by Tricia Owens
“I told you,” Adrian mouthed beside him. It was too loud to hear him, but Neil got the message. He tried to be stoic, but ended up smirking back.
“Yeah,” he mouthed back and to hell with it—he was allowed to be happy about this. It didn’t matter that Adrian had orchestrated this or that Neil had been rejected by his team. This was the future and he was thrilled to be a part of it.
The puck dropped and the intensity of the crowd didn’t waver. It sounded as though the fans screamed nonstop as the Kraken top line chased the puck. Neil let the game flow through him, let himself melt into the fluidity of the action. He stopped hearing the crowd. He stopped feeling the cold. His awareness shrunk down to the other players and the puck. He’d always prided himself on having eyes in the back of his head and those eyes were in laser focus tonight. His first pass to Elias snapped with a crack against the centerman’s stick, perfectly positioning Elias to tip the puck into the net.
Goal! Sixteen seconds into the game. The building sounded as though it would collapse from the volume of the roaring.
“I told you!” Adrian screamed as he slammed into Neil, crushing him against the glass. For a wild second, Neil thought he was going to kiss him and he welcomed it. He wanted it.
Elias caromed into them along with the two defensemen, and they hugged and cheered each other as though they’d been playing on the same team for decades.
The game continued its relentless pace. The second, third, and fourth lines took their turns at running down the puck and defending against the Atlanta team. The top line went out again and Neil and Adrian cycled around each other, finding each other through defenders and up and down the length of the ice as though they existed on the same wavelength, as though they were in constant telepathic communication.
Neil did something tricky, tried a pass that had little chance of making it through and yet somehow it did and somehow Adrian had known it would and was there to slapshot it over the Atlanta goaltender’s shoulder. Neil screamed himself hoarse as he dove for Adrian and swung him in a mad embrace. The building trembled and shook.
At the end of two periods, the Kraken were up by one after a series of penalties left them shorthanded and allowed Atlanta to catch up. Still, going onto the ice for the final period of the game, Neil and his teammates understood the energy of the game and which team the hockey gods were smiling on.
“We’ve got this, baby,” Adrian said as he circled Neil while they waited for the TV timeout to end and play to resume. “How about a hat trick?” he said with a huge grin. “I’ve already got two goals. Another one is a piece of cake.”
Neil laughed, unrestrained. “So greedy. How about three goals for both of us?”
Adrian’s bright blue eyes seemed to shine even more brilliantly as he skated up to him. “If you get a hat trick, I’ll drop to my knees and blow you all night long, baby.”
Neil blushed and punched him in the shoulder but he could feel the flirtatious smile on his lips and the invitation in his own eyes. “Give me three goals, Maggy,” he taunted, “and we’ll do whatever you want.”
The puck dropped and the crowd began to scream again. Neil could feel in his blood that either he or Adrian was going to score that hat trick. It was as inevitable as the rain that hugged Seattle’s skyline. My first game with my new team. What a story this will be.
The clock ticked down. Atlanta tightened up their defense and began playing grittier. The glass and boards rattled as Kraken players fended off body checks by their more aggressive opponent. The game slowed down slightly as it became more physical, but Neil and Adrian didn’t lose their edge or their creativity, finding ways to dodge defenders and put the puck on net, again and again.
But the Atlanta goaltender turned it up, blocking shots that should have gone in. Neil hit the goal post with a shot, the ding! ringing out as clear as a bell. Adrian yelled as he shot a puck between the goaltender’s legs, but it was called back after review because a Kraken player was off-sides. The tension in the arena grew smothering, pressing down on the ice.
And then the worst happened: a deflection tipped a shot past the Kraken goaltender. The game was tied with less than two minutes left in the game.
“We’ve got this,” Adrian told his teammates as they huddled at the bench for a timeout. “We got this, guys. They’ve been trying to rattle us but we’re still getting the shots. Just keep doing what we’re doing.”
Neil nodded in agreement. The hockey gods had shifted their allegiance slightly and puck luck was going against them, but the pendulum could quickly swing back their way.
“Shots on net,” he said firmly. “Keep shooting, keep looking up. Someone will be there when he needs to be.”
Adrian breathed like a stallion. The hype of the game had turned his cheeks blotchy, just as Neil knew his own were. Adrian looked like he was in the middle of sex and Neil’s cock twitched where it was trapped by his protector. Game sex wasn’t an idea that had ever crossed his mind, but right now Neil wanted it. Wanted it right there on the ice, with Adrian pounding the living daylights out of him.
Funnel that into the game, Neil, and you’ll destroy the opponent.
Smirking and aware of Adrian staring hotly at him, Neil headed back to the center for what might be the final faceoff of the game.
His body was a giant heartbeat, throbbing urgently. The puck dropped and both teams clashed, struggling for control. Atlanta came in hard, slamming into bodies and making every puck battle a true battle of strength and will.
Neil kept a mental clock running in his head, counting down the minutes, then the seconds. He could see the crowd rising to their feet for the final minute of play. He chased the puck desperately into the Kraken’s own zone, trying to steal the puck to head back the other way.
In the corner, he battled the opposing player.
Thirty seconds.
