Losing an Edge

by Catherine Gayle

  Levi leaned back in his chair, crossing his feet at the ankles. The chairs and tables weren’t designed for someone of his size. He seemed cramped in them, almost like they were meant for children. He took his chocolate out of the wrapper. “You gonna try yours?”

  “Thought I’d wait to be sure it doesn’t kill you first,” I joked.

  “I see. I’m the royal food tester.” He winked at me before biting off half the chocolate. Then he groaned in pleasure.

  Once he swallowed, I unwrapped my own chocolate. “Since you haven’t keeled over yet…” The second the chocolate hit my tongue, there was an explosion of flavor. Salt, creamy caramel, and rich dark chocolate. “Oh my God,” I said, my mouth still full. I didn’t care about manners just now, though. It was too good.

  He gave me a wry smile. “So I did okay, then?”

  “Okay?” I licked my lips, noticing how his eyes followed the path of my tongue. “You scored bonus points with this one.”

  “So maybe I move up a step or two in the process?”

  I sipped from my espresso, buying time. “Process?”

  “The one where you decide whether you can trust me or not. Where you decide how much to let me in and how soon.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. He was so persistent, but without being pushy. I wasn’t sure what to do with him, but there was no denying I wanted to be around him. “A step or two… Yeah, sure.”

  “Any chance you can tell me how many steps there are and which one I’m on?”

  I finished off my chocolate, taking my time savoring the flavor as I debated how to answer him. “To be completely honest, I don’t know how many steps you’re going to have to take. A lot.”

  “So basically I’m on step three of twenty, or something like that?”

  “More like step three of two hundred.”

  But two hundred was a lot less than the seven thousand four hundred and twenty-seven I’d estimated before. Something else I needed to chew on for a while.

  IN OUR LAST game against the Coyotes, their goaltender had shut us out. At home, no less, which only made the loss sting worse than if we’d been on the road. We were already at the end of January, and not once all season had we lost two games in a row. In today’s NHL, that didn’t happen. But now, it was looking like we were about to drop two in a row for the first time all season long.

  Needless to say, that thought didn’t sit well with anyone on the bench. We’d come so close to capturing the biggest prize in the sport, the Stanley Cup, at the end of last season, but we’d fallen just short. And why was that? Because, once we’d gotten to the Finals, we’d lost twice in a row. And then it had happened again. And then our season had been over. Done. Kaput.

  All season long, Bergy and the rest of the coaching staff had been drilling into us the importance of not letting any sort of a losing streak take hold like that. Not during the season. Definitely not once we got to the playoffs, but we had to treat the whole season like it was the playoffs. That was how it worked when you were in the thick of things in the Western Conference. There was no room for complacency. Only for excellence, for pushing yourself to the very brink of your limits and then finding some way to push further, harder, faster, stronger.

  It didn’t help that our defense was currently being held together with duct tape and silly putty. In a normal season, I was a third-pairing defenseman at best. We were all playing over our heads right now due to injuries to our top guys.

  Andrew Jensen was out indefinitely with a concussion.

  Keith Burns had been playing through a hairline fracture in his foot, but once Cole Paxton had returned from his emergency appendectomy, Burnzie had blocked another shot with the exact same spot on his foot. Now he was out for at least the next six weeks, possibly longer. We might be lucky to have him back in time for the playoffs.

  Dominic “Bear” Medved, who had been my partner before all these injuries, had been dealing with groin issues all season that kept pulling him out of the lineup.

  That was why Jim Sutter had brought in Hammer a few weeks ago. Better to have a guy with some experience than to call up some kid from the AHL who wasn’t ready for the kind of pressure we were under. So now, we had a makeshift defensive corps.

  Cody “Harry” Williams was up on the top pairing with Colesy. They’d both at least been in the league for quite a while, but neither was truly a number one guy. Or at least they hadn’t been before. Harry had been surprising everyone with how well he was adapting to his new role, though.

