The Czar: A Standalone Hockey Billionaire Novel
Page 4
I don’t answer him, and once we’re inside the routine begins, the one where the guys all try to act like everything’s good with me, but then one by one seek me out to whisper questions about how I’m feeling, if there’s any chance the doctors are wrong and I might be able to come back, or what will I do instead. Deke doesn’t realize how much I hate this, and why it makes me simultaneously want to see my former teammates and yet not want to see them.
I’m nursing my cranberry and lime juice when Matty makes his way over. Matty’s one of our other forwards. For five years he and I have balanced each other perfectly, give and take as we worked the puck up the ice. And we’ve been a perfect pair off the ice too. Matty doesn’t push me like Deke does. He doesn’t have expectations I can’t meet or ideas about who I should be. He’s just an easy-going fun-loving friend.
“Dude!” he says loudly as he slaps me on the back and shakes my hand. “Deke got you to come out.”
“Deke’s a fucker,” I mutter as I take another drink of my juice.
Matty laughs, his blonde hair flopping around on his forehead. “Did you hear about coach’s new service project?” he asks, sitting down on the vacant stool at my table. A few feet away one of our D-men is flirting with the waitress, his hand running over her hip as she rolls her eyes at him. It brings back flashes of the curve of Solana’s hip. The perfect resting place for a man’s hand. For my hand, actually.
“No,” I grunt, bringing my attention and my gaze back to Matty.
“He’s started some sort of youth coaching initiative. We all have to volunteer coaching kids’ teams. Or guest coaching or some shit. I don’t know.” He shakes his head.
“Don’t you like kids?” I ask, thinking it actually sounds kind of fun.
He rolls his eyes to the ceiling of the bar. “Dude, kids are great—especially if they’re not mine, but kids’ teams practice on Saturday mornings. I’m generally hung over or balls deep in a bunny on a Saturday morning. Small children are the last thing I want to see at that moment in my week.”
I nod. He has a point. I grab his shoulder, giving it a shake—he’s built like an oak tree. “Well, I’ll be thinking about you on Saturday mornings when I’m snuggled up with my sleepover guest.”
He groans. “You’re an asshole.”
“Certified, my man.”
Just then Deke shouts from across the room, “Mick! Come here, I want you to meet someone.”
Deke isn’t the most subtle, and I know that this is merely his attempt at getting me to move around. I usually pick a table and set up shop there, making the guys come to me. Some do, and others don’t, avoiding me as if my injuries are contagious.
But I don’t generally walk around a whole lot. It’s humiliating—hobbling around in my leg brace. I’d rather not do it in front of my former teammates, but Deke is onto me as usual.
I sigh as Matty chuckles. He knows what Deke’s doing too.
“I’m going to grab another beer,” Matty says. “Want one of your preschooler specials?” The guys all tease me about my non-alcoholic juice combos that I always drink when we go out.
“Sure. Meet you at Deke’s table,” I answer.
Matty heads to the bar and I hobble across the pool room to where Deke is standing talking to a couple of girls who are very obviously not puck bunnies.
“Hey,” he says as I arrive. “I wanted you to meet—Jessica?” He points to the brunette and she nods and smiles. “And Lisa.” He points to the redhead who grins and winks, but not in a seductive way, more confident and cool.
“And ladies, this is my buddy, Mick.”
I smile at them and shake hands.
“So you’re the infamous Czar,” Lisa says, one eyebrow raised to indicate she’s less than impressed.
I cringe. I’ve always hated that nickname. I realize it’s too easy not to use it, I’m the perfect setup for it, and the sports reporter at the Chicago Herald who coined it years ago took advantage, but I still wish people could forget about it.
“What am I infamous for, exactly?” I ask mildly.
The other girl—Jessica—elbows her forward friend. “Ignore her,” she says. “She’s just practicing her word of the day—infamous. She meant famous. And she meant to be more polite too.”
Lisa shrugs lightly as if she couldn’t care less whether she’s rude or polite. I have to say I sort of admire her chutzpah. She’s one of those rare creatures who are genuine. No pretenses, no false facades to be who they think you want them to.
I don’t have that many things in life that are hard limits for me—alcohol is one, lying is another. My father spent most of my life lying to himself and everyone around us about my mother’s disease. I have no tolerance for it now. If you can’t be honest about who you are, then I don’t have time for you. As much time as I’ve spent in the public eye, forced to worry so much about appearances, and image, I’ve come to crave honesty, genuineness, what you see is what you get.
“That’s okay,” I say. “She was just being honest.”
Deke chuckles into his mug of beer.
“What’s so funny?” I ask, scowling at him.
“I’m just thinking about all the answers I could give about what you’re infamous for.
I flip him the bird and go back to talking to the girls. A couple of hours later I have to admit that it was refreshing talking to a woman who had something on her mind other than what I can buy her or if she can take a selfie with me and send it to her friends. I didn’t try to hit on her, and Lisa was thoroughly unimpressed with me. I think I may need more of that in my life, and it makes me realize that’s one thing that drew me to Solana as well. The fact that she rejected me shows how unimpressed she was. She gave it to me straight, and even though it stung a bit, I appreciated it.
