Loud Mouth

by Avery Flynn

  Three Weeks Earlier…

  Two floors below the frozen surface where the Ice Knights battled for victory eight months out of the year, Shelby stood alone in the hallway halfway between the locker room and the coach’s office, trying not to hyperventilate or throw up on the scuffed pumps she’d pulled from the back of her messy closet.

  Her palms hadn’t been this damp since she’d checked into rehab six years ago, and it hadn’t been nerves that morning—it had been because she was still sweating out the vodka from one last monumental bender. This morning, her sobriety chip slipped easily through her fingers as she moved it like a magician doing a coin trick, sliding it from between one finger to the other as she stared at the closed door. Her future, the one she’d been working toward since she’d gotten clean, was on the other side of the unassuming gray door with the push-up bar running its width and a silver placard reading Media Room next to it.

  A good part of her wanted to turn tail and run. Not to the nearest bar but to her laptop and the hockey-loving world she’d created there. The Biscuit wasn’t just an Ice Knights fan blog that had grown into the most popular hockey site in Harbor City, it was her outlet. Some people went with exercise, some started vaping, some spent all their time trying to regain everything they’d lost to the bottle. Shelby had turned to hockey, the Harbor City Ice Knights in particular. And now she was graduating to the majors, a job with the team she loved, producing web content and independent analysis as part of the team’s new social media platform that would be home to everything from podcasts to The Biscuit.

  No more hustling for side gigs delivering food, making lattes, or temping in an office to pay the rent. This was everything she wanted, and she hadn’t relied on old family connections to get it—even if one of her former stepdads owned the team. Well, not that she could just call him up. It wasn’t like they’d even talked after the divorce more than ten years ago.

  Now all she had to do was walk through that door.

  She straightened her shoulders, let out the breath she’d been holding, and—didn’t move a single, measly inch.

  Girl. Get it together. Do not fuck this up.

  She put her red chip with the Roman numerals for six in the inside pocket of her purse, zipping it closed with focused deliberation. Procrastinate? Her? Oh my God, yes. So when her cell buzzed and her mom’s photo appeared on the screen, she didn’t hesitate to answer.

  “Hey, Mom,” she said, ducking into the bathroom across the hall from the media room.

  “You will never guess what Tina just told me,” her mom said, her loud voice making it seem as if Shelby had her on speakerphone.

  Knowing this was about to be an excruciatingly detailed peek into life in the Huckleberry Hills subdivision, Shelby did a quick scan to make sure all the stalls were unoccupied so no one else would be subject to the boring antics of one of Harbor City’s most distant suburbs. Every lock on the floor-to-ceiling doors was turned to green for unoccupied.

  “What did Tina tell you?” Shelby asked, not so much curious to know the answer as deeply grateful for the excuse to delay walking into the team media room.

  Tina was her mom’s neighborhood walking buddy. They were out together at six in the morning power walking and gossiping about everything from who put up their Christmas decorations extra early to who had the same strange car parked in his driveway three times a week as soon as his wife left for work. Both lived for the latest gossip.

  “So you know how Tina has an older sister? Well, I never realized it before, but her sister’s son, Tina’s nephew,” her mom added for unnecessary clarification, “plays hockey.”

  “Isn’t that something.” Since Shelby had started The Biscuit, her mom had been sure to share every tangentially related hockey connection she came across. “Does he play minors?”

  “He plays for the Ice Knights. His name is Adam Christmas or Andy Crawford or—”

  “Alex Christensen?” The forward was one of the best players on the team and an integral part of their efforts to lock in their first-place spot in the playoffs.

  “That’s it.” Her mom let out a little crow of triumph. “But that’s not the big news.”

  No doubt this was going to be about whomever Alex was currently dating—or more correctly, several of the whomevers Alex was dating.