  I was with Hammer in the middle, definitely a step above where either of us had spent much time before in our careers.

  Bear—as long as he was healthy—was with Ilya Demidov. Demi usually floated in and out of the lineup, filling holes when needed; now he was an every night player.

  When Bear had to sit out for a game or two because of his groin, Jim was forced to call up someone from our AHL affiliate, the Seattle Storm. Several of those kids had potential, but none of them were ready for the NHL. If they were, they’d already be playing up with us.

  So far, as a ragtag group, we were holding our own. But if one more of us went down with an injury or did something stupid to earn a suspension, we were royally fucked.

  All of that was running through my head when, down three goals to one against the Sharks heading into the second intermission, Bear came off the ice limping. Harry and I each draped one of Bear’s arms over our shoulders and practically carried him back to the locker room, where the trainers took over. It didn’t look good as they herded him back into the training room and called for Doc to join them. The way he was wincing and grimacing with everything they did—not a chance in hell he was coming back on the ice tonight. That meant we were down to five D for the rest of the game.

  After a few minutes, Bergy and Adam “Handy” Hancock, the assistant coach who handled the defense, came out of the trainers’ room and made their way over to the corner of the locker room where the five of us were huddled together.

  “Doc says it doesn’t look good for him to come back tonight,” Bergy said unnecessarily. “We’re going to stick with the current pairs. Demi will rotate in to spell the rest of you sometimes. I think we’ll go to a four-forward, one-D set for power plays to give you guys a breather where we can, plus it’ll give us a bit more firepower to score a couple of goals.”

  That meant for the rest of the game, Hammer and I would be out on the ice essentially every other shift, unless somehow the refs decided to give us a hell of a lot more power plays in this game. Not likely. They’d only handed out one between both teams in the first two periods combined.

  I reached for a bottle of water behind me in my stall, and I chugged. I knew I’d need it.

  “Let’s do this, boys,” Hammer said once the coaches left us. “Just stay calm out there. Do what you know you can do. Keep it simple. Nothing fancy—the Sharks forwards will pounce on a bad pass in a heartbeat, and Nicky’s already got enough rubber coming his way without us fucking him over like that.”

  Throughout the room, there were small groups like ours, with someone giving a quiet pep talk like Hammer was giving. It had to do with the way my brother led this team. He wasn’t much of a talker, more of a doer. He led the team by example, doing everything the right way and expecting everyone around him would follow his lead. The other leaders in the room had picked up on Jamie’s style. There wasn’t any need with this team for big speeches or yelling. We got shit done.

  Tonight, we weren’t getting shit done, though. Which was why there were currently so many of our leaders around the room, calmly talking to the guys around them—Hammer bringing all the defensemen together, Jamie talking to a few of the high-end forwards, Jonny gathering his line mates in.

  Hell, even Brenden “Soupy” Campbell had come down from the press box to sit with a few of the forwards who went out on the penalty kill. Soupy was on the injured reserve again, out for a few weeks with a hip injury, but the guy was as much a part of th
is team as ever. He might as well be a coach with those guys, the way they listened to him. I figured he held so much sway with them because he’d had to fight tooth and nail for everything he’d earned in this league. He was a warrior, never giving in, even when his body was fighting against him.

  Bergy only said a few words before we headed back out for the third—reminding us that we needed to dictate the tone of the game. Play our way. Skate fast. Fight hard. Clean, crisp passes. Keep the pressure on them, and we could come out on top, because we were as good as any team in this league.

  It seemed to be working. Shift after shift, our forwards were cycling the puck in the Sharks’ zone, peppering the goalie with shots. The D all focused on keeping an eye on good defensive positioning and not overstaying our shifts. As short as we were on defense, the last thing any of us needed to do was get caught out there too long.

  Four minutes in, I deflected Sharks forward Pavelski’s shot away from the net, then corralled and settled the puck. Glanced up ice. Jamie was already streaking through the neutral zone, so I lobbed the puck up and over everyone’s heads to land right at his feet. He stickhandled it, all alone even though the Sharks’ D were racing after him. Two dekes and a backhand shot later, the puck soared over the Sharks’ goalie’s glove hand and in the net.

