[York Bombers 01.0] Playing the Game

by Lisa B. Kamps

  Courtney dropped her head to the table and released the barriers she had struggled so hard to keep in place. The tears came, raw and burning but far from cleansing. So far.

  Because she knew, as certain as she knew who her son's father was, that Harland would be back. And she was very much afraid that she wouldn't be able to keep pushing him away.

  Chapter Seven

  Dig in.

  Push off.

  Harder. Faster. Back and forth, over and over again.

  Harland drifted to a stop and bent over at the waist, his stick resting against his knees. Sweat ran down his face and coated his body. A drop fell from his chin and landed on the ice at his feet, spreading out. He stared at it, watching as it slowly froze and disappeared.

  Part of him wished he could disappear as quickly.

  He straightened and took a deep breath then wiped his face against the damp material of the practice jersey. He should take a break, get hydrated.

  No, fuck that. He didn't want to stop. If he stopped, he'd start to think. Thinking was the last thing he wanted to do.

  He skated to the other side of the ice and grabbed the bucket of pucks sitting near the player's bench. One after the other, he lined them up on the blue line, six inches apart. Then, without thinking, he just started shooting. One, two, three.

  Again, over and over, mindless shooting toward the net. The sound of rubber hitting metal rang through the empty rink, taunting him. Such an odd sound: hollow, vacant, empty.

  A sound his son would never hear.

  "Fuck!" Harland whirled in a tight circle, sucking in heavy breaths. His heart pounded in his chest, too heavy beneath the weight of his pads. From the exertion, or something else?

  The sense of unreality hadn't left him all week. One day, everything had been as close to his new normal as it could be. Then, several hours later, his entire life had been turned upside down and inside out. He was skidding out of control, with no idea of what normal was anymore—and with no idea what he wanted to do about it.

  Courtney wouldn't answer his calls. Mrs. Williams wouldn't even answer the door. He'd finally stopped going over after practices because he was afraid of having the police called on him, something he worried was a real possibility. What the hell would he have done then?

  What the hell was he supposed to do now?

  He didn't know. Fuck, he didn't even know what it was he wanted to do. Noah was his son. Harland had a right to be a part of his life.

  Didn't he?

  "You ready for that ambulance?"

  The question echoed through the empty rink and Harland whirled in surprise, nearly losing his balance. Aaron Malone stood a few feet away, carelessly leaning against the boards. He was dressed in black workout pants and a frayed gray sweatshirt. Skates adorned his feet and a stick was held loosely in one bare hand.

  Harland straightened, tried to act nonchalant. "I didn't hear you come in."

  "No shit." Aaron pushed away from the boards in a slow glide, stopping a foot away. He raised his arm and Harland noticed the sports drink in his hand. "You might want this before you keel over."

  "Yeah. Thanks." Harland accepted the bottle, uncapped it and drained half of it in one long swallow. His gaze met the other man's then darted away.

  He didn't know Aaron that well. Hell, there were several players he didn't really know that well. Harland was still the odd man out, despite being part of the team. They played together—if you could call what he did at the end of last season playing—and they practiced together. And yeah, a few of them hung out together, went out to drink and carry on. But he wasn't really close to many of the guys, except maybe Jason and Zach.

  And Aaron wasn't one to usually go out and party and carry on. He was the oldest guy on the team, somewhere in his early thirties. Harland had no idea how many years he'd been playing, how many teams—pro and minors—he'd played for. Would the Bombers be the last? Christ, wasn't that a depressing fucking thought.

  "Killing yourself isn't going to help."

  "What?"

  Aaron nodded at the pucks scattered around the net then back at Harland. "You heard me. Whatever you're trying to do, trying to prove, trying to forget—killing yourself isn't going to help. Unless, you know, you really do want to kill yourself. In which case, there are a few ways that are a little more effective."

  "Yeah, sure." Harland took another swig of the sports drink, not quite as deep as the first. He expected Aaron to skate away, to go do whatever it was he had come here to do, but the man just stood there, watching him.

  His dark gaze was too intense, his rugged face too impassive. Harland couldn't tell what he was thinking and the experience was unnerving. He finally capped the drink and looked away. "I, uh, I'll clean this shit up and get out of your way—"

  "No need. I can use the pucks." Aaron flipped the stick so the end was planted on the ice. He draped his arm across the blade, not quite leaning on it. "Unless you want to stick around and shoot some passes to me."

  "Oh. Um—"

  "No big deal. You probably have some place else to go."

  "Actually, I don't." Wasn't that the truth? Yeah, he could go home but he didn't feel like dealing with his father's shit, especially not now. Hell, he'd never wanted to deal with his father. Ever. That was about the only thing in his life that hadn't changed.