As Deke drives me home later that night my mind wanders to thoughts of what it might take to make a good impression on Solana. Because I’ve decided I definitely want to. She’s the most genuine woman I’ve met in a long time, and I think I need more real in my life. I’m not living the dream anymore, so maybe it’s time to give the real world a try. And I’m going to start with the sexy little blonde next door.
8
Solana
My ex-boyfriend has texted me twice in two days. “Oh, hell no,” I mutter as I jab at the phone deleting his latest ‘baby I miss you’ missive.
“What’s the matter with you?” Marissa says as she walks into the living room with a lollipop sticking out of her mouth. “And what are you doing here, I thought you were spending the night at your professor’s with Satan the cat?”
“I am, but I needed more clothes.”
“Who’s blowing up your phone?” she says, flopping down next to me and peering over my arm to see the screen.
“Oh, hell no,” she echoes my previous protest. “Tell that asshole he needs to—”
“I already did,” I say, setting the phone down on the coffee table.
“So what does he want?”
“He probably heard I got the job at Petrovich and thinks he can get something out of me. His internship at the advertising firm didn’t get him a job so he’s unemployed and back in town.”
Marissa shakes her head. “That’s a shock. What a dick.”
“Hey, it wasn’t his fault he fell into that woman’s bed when he was in Minneapolis doing his internship. I mean, the fact that she was an associate at the firm and could potentially give him a job didn’t have anything to do with it, of course.”
Marissa laughs. “Well, the strategy worked out well for him. Couldn’t have wished it on a better guy.”
I try to smile, but it feels like a real effort. I wasn’t in love with Sam, but it still hurt when he took the internship out of state. He could have had two different great internships here in Chicago, but he wanted to take the one in Minneapolis. I was upset, but he swore to me it would just be the one semester, and we’d see each other over spring break. He even planned a trip to a Mexican resort for us.
“Well,” I say, standing. “The good thing is we’re not in school together anymore so I don’t have to see him again.”
“Chica, you know that was all him, right? You didn’t do anything to earn that. He’s just an asshole. It happens. To all of us.”
I nod and smile weakly. “Of course. There are plenty of assholes to go around.”
She doesn’t say anything else, but I can tell she wants to. She’s said it all before though, and I’ve listened. But she doesn’t understand, not really. Her family’s been there for her always. When her parents decided to retire last year to Florida, where my mom is, they talked to Marisa about it, made sure she’d be okay with it, and they even keep a small apartment here in Chicago so that they can come and stay for several weeks at a time whenever they want. Her older brothers are both here and check up on her all the time too.
My father left one day while I was at preschool and I never saw him again. My mother jumped in the moving van and left town the day I graduated from high school. I didn’t get to have a graduation party because our house was all packed up. So I shared Marissa’s, like I have everything else in my life.
Then, the first serious relationship I have ends after he leaves me to go out of town for a job. I don’t think it’s so hard to understand why I’d think it’s something to do with me. When every person who’s supposed to care about you leaves you behind, the universe is telling you something.
After I pack up some more clothes and say goodbye to Marissa I hop on the red line to Division. I’m walking the two blocks between the station and my professor’s apartment building when I see him—Mick Petrovich. He’s getting out of a big SUV in front of the building. He exits the car stiffly, and I see the doorman for the building take a step forward as if he’s going to help him, but Mick must give the guy a look that withers him because he quickly retreats under the building awning, not even looking in Mick’s direction again.
Once he’s extracted himself from the car, Mick leans in the open window and says something to the driver before tapping the window frame a couple of times as he turns to limp into the building.
It’s then that I realize I’ve stopped right in the middle of the sidewalk. People jostle around me, reminding me to move along. I take the first couple of steps, but then Mick stops, his hand on the front door to the building. He doesn’t move for a split second, almost as if he’s listening for something, then his head rotates my direction, and I’m caught in the laser beams of his eyes. He looks over the heads of the other people on the sidewalk, and nails me with his gaze.
I blink, stunned that he somehow knew I was there a half block away, and picked me out from the crowd around me.
Then a slow, sly smile curls the corners of his lips, and we’re locked in this electric push-pull stare off. My heart beats hard and fast, and my breath catches in my throat, because I swear it’s as if I can hear what Mick Petrovich is thinking. And it sounds like, Mine.
9
Mick
A week. I’ve spent an entire week obsessing over how I can fix things with Solana. Other than one intense stare-off across a sea of people on the sidewalk, I haven’t even seen her. But I’m still thinking about her, and how I can get somewhere with her, preferably to a bed. Because I fully intend to, and I always do what I say I will. I haven’t been able to come up with the perfect plan though. It’s messing with what little mojo I have left these days. I don’t want to fuck anyone else, and without sex my days are now reduced even further—to PT, TV, and walks to take out restaurants. Something has to give.
I finally get so desperate that I have Vanya drive me to my brother’s loft. Dmitri is a a bit of a manwhore, but of the artistic variety. He’s moody, tortured, and women crawl over him like flies over a sugary Popsicle. But when he beds them and leaves them, they thank him for it, cooing to their friends about how honored they were that they could take away some of his pain for a night or two.