  “His dad is David Petrov, so that means—“

  Yep. Mom and Tina definitely stopped at Tina’s for Bellinis after their walk. “No, Mom, Ian Petrov’s dad is David Petrov.” The man was a hockey Hall of Famer who’d once scored eight goals in one game. He was a legend on the ice and the players who came after him still whispered his name as if the man really was a hockey god. “Ian plays on the Ice Knights, too.”

  “I know—that’s what makes it so amazing.” Her mom’s exhausted, you-never-listen sigh took Shelby right back to being thirteen again. “Alex and Ian are brothers—well, half brothers, I guess—and now they get to play together on the same team. How sweet is that? You really should do a post about this. Very heartwarming.”

  “That can’t be right.” Surely someone on the team would have let it slip if it were. The two were basically inseparable on and off the ice. Someone would have noticed a family resemblance or connection.

  “I think Tina would know who the father of her nephew is.” Her mom paused, lowering her voice into her version of a whisper, which was still loud enough to be heard halfway across Target. “She has pictures of the two guys on her phone from a family Christmas they had eons ago. She was going through old pics and found one of the Alex guy and his humongous dad in the background. They were wearing matching sweaters. Tina said she remembers that Christmas, her sister was all weird about taking photos while the dad was there. She thinks that maybe the cops were after the David guy.”

  “Wow,” Shelby said, her brain spinning out.

  David Petrov hadn’t been hiding from the cameras because of an outstanding warrant. It was because he had a whole other family. Ian’s parents were still married up until a few years ago. And if what Tina was saying was true, then—

  A flush sounded, the center stall door opened, and Harbor City Post columnist Maddie Peters walked out, a superior smirk on her face.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  This was big. Every media site in Harbor City would be all over it in a hot minute, and if all involved had been keeping it quiet on purpose, then having it blast out to the public now could really mess with team cohesion. That, in turn, could make their playoffs a disaster. None of that would matter to Maddie, though—the woman was all about getting the story no one else could, which was exactly what she’d been doing for twenty years in the ultracompetitive world of Harbor City media. She was a scary-ass legend in her own right, and she’d overheard everything.

  Shelby gulped passed the oh-shit blocking her throat. “Mom,” she said, sounding a little panicky because any hope of her new job being a success was balanced on this moment like an elephant on a beach ball. “I gotta go.”

  She hung up and tried to figure out her next move as Maddie washed her hands and then applied another layer of rose-gold lipstick. “Thanks for the scoop.”

  “I’m sure it was just the Bellinis talking.” She gave her best impression of a chuckle, but there was no missing the edge of panic laced through it. “Tina’s always been full of shit.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Maddie said as she walked over to the door and opened it. “I’ll do my best to keep you out of it. Your shiny new place at the Ice Knights table will be protected.”

  Then she walked out, leaving Shelby alone—really this time—in the bathroom as she tried to figure out if she was hyperventilating or having a heart attack. Either way, she was in deep shit. A few years ago, the answer would have been to find the closest bar with the cheapest drinks, and she’d be lying if she didn’t admit that the temptation was always there. And right now, it was humming in
her ear like a song she couldn’t get out of her head. Sometimes it was louder than others, but after six years, she was starting to be able to block it out—at least a little. She looked down at the leafy tattoo climbing up her arm, counted the thorns, and breathed deeply.

  Exhaling one last time, Shelby started for the door. As unlikely as it was that Maddie would be able to confirm the story Tina was slinging, Shelby had an obligation to her new employer to let the PR people know that trouble was brewing.

  …

  Two Weeks Ago…

  Ian walked into the team’s workout facility, and it was as packed as a neighborhood gym after New Year’s. Down to the last man in Ice Knights gear, they were all in this together, fighting for that edge that could make a difference as the playoffs approached. Last year, they’d been too cocky and had gone down in six games. That wasn’t going to happen again. These were his boys and this was their year.

