Chapter Nineteen
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Susannah Lindenberg: When the Sea Lions are on, they are really, really on. Other teams would be smart to watch out!
The Monday after the All-Star Break, Coach Trout was taken in for questioning.
The team flew out to Minnesota for a game against the Furies followed by the rematch against Chicago that afternoon.
With Trout missing for morning skate and not answering his phone, Phil and Ben took Charlie to the shelter for an impromptu three-day sleepover so they could both coach the team, which Ben felt awful about.
“Are we sure?” Ben asked for the fifteenth time, knee jiggling in his seat on the team’s charter plane. “I could—”
“If you stay home now, you’ll raise suspicions,” Phil said. The Sports Network might notice. Pulvermacher and Van Giesing would definitely notice.
Phil also didn’t like the thought of Trout being released and coming to see Ben and Charlie when he wasn’t around.
He didn’t mention it to avoid freaking Ben out even more, but he thought Charlie would be safer at the shelter, with a round-the-clock adult presence and dozens of witnesses.
In Phil’s ideal world, they would have brought Charlie with them, but they couldn’t take him across state lines before the court hearing.
Phil couldn’t stay behind with Charlie either, not when he’d been cleared to skate with the team again.
Besides which, the Sea Lions needed Phil too.
Ben couldn’t concentrate on hockey for long enough to care about the angle Van Giesing chose to pursue.
The team needed Phil to keep up morale and provide some consistency in coaching decisions.
Ever since Van Giesing had looped Ben into his betting scheme, he’d been demanding line changes up and down the roster, most often shuffling Howie between the third and fourth lines and the bench.
Van Giesing probably wanted Howie traded while he was on his ELC, Phil figured, or maybe sent down.
It had already been odd when he made the roster straight out of training camp.
Promoting a low-drafted rookie and then trading him would make team management look incompetent, but it would also be unexpected enough to earn a lot on the betting sites.
Whatever the purpose, it left everyone off-kilter and on edge.
Ben’s leg bounced for the entire flight.
After a glance around to make sure no one was watching, Phil placed a hand on Ben’s thigh. He shot Phil a weak smile, and his leg stilled.
They’d been married for all of two days, and Phil wasn’t done honeymooning. He let his hand slide up a few inches, just for the joy of touching Ben.
“It’s a three-day work trip. Surely plenty of parents have those. He’s fourteen, and he’s in a safe place with friends. It’ll be fine,” Phil said as the plane descended over the Twin Cities. He didn’t know who he was trying to convince, Ben or himself.
When Van Giesing started blowing up Ben’s phone as soon as they’d landed, Phil was glad he’d come along.
Ben didn’t dare answer, letting the calls go to voicemail over and over on the bus ride to the hotel.
Once they arrived, he set it gingerly on the table while he put his things away.
Technically, Phil had his own room on the road, but he hadn’t bothered picking up a key. He liked waking up next to Ben.
The phone vibrated its way off the table onto the scratchy carpet, where it landed, face down, lighting up the floor as it continued to ring.
“Should I call the police?” Ben asked, watching his phone as if it might detonate at any moment.
“I don’t know,” Phil said. His faith in the police as an institution was about as great as his faith in the NHL reacting to his marriage to a man with open arms. Which was to say, if he saw any winged farm quadrupeds fly past the St. Paul Marriott, he might be inclined to give them a call.
They video called Charlie, who seemed more than fine at the shelter.
No less than six other kids interrupted their call, among them Jayden, who asked to pass along such a hair-raisingly cutting chirp to Breezy that Phil wouldn’t have the heart to repeat it.
Then they settled down side by side in bed for a restless night.
Neither of them got much sleep, but being able to reach out and feel the curve of Ben’s hip whenever he needed to settled some of Phil’s nerves.
The following morning did not improve matters.
Jax had used his curfew exemption to stay with his family, and when Tom didn’t appear at team breakfast, Phil knew he’d gone along without asking. When he didn’t show up on the team bus, the guys started talking.
“Maybe he’s already at the rink,” Breezy suggested loyally. “He wanted to practice his one-timer.”
“Cap doesn’t need to practice his one-timer,” Howie scoffed.
“Maybe he went out without us,” Mooney suggested.
“Do we suck so much?” Mats asked.
“Not because we suck. Maybe he wanted to…you know, meet someone.”
Hayes snorted loudly. “You have not been on this team long. Cap doesn’t do that.”
