But now Aarti Nieminen, one of the two kids fighting for the backup spot this season, was between the pipes, and the guy was struggling. So far, he’d only let in one goal—and even the best goaltenders in the world would have been hard-pressed to stop that one—but the Colorado onslaught kept coming.
I was still huffing for breath on the bench after my most recent shift. We were a little more than three minutes into the third period, and a mishmash line of Dima and two newly drafted hotshots were out on the ice, with Ray “Razor” Chambers and a tall, gangly defensive prospect supposedly helping them out on the blue line. But other than Razor and Dima, none of our guys were where they ought to be, and Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog had just picked the enormous twig’s pocket.
Razor turned on his jets and chased Landeskog, but he didn’t have a good angle to do anything but prevent the Avs forward from passing the puck to a teammate. Dima rushed to get back and help out, but the other D—the one who’d given up the puck—was flat on his ass on the ice. One of the two junior forwards was still skating around in the neutral zone like he was hoping someone would send him a breakaway pass so he could be the hero of the day, and the other kid was so clueless that he jumped over the boards for a line change.
“Fuck!” Spurs shouted behind me, slapping my shoulder. That was all I needed to dive onto the ice and rush into the play. “Save me from fucking idiots,” he was saying as I skated out of hearing distance.
Something told me that kid would be on a plane back to his junior team tomorrow. If not tonight. Seriously, a line change when the other team was roaring into our zone? That kind of shit didn’t cut it even on the worst team in the league.
Nemo managed to get his blocker on Landeskog’s first shot, but he couldn’t control the rebound. Razor attempted to knock the puck back to me, but the rest of the Avs players had all gotten into position, and we were still in scramble mode, the tall, skinny guy just finally making his way toward the net to defend. One of the Avs D got his stick on the puck before it reached me.
He wound up for a slapper. I dove, flinging my stick toward the puck and praying I wouldn’t end up taking a tripping minor instead. Somehow, I missed both, around the same time as the kid taking a leisurely skate around the neutral zone finally decided to join the rest of us.
Slap shot. The puck headed straight for Nemo’s head, clanged off his mask, and rebounded into the corner. Dima shouted something in a garbled combination of Russian and English, heading over to help Razor dig the puck out. That left me and the two kids, both of them looking to me for direction. Fucking hell.
“You stick to Nemo like glue,” I shouted to the human stick figure, using arm gestures to make sure he understood. Then I turned to the lackadaisical forward, but I doubted he was going to help us defend no matter what I told him. “You just stay the fuck out of the way,” I said.
He nodded, like that was exactly what he’d been hoping I’d tell him to do. Son of a bitch, how did these kids think they were ever going to make it in the NHL?
I positioned myself high in the zone, keeping an eye on both Colorado defensemen and occasionally glancing back to the scrum in the corner. Finally, the puck squirted free, and Razor managed to tip it in my direction.
I just got a piece of it before one of the Avs D, and then I was off. My first thought was to get it out into the neutral zone. Once I’d managed that, I wanted to take it deep into the Avs’ end so the rest of the guys on my side could get off for a change.
But that damned kid had beat me into neutral ice because this was what he lived for, and he was banging his fucking stick on the ice and shouting for me to pass it to him. There wasn’t anyone close to him, so he had a legitimate chance to get off a decent shot.
If he didn’t fuck things up.
If he did fuck things up, then the rest of my guys weren’t going to get their change in, and we’d be back to defending and trying to keep Nemo’s head above water.
The truth was, I didn’t trust this kid as far as I could throw him, so even if it seemed like a selfish move on my part, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was passing the puck in his direction. Wasn’t going to happen when the likelihood that he’d screw us all over was so high.
I held on to the puck, skirted between the two Avs D, who were converging on me, and surveyed my options. If I took the shot and missed, the kid was screaming toward the net to pick up the loose change. If I banged it around the boards, that’d give everyone a chance for a line change without the possibility of the Avs turning it around on us too soon. And then I could have other fresh legs out with me to help set up a cycle and generate some offense. Yeah, we were behind in this game, but the safer, smarter choice was clear.