  His phone buzzed in his workout pants for the fifth time since he’d walked into the building. Fucking A. There were a million things he’d rather do than talk on the phone, but whoever was on the other end was damn insistent. He walked through the workout room, heading for the locker room in the back to drop off his bag as he pulled out his phone right as the buzzing stopped. A notification that he’d missed a call from his dad appeared on the screen, but that wasn’t what made him halt in his tracks. Instead, it was the notification right below the missed-call alert. This one was from the Harbor City Post and it made absolutely no sense.

  Ice Knights Players Secret Brothers: David Petrov Confesses All

  Considering David the dick was his dad and he didn’t have any brothers—just two sisters who could make a grown man cry with a look—this was just nuts. He was gonna have to reach out to the team PR head, Lucy Kavanagh. She’d take care of it. Shaking his head, he continued on into the locker room. Even at one of the most crucial points in his career when everything was finally going right and he’d reached out beyond the journeyman limits everyone had expected of him when he’d been drafted in the seventh round, his dad took center stage.

  At this point, he shouldn’t be surprised.

  It had always been like this. He was never just Ian Petrov. He’d always been David Petrov’s son, held up to a standard that no one—with the exception of his buddy Christensen, fucking phenom—could come close to. Still, knowing his teammates, he was about to get a world of shit about his “brother,” so he might as well see who it most definitely was not.

  He clicked on the story, and a photo of him and his dad standing next to each other, matching crooked grins on their faces and the same waves in their dark-brown hair that both men hated. Right next to that photo was a years-old picture of Christensen that had been taken in the weeks before he’d been drafted. Unlike now, his light-brown hair was longer and wavier. He was smiling, but it was straight across, not crooked. How had he never noticed that Christensen and his dad had the same green eyes, the same butt-chin dimple, and the same nose right down to the pointed tip? Probably because he hadn’t ever seen the two of them in the same room together, let alone in photos right next to each other. It was a weird coincidence, sure, definitely something to give a hungry reporter looking for a new angle to run with. No doubt the Post was going for clicks not truth when they’d written that headline.

  He chuckled to himself and clicked out of the story, shoving his phone into his bag as he turned the corner to get to his assigned locker. Christensen was already there, early for once, sitting on the wood bench.

  “Well, if it isn’t my long-lost brother,” Ian said, dropping his bag on the bench with a loud thunk. “Did you see that shit story in the Post? Man, you think they could have made up that we were going out or something?”

  For once in his life, Christensen kept his mouth shut. Just sat there looking down. The first hint of unease creeped in, making him aware of the inside of his ears. It was always like this before a check he barely caught out of his periphery or before the puck came sailing his way. It was like his sixth sense and the common cold were unlikely twins.

  “Dude.” He stopped in front of Christensen. “No one is going to believe we’re actually brothers.”

  “Ian.” His best friend looked up, the muscle in his jaw working overtime. “I asked Lucy to buy me some time.” Christensen rubbed the back of his neck, hard, his movements jerky. “I figured for sure she could make it happen. She always fixes everything.”

  A bone-deep survival instinct shoved away most of what had just come out of Christensen’s mouth, as if it were radioactive. Instead, he focused on the rest, grabbing hold of it and refusing to let go.

  “Petrov,” he said, his voice harsh. “You always call me Petrov. You’ve never called me Ian.”

  Christensen rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. “That’s what you want to focus on right now? That I’m using your first name?”

  “Yeah,” he said, squaring up in front of his friend—and that’s all he was, a friend.

  “Fine. Petrov,” Christensen said, emphasizing the last name. “I never meant for you to find out this way. I meant to tell you, but the timing always sucked, and Dad didn’t want me to, and—”

  “Your dad,” he interrupted, desperate to keep the facts—and they were facts—straight.

  “Our dad,” Christensen said, slow and deliberate.

  No. That wasn’t it. It couldn’t be. Petrov refused to even consider it. Palms slick, white noise screaming in his ears as his blood pumped through him at triple speed, and gut churning, Petrov tried to hold on to the world as he knew it. His parents were divorced, but they’d been married for decades. He had two sisters, Kayla and Ashley. His dad was the usual kind of jerk who came with the world thinking he was a hockey god and a shit father, but he wasn’t a has-a-secret-family kind of asshole.