Twenty.
Fifteen.
A shove to the other player’s shoulder and suddenly the puck came lose. Neil flicked it out of the corner and caught up to it just above his own net. Adrian had trusted him to make the steal, was already streaking down the length of the ice all on his own. Once Neil passed to him he’d be all alone on a breakaway, and no way would Adrian miss. Heart in his throat, Neil bent his arm into the pass—
The player entered from the corner of his eye. It was Atlanta’s enforcer, their biggest player, who’d already knocked one Kraken player into the locker room to undergo concussion protocols. The Atlanta enforcer was only a few strides away, but Neil still had time to get the pass off to Adrian before he was crushed—
He flinched, turning his shoulder to brace himself against the huge hit he knew was coming. The blade of his stick, already pressed against the ice and prepped to flick the puck to the other end of the rink, slipped beneath his shift of position. Neil watched it happen: his stick jerking sideways instead of forward, striking the puck on an angle and giving it English. The puck spun backward, zipping past the surprised Kraken goaltender’s left skate. As the crowd screamed, it slid into the net.
Neil had scored the game-winning goal against his own team.
Chapter 11
Adrian was looking back at Neil and waiting for the pass that would give him a breakaway, so he was the first Kraken player to see the red goal light go on behind the net. He stared at it, unable to make sense of why it was flashing. Had the goal judge accidentally pressed the button?
The goal horn blasted and Adrian still didn’t understand. How could Atlanta have scored when Seattle was in possession of the puck?
A shoulder struck him. “Get off the ice,” Elias snarled as he skated past him. “Get off the ice!” he yelled at their teammates.
It finally pierced Adrian’s confusion: Neil had scored a goal on the Kraken.
“Get off the ice,” Elias kept saying.
Get off the ice before the stunned crowd of nineteen thousand understood what had happened. Get off the ice before shock gave way to something uglier. Get
off the ice before the replay revealed to the home crowd that their riskiest player had just proved them right.
Adrian was shaking as he hurtled off the ice and raced awkwardly down the rubber-matted tunnel to the locker room. When there was space, he turned around. The defensemen hustled past him, exchanging stunned looks with him. Finally, Elias appeared, pushing Neil in front of him—Neil who looked like he’d been hit in the head with a puck, more shocked than any of them.
“Shake it off,” Adrian told him, immediately grabbing Neil’s arm and pulling him along. “It’s regular season. Doesn’t mean anything.”
They’d hurried off the ice so quickly that none of the support staff or scratched players had had time to line up to greet them. It was utterly silent as Adrian dragged Neil to the locker room, where the rest of their teammates stood around awkwardly, still trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Adrian steered Neil to his stall and grabbed his stick from him. He carried both of their sticks back out of the room and shoved them in the rack. More staff members had filtered in, as well as the coaches. Adrian looked to catch the eye of their head coach, Barkov, but he and the assistant coach turned down the side tunnel to the coaches’ room without a look toward the locker room. Adrian would have to speak to him later.
For now, he sought out the press coordinator. “I’ll do the scrum,” Adrian told him. “I’ll handle it myself.”
Mark gave him a pained smile. “Adrian, you know they’re gonna want to talk to him.”
“It doesn’t matter what they want. They get who they get.”
“Avoiding them will only make it look worse.”
Adrian frowned. “How could—”
“He’s right.”
Neil, who hadn’t removed a single piece of gear, stalked up to them. “I’ll do the scrum,” he told Mark.
Adrian grabbed the back of his own neck. “It’ll be better to let this die down, Neil. Let the clip circulate on the highlight shows for a day or two until everyone’s bored of seeing it. The next time they see you it’ll be on the ice and you can replace this memory with a better one.”
Neil’s expression was stony. “I’m not running from this. I did what I did. I’ll own up to it.”
“You don’t need to own up to anything,” Adrian retorted. “We lost one game out of eighty-two. Big deal. We don’t need the points. We shouldn’t let them make a big deal out of this when it doesn’t need to be.”
“It’s my first game with the Kraken,” Neil said flatly. “Like it or not, Magnusson, this game matters.”
Magnusson. Not Maggy or Adrian. Neil might be playing it cool, but he was barricaded behind a wall and Adrian would need a jackhammer to get through it.
“Go back in the room,” Elias ordered as he joined them. To the coordinator he said, “I’ll answer ten questions. That’s it. Room is closed.”
Neil stepped forward. “I’m not—”
Elias jabbed a finger in his chest, his eyes blazing. “Are you the captain of this team, Shannon?”
Neil’s lips thinned into a hard line. “No, I’m not.”
“Right. I am. Respect that and do as I say.”
Adrian held his breath. He’d never heard of Neil being difficult in the locker room, then again Neil had been the captain of his team for the majority of his career. He’d ruled the room until he began to lose it earlier this season.
“You’re handling this wrong but that’s your decision to make,” Neil bit out. He turned and stalked back into the locker room.
Adrian released his breath. “Thank god.”
“Stick by him and keep his head on straight,” Elias snapped at him. He groaned and rubbed at his sweating face. “What a way to end a game. Especially that game.”
