by Avery Flynn
That was just too weird to contemplate.
Chapter Eight
Tired but feeling the kind of loose energy that only comes after a good day-before-a-game skate, Zach sat back in the passenger seat of his defensive partner Cal Stuckey’s SUV after putting in the code for the security gate in front of his driveway. That feeling was the reason why he’d asked for a ride in the first place. Usually, he jogged home from practice with his bag strapped to his back like a military pack. Today, though, things just felt different, and when Stuckey noticed he was hotfooting it home, he offered to take Zach instead. He wasn’t sure which one of them was more surprised when he said yes.
“Thanks for the ride.”
“No worries, man,” Stuckey said. “I’m not far from here, and if I’d known you didn’t drive, I would have offered sooner.”
Yeah, Zach didn’t drive as in he couldn’t afford a car, insurance, or gas money. And that was pretty much all it took to make Zach’s chest tight as that all-too-familiar anxiety jacked up his heart rate.
He was reaching for the door before Stuckey even pulled to a stop in front of his house. “I can find my way next time.”
“Man, relax. You are the most tense motherfucker I know,” Stuckey said, shaking his head. “Some of the guys are getting together at Petrov’s place tonight to feast before game day. I can swing back by and get you.”
A pity invite? Not that he was arguing that he needed a sincere one, but he’d learned a little too well that people’s motives were never just because.
“Nah.” Zach opened the door, got out, and opened up the back passenger door to grab his practice bag. “I’m good.”
“It’s really not a big deal,” Stuckey said. “Petrov is a more the merrier kind of guy.”
Zach grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “I’m not much of a joiner.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Stuckey gave him an epic eye roll. “We’re not all assholes, you know. I don’t know what someone said or did, but if you haven’t noticed it’s kinda hard to work together as a line when one person acts like they’re an island on the ice.”
That analogy gave his brain logic cramps. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Then, with one final thank-you, he shut the door and walked into his house. His very empty house.
After the rowdiness of the Hartigans’ home yesterday and the bro-tactic camaraderie of the locker room today, the silence of his own house was deafening. It was almost enough for him to text Stuckey back and tell him he’d changed his mind—almost.
Instead, he tossed his bag into his bedroom and then went into the kitchen and started a pot of water for spaghetti. He was scrounging through the cupboards looking for a box of pasta that he swore was in there somewhere when his phone buzzed on the island.
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Do you really not have any social media accounts that aren’t run by a lackey?
He wasn’t smiling. His mouth was having some kind of muscle twitch problem.
Zach: What makes u think it’s a lackey?
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Do you really think Reese’s Pieces are better than Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups?
That was just idiotic. The team nutritionist would kill him if he actually ate as many peanut butter cups dipped in chocolate as he wanted, but he still managed to sneak in enough to have to do an extra few laps around the rink.
Zach: Who is dumb enough 2 think that?
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Apparently? You.
He opened up Instagram and spotted the post Fallon was talking about right away. It was a picture of someone, presumably him, holding a bag of Reese’s Pieces and declaring them his post-workout guilty pleasure. Yeah. He was going to have to sit Kyle down and have a little chat about this.
Zach: Tks for the heads-up.
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: NP
He stared at his phone for a while, while the boiling water let off little pop-pop sounds in the pot on the stove. What are you waiting for, Blackburn? She said what she wanted and isn’t texting back. That’s not usually how it worked. Usually there was something flirty, some hinted-at promise of something more. Sure, it always came with an ulterior motive, but it always came. Not, however, when it came to Fallon. And that’s how, instead of turning back to the stove, he started thumb typing.
Zach: Are you actually off work and stalking me now?
It took about a minute, but the three dots in the bubble finally showed up on his screen.
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Yeah right. Totally. Short shift this morning and tomorrow.
His lungs squeezed tighter. She had to work tomorrow?
Zach: But you’ll still be at the game?
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Unless there’s a sixty-car pileup (I wish I was joking), I’ll be there.
Zach: Lots riding on this.
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: I gave my word.
As if that said it all.
He absently scratched his chest. If the Ice Knights traded him, that would officially be the beginning of the end of his career. Kyle hadn’t exactly put it that way, but Zach knew the score. He had the next few games to show he could play like he used to, or they were going to send him off to another team—or down to minors. And if that happened? He’d be lucky to ever pay off the millions in debt his parents had racked up in his name or manage to keep the lid on what his parents had done. When he had to file for bankruptcy, everyone would find out. Then the worst would happen—it would make the news. Everyone would look at him and realize what a fool he’d been. They’d know he was just another athlete who’d trusted the wrong people and wasted his money because he was too dumb to know better. That was why he’d never called the cops on his parents and why he’d paid them what little he had left to go away forever. Keeping his dignity by making sure this stayed secret meant everything to him. He couldn’t let that happen.
By the time another message from Fallon came through, his heart was ramming against his ribs, his pulse was pounding in his ears, and the hand squeezing his lungs had tightened its grip. He had to blink a couple of times to clear his vision enough to read her words on the screen.