Mooney eyed him contemptuously. “Seniority doesn’t excuse asshattery.”
“Oh my God, get over it.” Hayes rolled his eyes.
“Hmm.” Mooney pretended to consider. “No.”
“You have all forgotten the sweaters?” Dmitriyev asked, aghast. “The Crow would not cheat on the sweater giver.”
“I’m sure there’s a very boring explanation,” Luca drawled. “Anyway, what about Jax? He’s missing as well.”
“He had a family thing.” Howie waved a dismissive hand. “Unless he took Cap along for that—”
“Hey, look over there!” Breezy pointed out the window at what appeared to be a bush.
Everyone followed his outstretched arm and then turned back to look at him quizzically.
“Thought I saw a raccoon.” He flushed up to his ears.
“We have to intervene,” Phil muttered to Ben as the team began mocking him for the outburst.
“Huh?”
“Ben. The infighting is starting, and if they get wind of Tom and…you know who…”
“What do you expect me to do about it?”
“Literally anything? Start an icebreaker or—or have Edwards do one of his meditation exercises so they all shut up?”
Ben sank lower in his seat. “We’re nearly at the rink. I don’t think now is the time.”
Phil studied him. He was picking at his fingernails, and he kept turning his phone screen on and off again as if he kept forgetting all the missed calls. Or as if he expected more. Ben didn’t have it in him to run a hockey team right now. Unfortunately, the team needed him. Phil needed him.
They found Tom and Jax waiting for them at the rink as the team bus pulled up. Since they were both standing beside Jax’s rental car, shooting the shit and looking like parents coming along on their wayward children’s field trip, it only caused more questions.
Even more so when they entered the rink and found Trout waiting for them on the ice.
“Shit,” Ben muttered. “Shit.”
“Sorry I’m late, boss,” Trout drawled. “Something came up, but I caught a commercial flight out.”
Van Giesing caught him a flight out, more like.
Practice was a nightmare. Hayes and Mooney claimed to have made up but still checked each other brutally into the boards every chance they got.
Howie, not yet sure if he would be a healthy scratch, was more interested in where Tom had spent the night and kept hovering around him, trying to ask.
And Trout ran the D-men ragged. For the last year or so, Phil’s litmus test for whether a practice went well was how Breezy held up.
He dedicated the most time to conditioning to make up for how slow his size made him, and he had the advantage of youth, at least before Luca showed up and beat him out by a year and a month on that front.
Halfway through practice, Breezy doubled over at the end of a drill and looked as if he might puke.
Phil watched it happen. What could he do? Ben had checked out completely, refreshing his messages from Charlie over and over. If Trout already thought Ben had gone to the police, Phil taking over practice now would only add him to Trout’s list of suspects.
To add insult to injury, the Zamboni drivers must have called in sick because the ice was anything but smooth. The third time Hayes stumbled and fell trying to complete the drill, Trout laughed, loud and mean.
“I’m gonna check in the back to see if we have a walking stick for the old man,” he said. “Or a shotgun to take him out of his misery.”
He made for the locker room as if to actually do so.
Phil caught a glimpse of his phone screen in his hand, an incoming call with the same name as the ones Ben had been getting.
He elbowed Ben, but Ben only grunted, flipping through his notebook.
Phil guessed he was trying to find more proof.
Something to make the police believe him and to charge Trout with rather than release him after questioning.
“Aren’t you going to do anything?” Jax asked Ben.
Ben looked up from the notebook. “Huh? Oh. Shit. Um.”
Phil couldn’t stifle the sigh when Ben looked to him.
He knew Ben wanted out of pretending to be a hockey coach, but he still had to pretend to be a hockey coach.
Phil made a gesture, one he’d used in December when he’d spent his mornings watching from the stands.
At least he got to be on the ice now in a no-contact jersey.
“Right,” Ben said, looking for his whistle in his pockets. “Around-the-world drill.”
He didn’t have the damn thing on him.
“Christ, Ben, seriously?”
“I’ve got a few other things on my mind,” Ben snapped, which Phil knew and appreciated, but he had a responsibility to the team.
“When you’re on the ice, you’ve gotta eat, sleep, breathe—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Phil, I’m not even a real hockey coach.”
The whole team looked to Ben.
“Well, shit,” Phil said. Trout would be back any moment. “Tom’s room at the hotel, after practice. We’ll explain everything. Don’t say a word to Trout.”