I reached back to spank the puck into the zone, angling it toward the corner.
For some reason, the Avs goalie ignored the fact that this hotshot was coming in at full speed, and he went to retrieve the puck himself behind the net. Bad decision. Good for us, though.
The cocky kid touched the puck first, whipped it back out to me, and I slammed it home into the empty net.
Tie game. The crowd immediately came to their feet, chanting Dreeeeewwwww even louder than they’d done before the game. Razor and Dima caught up to me and lifted me off my feet from behind while the lanky D crashed into the hotshot and sent them both flailing into the boards.
Fifteen minutes to go, and we might as well be starting over with a clean sheet. Game on.
I had no idea why I ever thought I was ready to give this up. Not a chance in hell. I’d be a miserable fucking bastard without having hockey in my life, no doubt about it.
But then one of the Avs players skated past me on my way to the bench and said, “You might have scored once, but there’s no fucking chance we’re letting some fucking homo with AIDS score again.”
I whipped my head around to see who’d said it or if anyone else had heard it. But there were four Avs players all together in a group, and it could have been any one of them, and none of my teammates acted like anything was wrong.
Maybe it was all in my head.
“YOU JUST MISSED seeing your Muscle Man score,” Rick said, leaning one shoulder against the frame of my door. “Tied up the game. Crazy goal, too.”
I blinked a few times when I looked up. “Huh?” I’d been focused on my sketches for so long that I didn’t even know what time it was, let alone what the hell Rick was talking about.
I’d been working on an initial concept for Whitney, something to incorporate her ideas of beauty, hope, and strength into a design that would flatter her shape, emphasize what she wanted emphasized, and hide her scars. It was proving to be more complex than I’d initially imagined, which was saying something.
I wasn’t sure I’d have anything worthy of showing her in a week, when she was scheduled to come back for our next consultation, but I intended to do everything in my power to make it happen.
“In the game,” Rick said, laughing. “Crowd’s going wild, chanting his name. Who knew there were so many hockey fans in Tulsa, anyway? But you were right. Apparently his name is Drew, not Muscle Man. Although Billy’s trying to convince everyone they’re actually booing him. But everyone knows Billy’s an idiot.”
“You’re watching hockey?”
My brain wasn’t catching up. We were still at work, weren’t we? Or had I fallen into such a daze that this was a dream? Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me, or we could have slipped into an alternate universe. But everything about me still seemed the same, so I somehow doubted that one.
“Dagger turned it on once I told everyone that your man plays for the Thunderbirds. There’s only one client in the place, and the guys wanted to see what your Muscle Man is all about. Apparently he’s the real deal. That goal was no joke. You ever watch him play?”
“We haven’t exactly known each other all that long,” I pointed out. “And this is his first game this year.”
“Yeah, first one since that big accident at the end of l
ast season.” Rick narrowed his eyes at me, like he was trying to anticipate my reactions before I had them. “You see that yet? They showed the footage between quarters or whatever. Bunch of interviews with guys on the team, too, talking about what they remembered, how they dealt with it. Looked gnarly. He’s a lucky man to be alive after that.”
Lucky was one way to put it, considering how much that incident had changed his life—and not necessarily for the better.
But what did that say about me to think along those lines? I wasn’t sure I liked it, so I just shook my head. I didn’t know if I could stand to watch that incident. Drew had told me he could have died on the ice, and having seen that scar on his neck, I didn’t doubt it. Gnarly didn’t come close to covering it.
Rick straightened away from the doorframe and shrugged. “Anyway, I just thought maybe it’d be good for you to come out and watch it with us. Your choice.” Then he headed back into the lobby.
