“You’re still his best friend, huh?” I asked him while Evan continued to gawk at the NHL guys.
Sergei nodded. “Been friends too long to stop now. Grew up together in Russia, near Lake Baikal.”
Gradually, Evan crept closer to his idols, leaving me and Sergei alone.
I gave the big Russian man in front of me a long look. “You don’t ever—? No, never mind.” I shook my head, wishing I’d never started to ask the question.
“Blame Dima?” Sergei asked, raising a brow. “I was even more drunk. Neither of us should have gotten in car, but we did. Macho Russian idiots, both of us.” He grinned and winked. “Think we’re stronger than vodka. Vodka always wins. I don’t blame Dima. He blames himself enough for us both.”
“Yeah, but he was the driver.”
Sergei gave me a sly smile. “He was. But he’s the one who can’t move on with his life. Me? I’m fine. Dima is big, fat mess.” Then he pushed off to talk to someone else.
Couldn’t move on, could he? Interesting…
I headed over to find Evan deep in conversation with the very man we’d just been talking about. Evan’s cheeks were flushed. I’d hardly ever seen him so animated, excited beyond words to be spending time with one of his idols. Nazarenko’s expression was as dull and dour as ever. I figured he wore his beard so long and bushy to prevent any need to express himself. He nodded and murmured something every now and then, but Evan was clearly in control of that conversation.
One of Nazarenko’s NHL teammates came out and handed him a Tulsa Thunderbirds jersey and a marker, then shook Evan’s hand. Nazarenko signed the back and handed the jersey over to Evan, easily making the kid’s year. But Nazarenko didn’t even crack a smile—or if he did, it was so well hidden behind all that facial hair that no one would ever know.
Sergei thought his best friend couldn’t let go, did he? I could definitely see that.
And it pissed me off.
“EVAN!” I SHOUTED across the rink. I slapped one of my sticks on the ice to get his attention, since my voice alone hadn’t been enough. He had two guys in dark jerseys converging on him, but I was wide open.
He glanced up at the sound and passed the puck in my direction almost immediately, somehow seeing a seam anyone else would’ve missed. He got the puck underneath one of the dark jerseys’ sleds. By the time it reached me, Nazarenko was closing in, though. I pushed off to snag the pass before he could get there, edging my way around him.
“Too slow,” I said, laughing as I picked up speed toward the goal. It took him a moment too long to change directions and chase after me. I got off a shot from my backhand, and somehow the puck squeaked through. It flew between the goalie’s glove and the crossbar.
The goal horn went off, and the much-larger-than-expected audience got up and cheered. My teammates for the day—the guys in the white jerseys—gathered around me for high fives.
“That was sick,” Evan said when he reached my side.
“What, your pass?” I grinned. “How the heck did you even see that, let alone thread the needle the way you did?”
He blushed and grinned at my praise, sledding away from me. His girlfriend was a lucky girl. I hoped she knew it.
On my way back to the bench, I passed Nazarenko again. “How can a guy with big, strong arms like yours get beat by a girl?” I pushed my sled into the bench area before he could answer.
Through the plexiglas barricade, I caught his stare. Impenetrable, as always. Couldn’t ever tell what the guy was thinking or feeling. I expected that was exactly how he wanted it, too. Why else would he hide so much of his face with that scraggly beard? It wasn’t doing him any favors in the looks department, that was for sure. Left him seeming like a surly caveman.
But damn if it didn’t turn me on. Maybe I was coming down with a cold or something.
I tried not to snicker as he struggled to get his sled where he wanted to go. Shouldn’t he have gotten the hang of it by now? We were in the third period already, so he’d been using the sled for quite a while. If he’d had any sense, he would have practiced a lot before today, too. But laughing at him over that wasn’t kosher. It was one thing to poke at him on the ice. It was something else entirely to laugh when he was trying to learn how to do something that every single player out here had struggled with at some point in time.
We’d all been laughed at more than enough. No need to add to it.
“Why are you giving him such a hard time?” Evan asked, dismay written all over his face.
I shrugged to mask my sense of disappointment in myself. There was no reason for me to stoop to that level. “Someone needs to.”
“It’s good for Dima,” Sergei said before heading out to the ice to take his shift. “Needs to be teased. Someone make him stop taking himself so seriously. Make him laugh.”
Evan gave me a goofy look. “But… He’s Dmitri Nazarenko. He won a Stan—”
“I know who he is,” I cut in. “Being famous doesn’t wipe out his need for a good kick in the pants every so often, and I have no problem being the one to deliver it.”
“With whose foot?” Evan asked.
“Watch it, kid.” I shoved him playfully to the side, a bit harder than I’d intended and definitely with more force than was necessary. He had to turn his sled upright again. I tended to do things like that too often—trying to prove I was tough enough, strong enough to really hang with the guys. I was fully aware the issue was strictly in my head.
They’d accepted me as soon as I’d joined the team because I knew hockey as well as anyone—not to mention better than many of them—and because I fit in. It wasn’t uncommon for these guys to only start playing hockey after becoming disabled in whatever way—amputation, spinal cord injuries, and the like. I was an exception to the rule, because playing hockey had been the cause of my disability.