I need some of that mojo. I need to know how to be a sensitive guy so that Solana will quit busting my balls and start stroking them.
“Brat!” I call as I walk into Dmitri’s River North district live/work space. I started using the Russian word for brother when addressing Dmitri as soon as I was old enough to realize that it had an English meaning that was much more fun.
The ceilings of Dmitri’s lair soar up two stories, and the far wall is filled floor to ceiling with industrial windows. The rest of the space is raw brick, steel beams and brightly colored canvases. His bedroom is in the partial second floor above the entryway, and the kitchen is open to the rest of the space.
“Dude!” he calls from the far side of the room. “Come look at this.”
I go to where he has a canvas tacked to the wall—an enormous canvas that’s filled with an abstract image of the skyline of St. Petersburg, onion domes prominent, winter colors, misty and cold.
“It’s fantastic, man,” I tell him honestly. My whole life I’ve been in awe of Dmitri’s talent. He was a solid hockey player as a kid, but he quit halfway through high school to pursue his real passion—art—and he hasn’t stopped since. I’m incredibly proud of him.
“It’s for the corporate offices,” he tells me, standing with his arms crossed, examining it critically.
“I think Dad mentioned it. It’s going in the lobby?”
“Yeah.” He looks at it another moment, then shakes himself out of his trance and turns to me, smiling. It takes me back to the days when he was my baby brother and followed me around all day long. After our mother died Dmitri and I became inseparable, even sleeping in the same room although we each had our own. With my hockey career taking up so much time the last five years, I realize suddenly how far we’ve drifted from one another.
“What brings you by?” he asks, on his way to the refrigerator.
He pops open a beer and brings me a glass of o.j. I fear ending up like our mother too much, so I don’t drink anymore. I had my days as a teen of course, and the first couple of years in college as well. But when I woke up too hung over one day to make it to my college hockey practice I decided it was time to put alcohol away. I wish Dmitri would follow my lead.
We sit on the sofa and I prop my leg up on the coffee table he made from an antique door and painted with the Cyrillic alphabet.
“I’ve missed you, brat.”
He chuckles. “I’ve been right here. I’m always right here.” I pick up on a dissatisfaction that I don’t typically see in him. He likes acting the tortured artist, but the fact is Dmitri is generally satisfied with his life. He gets to do what he loves, has almost no pressure from our father, and has women running out of his ears. It’s not a bad setup.
“Well, now I’m always here too,” I say, tipping my glass at him. “To the Petrovich brothers and always being here together.”
He grins.
“So, I’ve come to you for advice.”
“Excuse me?” He cups a hand around his ear. “I don’t think I heard you correctly, big brother.”
“You heard me just fine. I need your expertise with women, Don Juan.”
He sets his beer down and rubs his hands together. “This must be my lucky day. America’s sexiest bachelor three years running is asking me for advice on women. Are you sure you’re feeling okay there?”
I throw a sofa pillow at him. He snatches it out of the air, then leans back and gets serious. “So, tell me what’s up.”
Now I’m embarrassed. It seems so infantile. I’m a twenty-seven-year-old man. Surely I can figure out how to get a woman to spend some time with me. I take a deep breath and look up at the ceiling so I don’t have to face Dmitri.
“It’s possible—just possible, mind you—that I’ve been a little more casual than usual with my liaisons.”
“Oh God, don’t tell me you caught something.�
�� He shudders in disgust.
I flip him the bird. “Fuck no, asshole. I was the one that taught you to wrap it up, you think I’m going to forget that?”
He shrugs and I continue. “I only meant that I’ve been spending more time than usual with the team groupies, and some friends who offer benefits, that kind of thing.”
“Because it helps keep your mind off the accident.” His voice is soft. Like I said, sensitive artist type.
“My point is—” I give him a look that says I don’t want to talk about my accident, “It’s been a long time since I’ve met anyone that wasn’t a puck bunny—”
“But you have now,” he finishes my sentence.
I nod. “And I think I already fucked up and I need you to tell me how to fix it.”
“What did you do? And who is she?” His eyes dance with interest.
“A girl who’s housesitting for a neighbor, and I pretty much asked her to fuck me.”
“Just like that?”
“Not in those words. There was something along the lines of a tour of her bedroom.”
“Were you both half dressed?”
I feel my cheeks heat. “We hadn’t even kissed yet.”
Dmitri shakes his head and looks at me with pity. “You have no game, dude. The NHL ruined you.”
“Fuuuck,” I moan in frustration. “Maybe you’re right. I didn’t need to have game for so long I’ve forgotten how. Seriously. For nearly a decade all I’ve had to do is smile at a chick and they were falling to their knees—in every sense of the word. I don’t know how to handle a normal woman.” And I don’t know how to be a normal man.
“Well, for starters, you don’t proposition her without some compliments and an orgasm thrown in. Even a one-night stand wants a little bit of romance.”
I sigh. He’s right. I know he is.
“Some drinks, tell her she looks great, a little dry humping, then you can suggest the mutually satisfying event for the night.”