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Have you ever heard Baby Shark?
Zach: ?
He just stared at his screen, his breathing slowly returning to normal as he tried to figure out where the hell she was going with this. They were playing the Thunder tomorrow. They didn’t have the Sharks on the schedule until their western road trip later in the month.
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Click this link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w
From anyone else, he would have expected it to lead to something that would probably infect his phone and send everything he had stored on the cloud out to the masses. This was Fallon, though. She was a pain in the ass, but she didn’t seem the kind to fuck him over. So he clicked. And watched. And…what the fuck?
It was a kids’ song, the kind of obnoxiously-catchy, barely-any-lyrics song that was never going to get out of his head.
Zach: Why did u do that 2 me?
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Because I’m evil.
Zach: Can’t disagree.
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Plus it’ll be stuck in your head now and when things start to get a little stressful you can just bop along to your ear worm.
How did she know? And she wasn’t wrong. He was still tapping his fingers along to the beat.
Zach: There is something not right about you.
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: There’s a lot not right with me, but that’s what makes me fun.
Now that was the truth.
Zach: See you at the game.
Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Yes. Jeesh.
He put his phone down on the island and turned back around to face the stove. The water was boiling away, but the idea of finding the lone box of pasta and throwing it in there so he could eat alone didn’t hold any appeal anymore. That easy loos
eness was in his muscles again.
“Fuck this.”
He switched off the stove and grabbed his phone.
Zach: Changed my mind about going to Petrov’s house.
Stuckey: Leaving in five. Grab you on my way.
…
The next night, Fallon decided it was a good thing she and Tess had seats at the very top of the Ice Knights’ arena’s second level. Really, that was as close as she needed to get to him. The man was invading her thoughts on an all-too-frequent basis as it was.
Tonight was just free tickets to see the Ice Knights—the only kind of tickets she could afford. It wasn’t like she actually wanted to see him anyway. She was here for the team.
She and Tess settled down in their seats with their plastic stadium cups of beer, which just about covered the cost of a ticket—hello jacked-up price tag—but it wasn’t like they’d be here in person again, so they might as well do it up right. The Thunder were a physical team with a hot new rookie scoring phenom that no one seemed to be able to touch. It was gonna be a rough-and-tumble game, with odds that didn’t look good for the Knights.
“Excuse me,” an usher said from the end of the row, looking right at Fallon. “There’s been a bit of a mix-up.”
Before she could say anything, her bestie jumped in.
“Are we in the wrong seats?” Tess asked, already picking up her purse from where it was hanging from the armrest. “I’m sorry, I’ve never been to a game before, and I must have misread the tickets. I did that once at Comic-Con and ended up missing my in-person visit with Patrick Stewart.” She let out an unhappy sigh. “Very. Disappointing.”
The usher gave her a bewildered smile, not an unusual reaction when it came to a first-timer’s exposure to Tess’s embarrassed verbal vomit.
“It was on our end,” he said. “We actually gave you the wrong tickets at the will-call window. I’m so sorry about that.”
That was officially weird. Her name had been printed on the outside of the white envelope in block letters. If the guy hadn’t been wearing an official usher’s jacket with photo ID clipped to it, she would have been more suspicious. As it was, she checked her natural inclinations and stood up, patting the kangaroo pocket of her Ice Knights sweatshirt to make sure her phone was still there.
“No worries,” she said.
The area around his eyes crinkled as he gave her a relieved smile. “If you’ll follow me.”
She and Tess did, walking out into the arena’s concourse that wrapped around the seating area. They went past the cinnamon pretzel place, passed by the hot dog vendor, and peeked in the exclusive season ticket holder bar as they walked by it. Instead of going up, the usher led them down a set of stairs and through another door that was guarded by an usher checking tickets, who didn’t give them a second look. When they walked back out into the seating area, they were on the first level.
The air was cooler down here closer to the ice as the usher led the way down the stairs and past the regular seats to the ones with thicker padding and the Ice Knights logo on them. Her pulse picked up with each step, and it got harder to hold her beer steady as realization dawned. When the usher finally stopped by two empty seats in the front, right next to the glass, the only thing going through her head was Oh my fucking God! These weren’t just good seats, they were once-in-a-lifetime seats for a fanatical-if-broke Ice Knights fan like her.
Eyes wide enough to fall out of her head, she turned to Tess, needing to share the OMG of the moment with someone. A casual observer, if that, Tess just smiled sweetly at the usher as if this was just a cool thing that happened.
“This can’t be right,” Fallon said, her belly all jumbly with excitement.
The usher handed her and Tess two brand-new tickets that listed their new seats. “We couldn’t have our own Lady Luck sitting way up there. Coach Peppers insisted.”
Some of the people sitting around them looked up at the nickname and gave her curious glances that made the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up. This was very much not her jam.
“Thanks,” she said, trying her best to pretend that the usher and Tess were the only ones there.
He tipped an invisible hat and disappeared back up the stairs like a fairy god-usher who’d just turned a pumpkin into the best seats in the house.