I still had both of my legs, but neither of them had worked like they should since the day I’d crashed awkwardly into the boards in a college game about four years ago. Spinal cord injury. They told me I’d never walk again, not that it had stopped me from doing everything possible to attempt it. I spent most of my life in a wheelchair these days, except for when I was in my sled on the ice. That was one of the first things I’d insisted upon, once I’d accepted that getting back on regular skates was probably never going to be in my future and I’d healed enough that I could start learning what my new life would be like.
I needed to be active, and I needed for hockey to still be part of my life, in some way or another. Having that come to an end wasn’t a possibility for me. I couldn’t live my life that way.
Even though there were tons of athletic teams for those with disabilities in my hometown, there hadn’t been any sled hockey teams within a hundred miles of where we lived. So when my brother and his family had moved to Tulsa for his career, I’d tagged along as soon as I discovered they had a sled hockey program.
These guys might as well be my family now, which explained why I was a bit overprotective of Evan.
Heck, I’d even dated one of my teammates for a while, a wounded Marine named Wade Miller. It turned out we were much better as friends. Besides, it had been too soon for him. His PTSD had been off the charts in those days. Now we had more of a sibling-esque relationship, and he was precisely as overprotective of me as I was of Evan.
Dana Zellinger, the coach for the white side, came over to kneel between me and Evan. I liked Dana a lot. She came from a hockey family and had played hockey in college, too, before marrying an NHL player. These days, she coached a midget team in the area.
She draped one arm around each of our shoulders, and Evan turned a hundred degrees of scarlet.
“We’re still down by one, and I do not want to lose to my husband,” she said, glancing over at the opposite bench, where the husband in question was coaching. “Going home with him gloating about who’s the better coach, when it’s my job, is not my idea of a good time. Think you two can work some more of that magic on
your next shift?”
I winked at Evan and nudged him in the ribs with my elbow. “We’ve got this.”
“Y-yeah. Sure,” he stammered.
“I’m counting on you two,” she said before crossing over to say something to Sergei and a couple of the other defensemen.
“Not star-struck again, are you?” I asked once she was a couple of feet away.
“Just wasn’t expecting her to be so close.” Then he gave me a wide-eyed look. “Don’t say a word to Melody.”
“My lips are sealed, but don’t blame me if your girlfriend noticed how much you blushed on her own.”
When he gave me a questioning expression, I pointed up to the Jumbotron, where his face was lit up for all the world to see. Somehow, his blush intensified. Poor guy.
Wade and his line—all of them wounded veterans, a move intended to mimic the U.S. sled team—came off the ice, so Evan and I went back out, along with Andrew Nash, one of the Thunderbirds players who’d been drafted into playing today. Sergei and Ray Chambers followed us.
Once again, Dmitri Nazarenko was on the other side of the face-off circle.
“Watch out,” I said, bumping up against him. “Better look where you’re going or I’ll run you over.”
He met my eyes, but his were completely opaque. The guy was a freaking fortress, which drove me insane. I wanted to get under his skin, and I still hadn’t figured out a way to do it. Nothing I did or said elicited a lick of emotion from him.
They dropped the puck. Nash lost the faceoff to the dark jerseys, and everyone set in motion.
Nazarenko got open in the neutral zone along my wing, and the puck headed straight for him. So did I.
I bumped him right as the puck hit his stick, knocking it free.
He shot his head up in shock.
“Yeah. You got hit by a girl,” I said, getting the toe of my blade on the puck to zip it across the ice.
Evan had anticipated my move, so he darted over to gather up the loose puck before the NHLers trailing behind him could get there.
I untangled my sled from Nazarenko’s and propelled myself into the zone, but I could feel him behind me. Maybe he was starting to get the hang of the sled, after all.
Two dark jerseys converged toward Evan, leaving me open yet again. For some reason, men always assumed I wasn’t a threat out here. This time, Evan didn’t need any prompting. He passed it my way as I got close to the goal.
The only problem was that Nazarenko had closed in on me. He stretched out and used his longer arms to poke-check the puck out of my reach.
“I’m still faster than you,” I said, taking off to chase it down and prove my point.
But this time, he was on me every inch of the way. I got to the puck in the corner and pushed it out with my stick just before Nazarenko crashed into me, knocking us both sideways.
The game was still going, so I didn’t waste any time righting myself and getting back into the thick of things. He caught up to me again as I tried to streak in front of the goal, using his bigger, heavier body to bump me out of the lane I wanted to be in.
I snapped my head back so I could look at him.
He winked at me.
He freaking winked at me.
Using my stick blade, I shoved his sled out of my way with as much force as I could muster and went to the front of the net just in time for Nash to get off a shot.
I angled my stick and tipped the puck into the net. Tie game, and only minutes left. At least we were giving the crowd their money’s worth. Before I could get over to my teammates to celebrate, Nazarenko slipped up alongside me.
“Now who beats who?” he said, his accent as thick as his facial hair.
He propelled himself away before the grin reached my lips.
THEY’D TOLD ME there was a woman on the team back when I’d first arranged for the sledge team to take part in the event, but no one had ever mentioned the fact that she was a shit disturber. It would’ve been nice if someone had thought to bring it to my attention, not that it would have changed things.