If they’d already shown the footage from last season, packaged up in a big segment with interviews and whatnot, they probably wouldn’t show it again. At least not during tonight’s game. So I probably wouldn’t have to see it if I went out there.
And I couldn’t deny that I was curious to see Drew play. We didn’t talk about hockey much, outside of those brief conversations when he was debating his future. Most of that had taken place during the support group meetings at the conference center, not between the two of us.
But hockey was his career. It was something he’d obviously devoted a huge portion of his life to, and I didn’t have the first clue about it.
So I picked up my sketchbook and my colored pencils, and I headed out into the lobby to join the rest of the guys in watching the game.
The TV was showing a commercial break, so I decided to set myself up to keep working like I had been—because for the first time in a long time, I felt inspired. Like I could do what I was meant to do. I might not have figured everything out yet, but right now, I wanted to.
Rick gave me a brisk nod when I took up a seat at a big table in the middle of the room and spread out my materials. When I reached for a gray pencil, he raised a brow.
I narrowed my eyes at him in response and picked it up anyway. I was going to use color, damn it, but a bit of black and gray would only help those colors stand out. Which he knew. He’d taught me that, damn it.
Dagger took the seat beside me and shoved a water bottle in my direction. “That for your ginger lady?” he asked, pointing at what I’d drawn so far.
“Maybe. Not sure it’s right yet.” I liked the combination of elements, but the layout wasn’t right. I had to find a way to get it to work with the shape of her body, not against her. Right now, the solution wasn’t coming to me.
And until I got that part sorted out, the colors wouldn’t matter. Which Rick also knew. He was just giving me a hard time.
“You’ll get there,” Dagger said. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, and it’ll come.”
But then the game returned, and I looked up to find Drew’s focused, sweaty face filling the enormous TV screen on the wall.
Rick had installed a gargantuan seventy-two-inch flat-screen for us. Sometimes as a staff, we all watched instructional videos about new tattooing techniques on it, and he was all about getting us the best view possible.
His dedication to our education was working out nicely for me right now, because seeing Drew in his element did a number on me.
Notably on my girly parts.
The referee-looking guy dropped the puck, and then all of the players on the ice whipped into action. At that point, I had no idea which one was Drew anymore. They were all moving so fast, and with their helmets on, I couldn’t make out his face.
“He’s number eighty-one,” Dagger whispered, probably sensing my frustration at not having a clue.
I gave him a sheepish grin. “Thanks.” How sad was it that I’d spent almost every waking minute with him for close to a month, other than those times we were otherwise occupied with our jobs, but I didn’t know even the simplest thing about his career?
I didn’t like that realization. At all. Because it meant I’d been so selfishly wrapped up in my own misery that I hadn’t bothered getting to know anything that was important to him.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t follow the action on the ice, not even with the commentators explaining what was going on. It was too fast, everything moving at warp speed.
The next time we got together, maybe instead of immediately jumping into bed, I could get him to explain hockey to me. Only I had a hunch that it would take a hell of a lot longer to explain than we could accomplish in the time it would take to reach an orgasm or two each.
Which only further emphasized how self-absorbed I’d been lately. This had to change. And soon.
Before I could blink, Drew and the rest of the guys who’d been out with him dived over the boards onto the team bench and were replaced by a bunch of other men in the same jerseys. Again, they turned into a turquoise-and-terra-cotta blur. I could hardly breathe from watching, and I was just sitting there.
My pencil landed on the sketchbook, willfully ignored, but I didn’t care. I was probably stupid to think I could focus on this design while the game was on, anyway.
There was a big hit, with one of the guys on the other team going hard into the glass. Everyone in the stands stood up, screaming and jeering in equal measure. In no time, there was a fight between the two players involved.
I did a quick check to be sure Drew wasn’t the one fighting. It was someone wearing number seven, though, so I allowed myself to breathe again.