  “Hell of a fucking pass,” Jamie shouted in my ear when I caught up to him, slapping my helmet.

  He was the one who’d made the play happen, though. Not me.

  It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was we were now within a single goal. One good shot was all we’d need, as long as no one did anything stupid. Now to tie it up.

  The next several minutes turned into a track meet between the two sides, racing up and down the ice from one end to the other, with countless flurries of activity in front of the goaltenders, but they both kept the scoreboard the same.

  I was huffing for air on the bench after one of those crazy shifts when Koz and Ghost broke out with the puck and none of San Jose’s players within range to cut them off—especially when you considered Ghost’s wheels. The guy could fly out there.

  Koz waited until the goalie committed and pulled himself out of position. Clean pass over to Ghost, who tapped it in over the goalie’s sprawling attempt to remedy the situation.

  Tie game. Seven minutes left, and we had all the momentum.

  The track meet didn’t end there, despite Bergy’s attempts to calm us all down on the bench. “We play fast but within control. Take your time out there, boys. Slow down and assess the situation.”

  Shots kept pelting the goaltenders. Someone would grab the puck and shoot it up ice to a streaking teammate. The race was on again. Turnover after turnover in the neutral zone.

  It was utter chaos out there, and I was so winded I didn’t know how to slow the game down.

  Four minutes left. Still tied.

  I chugged an entire Gatorade as soon as I came over the boards to prepare for my next shift.

  The Sharks crashed in on Nicky, with Colesy trying to break up the play. He and two Sharks forwards collided, full speed, at the boards. Colesy came up and immediately raced to the bench holding his arm funny. A trail of blood followed behind him.

  “Skate blade,” he said. No further explanation required. The trainers rushed him back to the locker room to perform whatever repairs he needed…if they could even do that here. I wasn’t so sure. That was a hell of a lot of blood coming out of him in a very short period of time. He might need surgery or something.

  Play was halted so they could clean the blood off the ice. We were down to four D.

  Bergy was busy with the forwards, trying to reiterate the fact that they needed to slow everything down and let the game come to them, reminding them that there were only four of us on defense now, so they needed to help us out as much as possible. While he was doing that, Handy sat down with the four remaining defensemen.

  “I want Harry with 501, Hammer with Demi.” He slapped us each on the shoulder, and that was that. We had a plan. We could do this.

  Harry and I went out first, ready to set the tone for how the remaining few minutes of this game needed to be played.

  Our top center, Riley Jezek, won the face-off straight back to me. I skated backward a couple of paces, waiting for the rest of the guys on the ice to get into position. RJ and Jamie were both well covered, but Aaron Ludwiczak had gotten free from his guy, so I saucered the puck up to him. Those three cycled a bit, and RJ got off a couple of nice shots at the net, but nothing went in. Each time, one of our forwards managed to dig the puck free and maintain possession. But the Sharks were circling. Each second that ticked off the clock, one of them got closer to poke checking the puck free.

  Pavelski almost managed it, but I pinched in along the boards to pass the puck back to Jamie while Harry shifted over to cover my point and RJ cycled back to fill in Harry’s point.

  Or at least that was how it was supposed to work.

  Communication breakdown.

  Pavelski zipped past me, puck on his stick, and Harry had realized what I was doing too late. We were off to the races again, and I was gassed.

  I dived for the puck.

  Got my stick tangled up in Pavelski’s skates, instead.

  The ref’s arm went up, and he signaled for a penalty shot.

  Pavelski went out to center ice all by himself. Picked up the puck on his stick. Deked once. Twice. Roofed it, stick side, beating Nicky.

  And once again, it was my fault. It was the first shift Harry and I had been out there together. He hadn’t anticipated what I would do; I hadn’t told him. That was on me, especially since I’d missed poking the puck away from the other guy.