  “When the chick from The Biscuit told Lucy how a reporter from the Post had overheard the story, I begged her for some time. I needed to tell you myself, to explain.”

  “Explain what?” Because it couldn’t be what everyone was trying to sell. He refused to let it be.

  “Your dad knocked up my mom and we’re brothers,” Christensen yelled, standing up and getting right in Petrov’s face. “All right? Is that in simple enough terms for you? We share that asshole’s DNA.”

  He shoved at Christensen’s chest, hard enough to back him up a step. “Don’t you talk about my dad like that.”

  “What? Like you’re such a huge fan?” He crossed his arms, his mouth curled into a cruel smirk. “How many times have you said ‘if the world only knew the real David Petrov’? About a billion seems right. He cheated on your mom and paid off mine to keep her mouth—and mine—shut tight.”

  “She’s lying,” Petrov said, the words flying out of his mouth fueled by a desperate need to keep his world intact, to protect his mom from the truth, and to maintain at least one illusion about the man who raised him. “She spread her legs for some hockey dick so she could blackmail him and has been keeping it up for years.”

  He was up against the lockers a half second later, the metal vents pressed against his cheek, the pain of it feeding into the jagged emotions fighting for dominance.

  “Not a single fucking word about my mom,” Christensen said, his face red with fury and his eyes wet with tears. “Not. One.”

  And that’s when he knew. He didn’t need a DNA test or confirmation from his dad. Shit. He’d known the moment he’d seen that side-by-side picture. They’d both been sideswiped by the news, and now Dad’s mess was theirs to clean up. He let out a deep breath and nodded to Christensen, who released him and took a step back. They eyed each other warily, both bruised in places neither could see.

  “When did you find out?” Petrov asked.

  “Middle school.”

  Hearing that was like skating at full speed right into the boards. They’d been practically inseparable on and off
the ice for three years, and the whole time Christensen had known? Fuck, he really was their dad’s kid. Manipulating and twisting things for his own benefit.

  “So you must have had a good laugh when you got traded to the Ice Knights.” Petrov pushed past the other man, checking him with his shoulder as he headed for the door. “Was it fun? Knowing all along?”

  “I thought you knew, and then when I realized you didn’t, I couldn’t figure out how to explain. Dad said it would fuck things up for you if I did. So I kept my mouth shut.”

  “How convenient.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Christensen all but roared as he rushed forward and blocked Petrov from leaving. “None of this has been convenient. While you were growing up with your rich-family reality, I was watching my mom work two jobs to pay for rent. You were the silver-spoon kid. You got vacations and family dinners and the old man showing you the hockey ropes. I didn’t even get a last name.”

  It was too much to process; his circuits were overloaded. He was going to puke or explode or break down in fucking tears like he had when he was ten and his dad told him that hockey wasn’t for everyone and probably wasn’t for him. Petrov had to get out of here. Now.

  “Get the fuck out of my way.”

  “No.” Christensen didn’t budge. “We need to talk.”

  “I said move.” He shoved Christensen. Hard.

  The other man went stumbling away. By the time Christensen stopped his backward momentum, Ian was already charging forward and ready to take the other man out. His dad had betrayed his family. His best friend had betrayed him by knowing the truth and never telling. Someone had to pay, and Christensen was right in front of him, grinning like a loon and as ready for a fight as he was.

  “Petrov. Christensen,” Coach yelled from the door, stopping them both in their tracks with just the timbre of his voice. “Cut this shit immediately. My office. Now.”

  Without waiting for a response, the coach spun around and stalked out of the locker room.

  Glaring at each other the entire way, Ian and Christensen followed him back to his office. Lucy was already there, pacing the small cramped room and tearing whoever was on the other end of the phone a new asshole.