Chapter 39 #2
The ice calls to me the second I lace up my skates. I take a few warm-up laps, feeling my muscles remember this language they’ve spoken since I was five years old. Every stride feels like coming home.
The guys run passing drills, working on conditioning, and I slip into the rotation like I haven’t spent the summer playing executive boss. Coach has us do breakaway scenarios next and power play setups. For once, I don’t complain when he has us repeat them ad nauseam.
In the locker room afterward, sweat-soaked and breathing hard in the best possible way, I’m adjusting my gear when the teasing starts.
“Not long until preseason begins and you’ll be free of your nepo baby summer internship,” Johannessen says, tossing a puck my way.
I catch it reflexively, but my mind is elsewhere. In Chicago, with Jules, wondering if she’s safe.
“Earth to Linc,” Butcher says. “You’ve been distracted all weekend.”
“Just got a lot on my mind.”
“Let me guess,” Stevens grins. “Girl problems.”
“It’s not—” I start, then stop. Because it is girl problems, just not the kind they think.
I tell them I met someone, but leave out the parts about our adventures and almost being buried in an underground tunnel.
“Is the problem that you’re her boss?” Johannessen asks, holding his hands open for the puck.
I toss it. “Nope. It’s an unpaid internship, so I’m not on the payroll.”
“Meaning you don’t get a weekly check.”
I shake my head.
“And yet you flew here on your father’s private jet.”
I shrug, used to them teasing me about being a billionaire baby.
“Is it the woman I wanted to take boating?” Bīri?? calls in accented English from where he’s sprawled on a nearby bench.
“Yes,” I say softly, having forgotten about that.
He sits up abruptly, painting a picture. “She’s blonde, curvy. Has these gray eyes and is so …”
I interrupt. “Annoying. Too cheerful. Talks a lot. Way too optimistic for her own good. Drives me crazy.” Jules is one of a kind.
“He’s smitten,” one of them sing-songs before I realize what’s happening.
“Yep, drives him crazy. We get it, dude.”
Butcher flicks my ear. “It’s not fair. This guy has money, good looks, and gets the girls.”
Wearing a smug smirk, I toss him the puck.
“So what exactly is the problem?” Stevens asks.
“Don’t tell me she’s the boss’s daughter,” Bīri?? asks.
“That would make her his sister since he’s the boss’s son,” Butcher says, flicking his ear this time.
Then, Holden Goudreau, our captain, fixes me with his trademark intense stare. “You haven’t told her, have you?”
I clear my throat, admitting guilt.
“Told her about what?” Butcher tosses the puck my way again.
Goudreau snorts. “He hasn’t told her about hockey.”
I wince. “It got away from me.”
“No, it hasn’t,” my captain says. “You tell her you play hockey. She either cares or she doesn’t.”
“I just wanted to be a normal guy to her.”
“So you’re saying, she thought being a billionaire’s son was run of the mill, so you didn’t want to pile on that you’re also an NHL player?” Bīri?? asks.
“When you put it that way …”
They all stare at me.
My phone buzzes with a text from Jules.
Jules: Everything is normal at the office, but I think someone was following me home. Probably just paranoid.
I’m messaging about a flight back to Chicago before I finish reading, while I tell them about the fire.
Bīri??, whose cousins also live in Chicago, hence the boat, offers to send someone to check on her.
“If your cousins are anything like you—”
He chuckles. “Big, tall, beautiful. Like me, but ladies.”
I call Jules and ask if she’s okay, prepared to stay on the phone with her until we’re face-to-face.
“Oh, hi. Um, I hope it’s okay. But I invited Oly over and a couple of friends from work—Wendy and Carmen. She’s a grandma, so don’t worry, we’re not going to have a rager. Mostly cooking and watching movies.”
She can do whatever she wants. Invite King Kong and Godzilla for dinner. Relief sweeps through me at hearing her voice. But I need to be there, with her. Now. I tell her as much.
“Where are you going?” Goudreau asks.
“Emergency,” I say, already packing up my gear.
“Linc.” His voice stops me at the door. “Whatever is going on with this girl, don’t lose yourself in it.”
I think it might be too late for that.
By the time I get back to Chicago, I’ve made a decision. Jules needs to disappear for a while, at least until I can figure out who’s targeting her and why.
“Pack a bag,” I tell her when I walk through the door. “We’re going to my family’s cabin.”
“Linc, you just got back—” She opens her arms for a hug and I wrap myself around her.
“If you think someone was following you, that’s not paranoia, that’s a threat.” After I picked her up in the rain storm, when she said If I go missing, people will look for me, she meant those thugs.
Moving to her room, I start pulling clothes from the closet. “Fox Lake, north of the city. It’s quiet, peaceful, serene.”
“Like witness protection?” She stops me, eyes pleading for an explanation.
“It was my mother’s favorite place. I think you’ll like it,” I say, tucking her hair behind her shoulder.
Jules studies my face, and I wonder what she sees there. Desperation? Fear? The barely controlled panic that’s been eating at me since I got her text?
“For how long?” she asks finally.
“As long as it takes to keep you safe.”
She nods slowly. “Okay. But Linc? If there is something you’re not telling me—”
This woman, who’s lost everything, is trusting me to protect her even though she senses I’m hiding something from her—the one thing I’m proudest of in my life. But I’m afraid once she knows, she’ll look at me with the same cool wariness she gave Iva and Aiken—and rightly so.
But I’m not like that. Though I’m afraid because I’ve kept my hockey-playing status secret for so long now, she’ll only see me as one of them.
August is almost over. Summer is ending. Preseason starts soon and I’ll have to choose between the life I’ve always known and whatever this is becoming.
I flip my lucky penny, but every time I ask whether I should tell her, it lands on tails. Not yet.
As we prepare to leave for the lake, my mother’s sanctuary, I wonder if eventually will be too late.