by G. K. Brady
Blake gave him a sidelong glance, chafed by Ferguson’s unsolicited appraisal of him. And really, couldn’t the guy give him a little more credit? Blake had done more than “okay,” at least according to the coaches. Instead of voicing any of this, though, he merely grunted.
Fergs went on, apparently oblivious. “I was thinking about picking up some flowers on my way home and delivering them to our neighbor.” His eyebrows bounced. “What do you think? Roses? Something more subtle?”
Why this irritated Blake so much, he couldn’t say. “Does it matter?”
Ferguson leaned a shoulder against the stall. “Yeah, it matters. She’s smart and classy. Sassy.” He grinned. “I want to impress her, but I don’t want to go overboard and chase her away. This girl’s different.”
Yeah, she is. “How so?”
“She’s … she’s out of my league.”
“Then maybe you should leave her alone,” Blake huffed.
“Nah. I might be intimidated for now, but—”
“Listen up, boys,” Coach LeBrun barked, and everyone’s head swiveled in unison toward the locker room door. Beside the coach stood a familiar-looking guy, his face blank. Or was that surliness? “I want you to meet your new teammate, Cam Blue.”
Whistles erupted throughout the locker room, punctuated by a few whoops. Their captain, Dave Grimson, pumped his fists in the air.
“Management figured you’d rather play with him than against him,” Coach drawled. “So make him feel welcome.”
Guys crowded around the newcomer, and Blake hung back with Fergs, waiting for their chance to say hello.
“Fuck me!” Fergs chuckled softly. “We just acquired the meanest, nastiest D-man in the league! God, I fucking love this club! They don’t do anything half-assed.”
Blake agreed wholeheartedly and was on the verge of saying so out loud when Coach, who had sidestepped the meet-and-greet mob, crooked his finger their way.
“Ferguson? Barrett? See you boys a minute?”
“Yep.” Fergs pivoted to follow Coach out.
“Sure, Coach.” When Blake looked down, he realized he’d crushed a roll of tape in his hand. He flung it into his bag and fell in line behind his coach and teammate. When he reached Coach’s office, LeBrun instructed him to shut the door and take a seat beside Ferguson.
Coach dropped into the chair behind his desk and leaned forward, his elbows on his desktop. Marty LeBrun wasn’t as big as Blake, but the force of his personality made up for it. All Blake had to do was look at the man’s scarred hands and craggy face to understand what a total badass he’d been during his time in the NHL. And if that wasn’t proof enough, Blake had seen the video of Coach putting the hurt on guys from back in the day. No one to mess around with, and he had the respect of every member of the team. Somewhat soft-spoken, his even tone and spare words carried an undeniable impact. Like now.
“As you boys know, our chemistry’s been off these last few games,” he began. Blake nodded—they had been off, and their three-game losing streak proved it. Coach continued. “I’ve decided to mix things up for tomorrow night’s game.” His eyes shifted between them, finally landing on Blake. “Barrett, you’re centering the first line. I’m moving Nelson to the second line.”
Blake could practically hear Ferguson’s eyes widen beside him. He did hear the edge in his voice when he said, “What about me, Coach?”
Coach’s hawkeyed gaze focused on Ferguson. “You’re on the fourth line. Depending on how the game goes, I might split you between third and fourth.” Coach smacked his palm on the desk. “That’s it. You boys can close the door on your way out.”
Heart leaping in his chest, Blake stood. He reined in his excitement, though. Beside him, his mouth hanging open, Ferguson sat frozen in his chair as though his ass was superglued to the seat. Blake tapped his shoulder. “Let’s go, Fergs.”
Ferguson shot to his feet. When Blake closed Coach’s door behind them, Ferguson still wore a stunned look. “You okay?” Blake asked his friend.
Ferguson rounded on him, his mouth a tight line, his eyes hard. “You asshole! What the fuck did you do?”
Blake took a step back. “What do you mean, what did I do? I didn’t do anything. I’m as surprised as you.”
“Bullshit!” Fergs snapped.