But then I wondered if he was one of the men I’d met at the pool party that afternoon at Drew’s house. Not that I’d truly met any of them, since I’d run off before getting the opportunity to talk, but still. Even if he wasn’t, he was one of Drew’s teammates. Someone Drew knew.
My stomach churned, and I wanted to bury my face so I couldn’t see. This was awful.
I’d known there was fighting in hockey, but I had no idea that there was really fighting fighting. This was all-out, full-on, bash-the-other-guy’s-teeth-in fighting. Nothing at all like what I’d been expecting.
I couldn’t look away, but I was cringing the whole time, and my stomach was doing flip-flops. When the referees finally broke the two up, the Thunderbirds player had lost his helmet, and the camera got a close up of his bloody nose as he was escorted toward the team bench. The other guy looked a hell of a lot worse for wear, which didn’t seem possible.
But then I got a better look at the Thunderbirds player. It was Ethan Higgins. Huggy Bear. Carter’s father. Now I really felt sick to my stomach. Had Carter seen that? Was he worried about his father, or did he get excited by the fighting, like so many of the people in the crowd seemed to be?
The camera panned over to the bench, and Drew was up on his feet with the rest of his teammates. They were all tapping their sticks on the boards, in an odd sort of applause. As the official took Huggy Bear past them, Drew reached up and accepted a high-five from his teammate, who dragged him in for a man hug. When they skated Huggy Bear off, Drew looked fierce and determined, and maybe a bit embarrassed.
Why would he be embarrassed?
Moments later, the game resumed. The guys were back to business, but my pulse was going a mile a minute. I’d never watched anything that was so exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.
At first, the play on the ice seemed to all be taking place at one end of the rink. Then, in the blink of an eye, everyone shifted in the other direction, and it was a mad rush toward the opposite goal. I lost track of the puck—how the hell could the players see that thing out there, anyway?—and then a red light lit up while a deafening fog horn sounded, and everyone in the arena was on their feet screaming at the tops of their lungs.
Dagger jabbed his elbow into my ribs. “Somebody deserves to get laid tonight,” he said.
Huh? I blinked in surprise and squinted at the s
creen. Sure enough, Drew’s grinning face was in the middle of a pile of his teammates, and he had his arms in the air.
“Drew scored that one?” I asked.
“Fucking right, he did,” Billy said.
That was all it took for my coworkers to decide they approved of my choice of a new friend…boyfriend…whatever he was. The guys made a bunch of crass jokes, which served as terms of endearment around here, and told me I needed to bring him around more often.
I’d just about decided their approval was solely because of Drew’s status as a professional athlete when Dagger threw me for a loop.
He looked like a scary dude—covered from head to toe in ink, with piercings in so many places he seemed more metal than human, and a spiky Mohawk. But underneath all of that, he was actually a soft-spoken man. That was probably why I’d felt comfortable enough to go to him for the piercings I wanted done.
My ears, my tongue, my eyebrows…those were all places I could have handled anyone doing, as long as they practiced proper hygiene and safety techniques. But the nipple piercings? The one in my clit hood? Those are a hell of a lot more personal, for one thing, and if someone were to get them wrong, it would be really, really bad.
Which only reminded me how important it was to get Whitney’s tattoo exactly right. Every tattoo was personal, but some meant so much more than others. This wasn’t something I could half-ass or give anything less than my best.
But now Dagger was leaning toward me so the rest of the guys in the lobby wouldn’t hear. “Especially since you two have so much in common,” he said. “You and Drew,” he added, probably because I looked at him like he was a crazy man.
Drew and I didn’t have anything in common. He earned millions of dollars, lived in the nicest neighborhood in the city, and had a completely normal, supportive family. They’d probably had dinner together every night of his life, and I assumed his parents had gone to all of his games when he was a kid. In my mind, they were the perfect sitcom family. And he’d only gotten a tattoo because he’d wanted an excuse to see me. The two of us couldn’t be more opposite if we tried.
Rites of Passage Page 18