Sympathetic to the questions his friend would have to face from the media, Adrian clapped him on the shoulder before returning to the room. They closed the doors behind him, leaving Elias out in the tunnel.
Neil had returned to his stall and was quietly undressing, his back to the others. Adrian looked around, catching the eye of a few of his teammates. No one looked angry, just subdued. Their disappointment was tangible. It had been a hell of a game for them up until those last few seconds. Fuck. What a way to end a game is right. That could have been a hell of a debut for Neil.
Instead, it was a disaster.
All Adrian could do was move on.
“One thing we’ve got going for us,” he said as he walked back to his stall, “is that we’re damn good at making headlines.”
Bastian laughed, but quickly pinched his lips shut as he looked around guiltily.
“Nah, it’s funny,” their goaltender told Bastian as he worked to divest himself of his heavy pads. “One loss isn’t the end of the world.”
“It’s not like we were blown out, either,” a defenseman chipped in. “We were strong the entire game.”
“We should have won it.”
Eyes snapped to Neil, who’d finished undressing and stood up, naked. Adrian felt guilty for the way his eyes dropped down his body. Now was not the time to be ogling him. But damn, is he hot.
“I lost the game,” Neil said. When he looked over his shoulder at them, his expression was a brick wall. “I’m sorry, guys. I’m sure this wasn’t what you were hoping for from me. I owe you all an apology.”
“You think you’re the first guy in here to get an own goal?” Adrian scoffed and grinned. “Ask Eli about Worlds someday. Ask him about our game against Slovakia. Not only did I score against us, I ran into our goaltender while doing it and knocked him out of the rest of the tournament.”
Laughter circulated through the room. Neil’s expression didn’t change.
“Sorry,” he said again and walked into the showers.
Conversation slowly picked up in the room as the players tried their best to normalize the situation and shrug it off. Adrian tried to participate, but all he could think about was Neil’s expression in the second after the goal light came on. It was a face that would haunt him tonight in his dreams.
His teammates filtered one by one into the showers. Adrian hung back, needing to see Neil’s face as he came out. But Neil seemed to be taking his time so Adrian gave in and entered. The only spaces available were opposite where Neil was showering. As Adrian feared, he was in the midst of his own routine when Neil slipped back into the locker room. By the time Adrian noticed he was gone and swiftly rinsed off, Neil’s gear bag was absent from his stall and so was he.
The door opened and Elias came in, grim-faced as though he’d faced a horde of invaders. He relaxed once he saw Adrian.
“That wasn’t so bad,” the Finn quipped.
Adrian smiled. “Piece of cake, right?”
He watched his linemate look to Neil’s stall. “He’s already gone?”
“Turns out he’s fast off the ice, too.”
“You need to find him,” Elias said. “That was a shitty way to start his career with us and it doesn't look like he's handling it well. You need to make sure he doesn’t do something stupid.”
“Come on. For an own goal? In regular season?”
Elias gave him a long look. “You and I both know this was no ordinary game for him, Maggy.”
“Yeah.” Adrian couldn’t continue pretending he didn’t know differently. He quickly began dressing. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Up until the end...that was some game.”
Adrian looked up to catch the wonder on his linemate’s face.
“It was good, wasn’t it?” Adrian said excitedly. “It can be like that every game, Eli. It will be that way once we settle in. We’re winning the Cup. I have zero doubts.”
“I feel good, yes, but there’s a long way to go still.” Elias tapped his temple. “And the miles are going to tricky ones, if you get what I’m saying.”
Adrian got it, though he didn’t share his friend’s opinion that Neil was a headcase. Every professional suffered doubts during their career. Adrian was no different. Th
ere had been a short stretch in his career where he’d questioned whether he wanted to continue playing at all. But you didn’t get to the level they were at by being weak psychologically. Winners didn’t happen by accident. They were forged by adversity.
Once out of the locker room he asked around for Neil and was told that he’d gone straight to the players’ parking lot. He tried calling Neil on his phone once he got in his car. Unsurprisingly Neil didn’t pick up. Adrian tried to guess where he could be, but the list seemed short. Being new to the city, Neil didn’t have many options. Adrian decided to try him at home.
But there was no answer at his apartment and Adrian didn’t think Neil would be petty enough to leave him standing outside in the hallway if he were there. Thinking hard, Adrian retreated to his car and pulled up Instagram on his phone.
It was easy enough to find Moira Shannon’s account since Neil posted so many event photos with his sister. Adrian sent her a direct message including his phone number and then sat back and waited.
His phone rang three minutes later.
“Is this Moira?” he asked as soon as he answered.
“Um, yes. Is this Adrian?”
“It is. Thank you for calling.”
“I didn’t expect it. Is there—is something wrong? Are you calling about Neil? Is he okay?”
“It’s okay,” he said quickly. “He’s fine. Nothing’s wrong.”
She breathed a sigh. “Okay, then...well, not to sound rude, but why are you calling? This is out of the blue. You guys finished playing an hour ago—ah. I see.” Her voice hardened. “What’s this about? You putting the blame on my brother, too?”
“I’m not blaming your brother for anything. Bad luck happens to everyone. Tonight it was his turn.”