon was at Kieran and Harper’s wedding last month. I watched as she asked her husband to dance, as he brushed her off and made her face fall, and wished desperately that I could take her in my arms instead.
She’s changed her hair since then. Her long blonde waves are darker now, as if the bottom layers have been painted with caramel and chocolate. And she’s traded the glitzy summer gown from that night for skinny jeans and a loose plaid shirt that flows over her willowy body. Even though it’s still August, she looks ready for fall and the return of hockey. The return of her cheering on my team while wearing another man’s number.
“Thanks for inviting us for the weekend,” she says with more warmth than I deserve, given that I wake up most mornings hard as a rock for her.
“Glad you could make it,” I grind out.
Max comes around from the driver’s side and extends his hand. “Buddy,” he says. His grip is too tight for a teammate, and his smile is too hard. “You had to buy a place in the middle of fucking nowhere, didn’t you?”
I don’t bother to point out that this is a popular lake with hockey players and the only reason he is here is because he invited himself.
He wants to get the jab in, and since I’m going to covet his wife all weekend, it seems fair to let him.
Not that I always play fair.
I thump his bad shoulder and give him a big grin. “You seem cranky, Tiller. You need a nap? I saved the best room for you.”
He grins back. “I don’t need a fucking nap. I just sat on my ass for three hours in the car. I want to see the gym you’ve got set up here. Who else is here? Maybe we can make it competitive.”
Oh, we’re going to make it competitive. My return smile to him is as genuine as can fucking be. “Foster has everyone working in the gym already.”
“And just like that, the day’s agenda has been set,” Shannon says lightly. I make an apologetic face in her direction, but she waves me off. “It’s fine. I’m used to it. Where am I going to find my girls?”
I grin. “Let me tell you about the pool…”
“You’ve got a pool?” Her expression brightens immediately. “Point me to the lanai, Russell. I know what I’ll be doing while you boys get sweaty.”