  We skated back to the bench, me mentally berating myself the whole way.

  Hammer came over the boards and slapped his stick on my ankles. “Hey. Look at me.”

  I shot my head up.

  “You took a chance. It didn’t work out. Big fucking deal. Take another chance anyway.”

  THEY’D SCORED ANOTHER goal in our empty net in the dying moments of the game, so we lost five to three. Two losses in a row. It fucking sucked, but I was determined to not only listen to Hammer’s words but to believe them. I couldn’t let this sink into my head any more than we, as a team, could afford to let this losing trend become a streak.

  I was about to head out and go home when Jonny locked an arm around my neck like he was going to give me a noogie and dragged me toward the concourse.

  “What the fuck did I do to deserve that?” I demanded once I got free from his grasp. I couldn’t think of anything I might have done or said to Cadence to have him ready to kill me, but that was exactly what I’d thought was going to happen once I realized who had hold of me.

  He gave me a look that said I was the biggest fucking idiot in the world. “Are you trying to start a relationship with Cadence, or what? Because it sure as hell seems like you are. And I can promise you, she thinks you are. So are you?”

  Seemed like a trick question. “Yes?”

  “Then get your fucking ass up to the owner’s box and talk to her before you go home.” He took off ahead of me, his long legs not showing any of the exhaustion I felt after tonight’s game. “Fucking dumb ass,” I heard him say under his breath. He stopped halfway down the hall and spun around to face me. “I swear to God, 501, I hate every second of this. But I refuse to hold your fucking hand through it. You’re not a toddler. Figure it out. And if you fuck this up, if you hurt her, I will rip every digit from your hands and feet, along with a few other choice appendages, and let my son feed you to the alligators like he wants to do.” Then he stormed off again.

  So now Jonny was encouraging me in regard to his sister, not trying to murder me for even breathing in her vicinity? I’d assumed there had been some sort of miscommunication when Jonny had texted me about meeting Cadence at the rink that day, but now I wasn’t so sure. I was starting to think there must be something in the Johnson family’s genes to make them i
mpossible to figure out.

  Sara might have had something to do with it. That was the only thing that made sense, as far as I could tell. Different gene pool. She didn’t confuse me. Sara was as direct as they came.

  I followed Jonny’s retreating form up to the owner’s box again. This time, Cadence was hanging out with both Katie and her younger sister, Dani Weber, but as soon as I came through the door, she turned to me and flashed a gorgeous smile in my direction. Harry was up here, grinning and winking at Dani from across the room. She gave him a coy expression in return. I shook my head, trying to clear away the fog that came from Harry and Dani Weber flirting with each other, and headed toward those girls.

  I didn’t make it far, though.

  “Levi!” Sophie Calhoun, Bergy’s youngest stepdaughter, leaped up from her seat and gave me the biggest, tightest bear hug ever. That was par for the course when it came to Sophie. She was a twelve-year-old with Down syndrome. And she had a massive crush on me. The first time I met her, she’d raced through the concourse and hugged me, exactly like this, and immediately asked me to marry her. She ran at me so hard that time, I’d had to brace myself to prevent being tackled to the ground. That was a little over a year ago.

  Her older sisters had crushes on me, too, so I was always careful around those girls. Not that I thought either Bergy or their mother would let them pull a fast one on me, but I couldn’t be too careful. The Babcock boys—we were all fully aware of the effects our dimples had on young girls. I was always on my guard once the giggles started.

  Sophie was different, though. She was sweet as could be, and not a danger to me in the least.

  It was a Friday night. No school tomorrow. That was the only reason Paige would have brought her girls to the game. I should’ve thought of that before. I would have been up here in a heartbeat to see Sophie if I’d realized they were here.

  Since I knew it would earn me one of her infectious laughs, I picked her up and spun her around a few times. She cackled with glee. For a few moments, the rest of the room disappeared. That was the power this little girl had over me.