Blake laid his hand on Ferguson’s arm. “Let’s take this somewhere away from Coach’s office.” Blake had no idea what Ferguson had done to merit the demotion, but sounding off where Coach could hear wouldn’t help his case. At. All. But Ferguson shrugged off his hold and stormed away. Blake sighed and hung his head for a beat. The surge of elation that had spiked in his system when he’d heard “first line” had been thoroughly tamped down.
His phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket. He muttered a curse when he saw the caller ID. He picked up the call with a resigned, “Hi, Mom.” His day was already in the crapper, so what difference would one more pile of shit make?
“Blake!” she shrieked. Her overenthusiastic greeting set his high-alert sirens screeching inside his head and his teeth on edge. She was drunk.
“Hey, uh, sorry I haven’t called you. Amanda told me the bad news.” Two days ago, when he’d called his sister back, she’d told him how their mom had left rehab—or had been kicked out. Amanda hadn’t been sure of the real story because their mother wasn’t exactly forthcoming, and Blake had called the rehab center. They’d nicely told him that because of HIPAA, it was none of his business. And while he should have called his mother right then—a good son would at least check on his mother’s welfare, wouldn’t he?—he simply hadn’t been able to marshal the energy for it, telling himself he needed a few more days to build his reserves.
“What bad news?” The high, joyful pitch of her voice brought him back to the conversation and made him cringe.
“Mom, you left rehab again. Or did you get kicked out?”
“I didn’t need to be there, so I checked myself out. And good riddance to them, those bunch of power-hungry, so-called medical professionals,” she slurred. “Why did you make me go, Blake? Is that any way to treat your mother?”
He braced himself for the part about how she’d brought him into the world, and how she’d suffered doing it, but apparently she was sparing him that speech today.
Slowly, he ambled down the hall, looking for a private place to continue the conversation. “How have you been, Mom?”
“Terrible. Nobody cares about me, including my children.” She sniffled on the other end, spurring a flood of emotions in him. Anger, pity, helplessness, guilt, and frustration coalesced into giant knots in his stomach and chest. He never knew how to respond, and in the silence she rushed on. “I might as well just get it over with.”
He let himself into a deserted equipment room and sank to the floor. “Get what over with, Mom?”
“My life. What’s the point? I’m just taking up space,” she whined. “No one will miss me. Life will be easier for you and your sister if I’m gone.”
“You know that’s not true,” he said gently. His head sagged, and he stared at the floor, noticing flecks in its pattern.
“If it’s so true, then why aren’t you here?”
“Mom, we’ve been through this. I have a job in Denver. That job is what keeps you in your house and Amanda in school.”
Her sniffles amped up into soft sobs, and she sounded like she was starting to hyperventilate. “Why can’t I come live with you?”
“Because I can’t look after you, Mom.”
“Why not?”
I just can’t. “I’m gone most of the time. You’d be more alone here than you are in Oregon.”
“I don’t have any friends here. No one likes me. I’m a bad person. That’s why you hate me, isn’t it, Blake? Because I’m a bad person?”
His shoulders folded around his ears, and his head sank farther. He felt a familiar gash open up deep inside his soul, tearing him apart. “Mom, I don’t hate you. But I hate your drinking. You need hel
p, Mom, and I’m not the person to give it to you. Neither is Amanda. We need to find you someone who’s a trained professional.”
“You will not send me back to rehab,” she suddenly snarled. He steeled his spine for the shift in her personality and what was coming.
“Mom, you need help,” he repeated, keeping his voice as even as possible. “Help from people who understand what you’re going through. I’ll pay for it, whatever you need. You didn’t like that rehab center, but there are others out there. I’ll make some calls—”
“Fuck you!” she lashed out. “There’s nothing wrong with me! You’re the reason I drink. This is your fault.”
Every muscle in his body felt fatigued, wrung out, as if every ounce of energy had been drained. “I’m sorry, Mom. I can’t do this.”
“I love you, Blake,” she whimpered, the evil mother supplanted by the pathetic one once more. “I know you hate me for what I did to your father.”
Sadly, he knew too well there was no reasoning with her when she was like this. “Mom, I don’t hate you. But I can’t have this conversation with you when you’ve been drinking. When you sober up, call me back.” Had he kept the harshness he felt from his voice? No idea, not that it mattered.