Quite some time after the game had ended and I’d finished giving all the interviews expected of me, I was still stewing over how I’d allowed London Hawke to get under my skin. Not only that, but I hadn’t yet been able to leave the BOK Center, as Sergei hadn’t finished up.
The pair of us didn’t get to see each other too often these days, and I wanted to have dinner with him, spend some time catching up. He planned to stick around Tulsa until a few days before Christmas, but I didn’t see any reason to put off getting out of here so we could talk. Sergei was the closest thing to family I had now and had been since my father had died more than a decade ago.
It wasn’t taking him so long because he needed more time to change and adjust his prosthetic leg or anything like that. Sergei usually got dressed faster than I did. The problem was that he wouldn’t stop talking to the other sledge players around the room. All of a sudden, my best friend was everybody’s best friend.
That wasn’t fair of me. He’d always been the friendlier one of us, the popular guy in the locker room. Our wreck had only left me more sullen than ever, but if anything, Sergei had come further out of his shell. He tended to be the life of the party.
The room was full to bursting, not only with those who’d played in today’s game but with their friends and family, too. Zee and Dana had brought in all three of their kids to help celebrate Dana’s coaching win, even the baby, Patrick. Most of the sledge players had parents or siblings with them, and a couple of the guys’ girlfriends had dropped in. London’s corner was overflowing, with a man and woman, plus four kids of varying ages. The other woman held a baby on her lap, which made me wish Hunter and Tallie had come and brought Harper. If Harper were here, she could rip out a few of my beard hairs and help me forget my frustrations.
My focus went straight to London, though. Now that she didn’t have all her hockey gear on and I could see her face, I recognized her. She’d been in the news a few years back after an accident in a women’s hockey game. Her story had struck a chord with me, and once they’d started raising money for her treatment, I’d badgered my teammates at the time to give me money so I could make an anonymous donation.
With her family surrounding her, she was all smiles and laughter. Her face lit up the room when she leaned over to tickle one of the children. This was a very different side of her than what she’d shown out on the ice today. Not only that, but she might as well be my polar opposite.
I sat in my stall, brooding and wishing I were anywhere else. My only consolation came from the amount of money we’d raised for the Para-Pythons—something in the range of twenty-five thousand dollars. The Thunderbirds had promised to match everything we’d brought in, and they were organizing an auction for the signed, game-worn jerseys to raise even more. With all of that and what I’d haggled out of my teammates, we could possibly write them a check for close to a hundred grand. That money would go a long way toward meeting their expenses this year.
Viktoriya Chambers came in, cautiously scanning the room for her husband. Razor was deep in conversation with Sergei, so I thought I’d go over and talk to her for a few minutes. She was at least Russian, even if she wasn’t family. I needed to make sure Razor was still treating her right, anyway. It’d been a week or so since I’d checked in with her.
I hadn’t even made it halfway across the locker room when London Hawke wheeled into my path and glared up at me.
“Can I help?” I asked when she neither moved nor spoke. I didn’t want to help her. I didn’t want to have anything to do with her, because every time she stared at me, I felt like she could see all the way into my soul.
Most likely, she knew every detail about what had happened that night so many years ago. Seemed like everyone did. Maybe she had figured out that I was the son of a bitch who’d caused Sergei to lose his leg, and yet I was still playing in the NHL when he couldn’t. Hell, maybe she wanted to take out her own injury on me. Whatever i
t was, I wished she would just cuss me out so we could move on, both of us knowing exactly where the other stood.
“Yeah, you can help me.” Her eyes roved over me, up and down, before stopping on my face. Or really, my beard. She stared at it a long time before moving back up to my eyes. “You can buy me coffee,” she finally said.
That didn’t make any sense at all. “Why you want me to buy coffee?”
She raised a single brow, not wavering in the least. “Because I do. You ready? I’ll drive.”
I got the sense that she was determined to have her way, whether I liked it or not.
“I don’t want to have coffee. Sergei is coming—” At that very moment, I caught sight of Sergei following a group of the other sledge players out of the locker room.
He glanced back and caught my eye, waving. “We’re having dinner,” he said in Russian. “I’ll come by your place later.”
Well, there went my ready excuse.
“Looks like he’s got other plans,” London said dryly. “Come on.” Then she wheeled herself around and headed for the exit.
“Don’t you have plans with your family?” I demanded. Even though I was racking my brain for an excuse, my feet were moving along behind her.
Then I remembered she’d said she would drive, and I really didn’t want to go.
My trepidation wasn’t because she was in a wheelchair. I knew better than most just how many modifications could be made for accessibility. I just didn’t want to get trapped somewhere with her and not have a way to get out of it.
“I see them all the time,” she said, picking up speed once we were in the concourse. “They live five miles or so away from me, so I can hang out with them any time I want, and with the holidays right around the corner, I’ll be sick to death of them before too long. It was a fun day for my nieces and nephews, but they’re going home now. The older kids have homework to get done this weekend. So…I’m all yours for the rest of the day, and it looks like your plans got changed.”
Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) Page 2