After they sat down, Tess leaned close. “Deep breaths.”
Fallon needed both hands to put her beer in the cupholder. Damn. This was not her usual reaction to things. This must be what Lucy felt like when she found the perfect pair of shoes for 70 percent off. Fallon hadn’t ever understood the giddy, zinging, oh-my-God experience of it all, but she did right now—even if people were sliding sideways glances at her and Tess. Following her friend’s advice, she inhaled deeply and willed herself to chill the fuck out about these amazing seats.
“I can’t calm down,” she said, keeping her voice as quiet as possible in the already chanting arena. “I can practically see the individual hairs of Quartz’s mustache.”
“Which one is that?” Tess asked.
“The goalie.”
Tess cocked her head to the side. “But he’s wearing a full-face mask. I can barely see his eyes.”
Fallon giggled and shook her head at Tess. She was just about to explain to her very literally-minded friend that she was exaggerating when the air around her turned a little more electric. She glanced back at the ice in time to see Zach skate by on his way to the tunnel after the on-ice warm up. He came to a fast stop in front of their seats, and her heart jumped up to her throat, something she knew was physically impossible, but it didn’t change the fact that it was true.
His skates gave him an extra two or three inches, and the Ice Knights sweater thrown over his pads made his shoulders seem even more broad. The steel bar that pierced his eyebrow was gone for the game, but that didn’t do a damn thing to change the fact that he looked like a man who could tear someone’s head off and smile as he did it. This was definitely Zach Blackburn’s game face, and it did things to her—things that made her breath catch as she squeezed her thighs together.
Maybe sitting this close to the ice wasn’t a good thing.
He just stared at her for a second as if he was mentally confirming she really was there, then that surly snarling mouth of his curled up on one side, and he winked at her.
Her panties evaporated.
Oh, holy hell. This was very not good.
Against her will, she lifted a hand and did an insipid finger-wave thing. It was like she could see herself doing it but couldn’t stop. The arena beer had to have a higher alcohol content. That was the only explanation. Never mind that she’d only had a few drinks from her cup. Being this close to the ice was probably like being at a higher altitude, too. She’d go on PubMed and find a citation after the game.
Not that it mattered now because her hand was still airborne when a group of players—she couldn’t identify who, which she as a lifelong fan should have been able to do, which only made the embarrassment factor even worse—came by and skated off into the tunnel with Zach in their midst.
“Oh, wow,” Tess said, fanning herself with her hand. “I thought it would be cold this close to the ice.”
Fallon lowered her hand, but there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to lessen the flush in her cheeks. “Is that your attempt at subtle?”
“Well, I do hang out with you.”
That was…totally true.
Grinning at her friend, she lifted her beer and took a drink. “Fair enough.”
A shared giggle and a national anthem later, and it was puck drop. The play was fast and tight. The Knights had an ease about them, though, that they usually didn’t. It was fucking glorious to watch. They made it through half of the first period before scoring. Too bad the Thunder answered it a minute later while the Knights’ third line was on the ice.
Peppers must have pulled the team together during the first intermission, though, because the Knights came out with something to pr
ove. Fallon was on the edge of her seat screaming her head off when one of the Thunder players took a cheap shot at Knights forward Alex Christensen. It was dirty enough that she jumped out of her seat along with most of the fans in the arena as Zach charged toward the Thunder player, dropped his gloves, and slammed the other man against the glass in front of Fallon’s seat. The two men went at it, exchanging a few blows before both men got sent to their respective sin bins to the roaring approval of the fans. It was hard, it was rough, it was hockey the way it was meant to be played in Harbor City—like it mattered.
“Why is everyone cheering?” Tess asked, worry carving deep lines in her forehead.
“The other guy put out a shitty hit on Christensen, and Zach came to his teammate’s defense,” she said as the play stopped on the ice for a broadcast commercial break. “It’s part of his job as a defenseman.”
Tess gulped. “It’s very violent.”
“But there’s a reason for it. Imagine when they didn’t play with helmets.”
“Oh.” Tess blanched. “That’s just awful. I’m glad they don’t do that anymore.”
She wasn’t the only one. Fallon couldn’t help but check out the JumboTron every time it showed Zach in the penalty box, making sure, despite herself, that he was okay.
Things slowed down for the third period, both teams having left a lot on the ice already. But with only a few minutes left in the game, the Thunder’s rookie phenom got the puck and sailed around Stuckey. As he raced toward the goal, his attention was probably focused on only one thing—scoring—which left him vulnerable to a certain Knights defenseman. Zach went zooming across the ice, moving faster and with more grace than a defenseman is supposed to, stealing the puck and passing it to forward Cole Phillips. Another pass, a trip around the back of the goal, and a fast shot later, and the Knights scored seconds before the horn blared and declared the game over.
Everyone in the arena was cheering. It was exhilarating. Fallon had never felt anything like it. She turned and high fived the stranger sitting next to them before she and Tess did a standing, jumping hug thing that seemed like the appropriate way to express their excitement.