She spewed a string of vicious curses, telling him how worthless he was, how ungrateful he was, how he only cared about himself. When she stopped to pull in a breath—no doubt to ready her next salvo—he quickly interjected, “I love you, Mom, but I can’t do this. I’m hanging up now.” He cut off the call before any more spiteful words bombarded him, then turned his ringer to silent so he could keep his blood pressure from skyrocketing every time her number lit his screen. And she would call him back until she passed out. Last time, she’d left twenty-eight voicemails. After hearing the first one, he’d deleted the rest without listening.
He stowed his phone and looked around the darkened room, weighing his thoughts, pushing them through a sieve. What could he have said? What could he have done? How could he have handled the call differently? Even as anger heated his blood, he felt the cracks in his heart widen. She was his mother. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He started down the “if only” road … If only he were a better son … If only he could tolerate being around her for more than ten minutes … If only … “If only she wasn’t a drunk,” he said aloud, then immediately regretted it. A son shouldn’t think such things about his mother, let alone voice them.
Dragging himself upright, he took heavy steps back to the locker room, lamenting how he should have been over the moon with his move to the first line. Problem was, the guy he’d have run to first with the good news was the best friend who had just lost out. Or was that former best friend? God, he hoped not. Besides Owen, Blake realized, he had no one to tell, not even family. Well, maybe Amanda, though she was caught up in her own world and disconnected from his by geography and general mindset. While they were siblings, they’d never grown up under the same roof and had only known about each other the last three years. Another uncomfortable chapter Blake would rather see torn out of the book that was his life. Because really, wasn’t it at the root of his dysfunctional family?
When he entered the locker room, Fergs was waiting for him by his stall, a sour look on his face. Go ahead. Pile it on. In the next instant, Blake told himself to stop the pity party. His friend helped him do just that when he surprisingly said, “I’m sorry, Bear. I shouldn’t have lost my cool. None of this is your fault. It’s my shitty play that landed me on the fourth line.” A ghost of a smile appeared, and he lifted his chin. “Good on you, man. You deserve it.”
Blake nodded, masking his whirlpooling thoughts. “Thanks.”
Suddenly looking all kinds of awkward, Ferguson scratched the back of his neck. “Well, I’m headed to Grandma’s, so I won’t be home for a while.”
“She doing all right?”
“Yeah, she’s great. Said she might have to go back and let the cute young doctor take care of her again,” Fergs chuckled.
“Sounds like your grandma. Tell her hi for me. You around tonight?”
“Uh, don’t know yet.” Ferguson’s familiar grin spread over his face. “If I’m lucky and Michaela jumps my bones after I give her the flowers, then no.”
“Maybe I’ll see you later,” Blake grunted.
With a light “See ya later,” Ferguson grabbed his gear bag and left as though nothing had happened. Blake leaned his head against his stall and blew out a long, lonely breath. Why couldn’t the game be tonight? He could lose himself in hockey and forget this day ever happened.
A half hour later, he was back in his building, and the spot that normally held Ferguson’s car was empty, not that he’d expected Fergs to beat him home. As Blake stood poised to unlock his condo, his eyes wandered to Michaela’s door, pulling his mind back to the kiss. For a wistful moment, he wished he could knock on her door and repeat last night. If he couldn’t lose himself in hockey, he could certainly lose himself in another electrifying kiss—and more.
Guilt once again bobbed to the surface. Admonishing himself with a headshake for his inappropriate thoughts, he opened his door and stepped inside. Time to ignore the rest of the world for a little while and give his heavy heart a time-out.
The time-out didn’t last more than an hour because Fergs came home with an armload of roses in every color. “Three dozen,” he announced happily. “’Course I bought two more besides to give Mom and Grandma, but it was worth it.”
“Isn’t three dozen overkill? You barely know the girl,” Blake pointed out.
“You think it’s too much?”
“Yeah … maybe.” I have no idea.
Ferguson tossed the flowers in the laundry room sink and headed off to shower. When he emerged, he smelled like he’d substituted cologne for water.
Blake pinched his nose. “Jesus! You trying to knock her out?”
“Oh, fuck you, Bear! Just because you can’t get a date—”
A knock on the front door stopped Ferguson’s rant. He threw it open and stuttered to a stop.
On the other side stood Michaela, all curls and smiles, holding a plate tented with foil. Her eyes darted to Blake, and he could have sworn they brightened. Just your imagination, dumbass. Her gaze swung back to the plate she held. “I brought you guys chocolate-chip cookies.”
Ferguson stood stock-still, his mouth hanging open, so Blake stepped up. “Sweet! But what for?”
Her nose twitched, and she pressed her fingers to it. “For your help with the couch. Phoo! Did someone drop a bottle of cologne?”
Blake bit back his smirk while Fergs let out an embarrassed chuckle. “Guess I overdid it.”
Michaela snorted. “Maybe just a little.”
Fergs remained frozen, so Blake nudged him aside, lifted the cookies from Michaela’s hold, and invited her to come in.
Her eyes took a tour around the entryway and the open living room. “Your place is a lot like mine. Except for the nudes, of course.” Now her eyes danced from one overlarge painting to the next.
“Oh, those are Barrett’s,” Ferguson coughed.
Liar! Blake had stopped noticing them a week after Ferguson had had them hung up—okay, two weeks—but now they were blaring back into his consciousness, aided by the late afternoon sun lighting them up. He hadn’t given them a second thought when Sherry had come over. It had been dark, but it struck him that even if she had seen them, any awkwardness he might have felt wouldn’t have touched the awkwardness blazing his cheeks right now.
Two pairs of eyes rested on him. “Honestly, I don’t even look at them,” he said.
Michaela scoffed. “Right. You just read the … signatures.”
“No, seriously. Someone decorated this place for us, and—”
“I guess they thought hockey players like this kind of … art,” Ferguson added helpfully.
“Or at least naked women,” Michaela tossed back.
“I’d much rather have hockey memorabilia on the wall,” Blake blurte
d.
“Bet you say that to all the girls.”
Ferguson closed the door behind her and pushed out a breath. “How about a drink?”
“No, thanks. I just wanted to drop off the cookies.”
“You sure? I thought maybe we could go back to the Detour. I never got a chance to finish my beer, much less our conversation.” Ferguson’s voice straddled a curious line between uninterested and pleading.
Michaela’s eyes darted to Blake again. “Both of you?”
“Nah, Barrett’s got a date tonight,” Fergs rushed in to say. “But I’m free.”
Blake was ready to lob a protest over the blatant lie when he noticed a flicker of something in her pretty gray eyes, but it was gone before he could begin decoding it. “Thanks, but I have a lot of work to catch up on, and I’ve already taken off too much time.” She gave Fergs a warm smile. “Some other night.”
“Uh, okay.”
“Thanks for the cookies,” Blake offered.
“Yeah, thanks,” Fergs added, not hiding his disappointment.
After she left, Fergs pushed out another breath. “Well, that didn’t turn out like I planned.”
“Yeah, you weren’t your smoothest.”
Ferguson flew him double birds. “She’s not easy to talk to,” he groused.
“She’s really easy to talk to,” Blake refrained from saying. In fact, she was easier to talk to than anyone he’d met lately.
Ferguson interrupted his thoughts. “I’m all dolled up with nowhere to go.”
“Go to the Detour, like you planned.”
“Wanna come with me?”
“Too tired. I’m gonna call our new defenseman and welcome him to Denver, then watch a movie and hit the sack.” Recharge.
“Well, there’s no point in wasting a sweet-smelling Fergs by cooping him up here.” Ferguson’s grin was back in place.
“Yeah,” Blake replied dryly. “Where only the nudes can see you. Why the hell did you tell her they were mine, and why the hell are you talking about yourself in the third person?”
“Oh, shut it,” Fergs grumbled.
Blake threw up his hands in surrender, breathing a sigh of relief when Ferguson finally left. He traipsed into the laundry room, and his eyes caught on the roses. Ferguson had completely forgotten them. After debating with himself about running them over to Michaela and telling her they were from Fergs, Blake decided to stick them in a bucket of water and let Fergs do it. They were his flowers, and he was better at sweeping women off their feet anyway. Not that Blake would dream of competing with his buddy. Nope. First of all, Michaela seemed to like Fergs, and second of all, if Ferguson thought she was out of his league, that placed her in an entirely different sport from Blake.