  Aaron watched him for a few long seconds, that dark gaze still too intense. Then he finally nodded, a small grin teasing the corner of his mouth. The scar that ran from his mouth to his chin deepened, making the grin oddly crooked and off somehow—and not necessarily in a good way.

  Harland tossed the bottle to the side, watched as it slid into the boards. Then he moved around the ice, gathering the pucks into a pile. "Let me know when you're ready."

  "I'm ready. Just start passing when you feel like it."

  Harland nodded then pulled the first puck in with his blade. He pulled back with his stick and shot it forward, aiming it toward Aaron. It was an easy shot, almost too slow. The other man spun around, caught it, sent it flying into the net with a satisfying whoosh.

  "I might be old, Day-glo, but I'm not dead. You don't need to take it easy on me."

  Harland clenched his jaw at the nickname but didn't say anything, not when that would only make it worse. He grabbed another puck and sent it flying toward Aaron, a little harder this time.

  Once more, the older man shot it into the net.

  They kept it up for a half-hour, passing and shooting, back and forth. Nearly every single puck made it into the net, no matter how difficult Harland tried to make the pass. And then they switched so Aaron was the one making the passes. Harland didn't have the other man's luck when it came to getting the puck between the pipes.

  "You're too fucking tense. You stiffen up damn near every time your stick touches the puck."

  "Tell me something I don't know."

  "So what the hell is going on? I watched you play last year, before you started fucking up. What happened?"

  "Nothing." Harland turned his back on the other man and started collecting pucks, shooting them all toward the boards.

  "Yeah, sure. Something happened. Your game doesn't tank like yours for no reason at all."

  "It's nothing. I don't feel like talking about it."

  "Suit yourself." Aaron leaned against the boards, his dark gaze following Harland's every move. "So if you don't want to talk about what happened then, how about what's going on now?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Sure you do. Anyone with an eye can tell something else happened this past week. You're too fucking tense, irritable. And you're acting like the world just collapsed on top of you."

  Harland slid to a stop and glared at the other man. "What are you, a fucking shrink?"

  "No. But I'm a bit older, maybe I can help. If you want to talk, I mean. Or you can just keep driving yourself into the ground until you end up on the bench—or permanently scratched until your contract is up." />
  Fuck. Had he been that bad? Harland didn't think so but what the hell did he know? Obviously nothing. He had been driving himself, pushing over and over, but it seemed that the harder he pushed, the worse he got. He had thought—hoped—it was just his imagination.

  Yeah, apparently not. And he couldn't afford to keep spiraling downhill, not with the regular season getting ready to start.

  He looked away and ran a hand through his sweat-dampened hair, his mind racing. Should he talk to Aaron? Why the fuck would he? He didn't really know the other guy, hadn't really had any conversations with him until today. It wasn't like he could just blurt out everything that was going on, every worry and failure and uncertainty that was now plaguing him.

  "Do you have kids?" The question came out of his mouth before he even realized he was going to ask it. Aaron stiffened for just a second, a frown creasing his rugged face.

  "Yeah. Two. Why?"

  "Is it—" Harland stopped, shook his head, not sure exactly what he wanted to ask. "I mean, how do you deal with it?"

  "Deal with what?"

  "Everything. I mean, life changes when you have kids, right? They come first. Nothing stays the same. I mean, that's how it's supposed to be, right? But what if you fuck things up instead?"

  "Sorry, I'm the wrong one to ask."

  "But you said—"

  "Yeah, I know what I said. You're still asking the wrong guy. I haven't seen my kids for more than a week at a time in over two years."

  "Oh." Well fuck. He'd really done it this time. Harland could feel his face heating up and he looked away, hoping Aaron would think it was from the exertion. "Sorry. I didn't mean to—"

  "Yeah. No problem." Aaron shifted his weight from one skate to the other, his head tilted the side, his face expressionless. "My wife and I divorced a few years ago. She took the kids and moved back to Utah with her parents. It's, uh, complicated."

  "Yeah. Sorry, man."

  Aaron's face relaxed and he shrugged. "It is what it is. So why so curious about kids now? Thinking about having one? Or did you knock up one of those bunnies always hanging around?"

  "No. Uh, nothing like that." Harland glanced down at the stick in his hand, noticed how white his knuckles were, how numb his fingers were. He should have left his fucking gloves on, then maybe the stick wouldn't be in danger of breaking. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, easing his grip on the stick. "I just found out that, uh, my old girlfriend had a kid."

  "Is she saying it's yours?"

  "The opposite, actually. At least tried to. But he's definitely mine. His name is Noah and he's—" Harland paused, frowning as the realization hit him. Fuck, he didn't even know how old his own son was. He did the math in his head, trying to remember. It had been early October when Courtney told him she was pregnant—he remembered that much because the season was just getting ready to start. And that had been three years ago. Three long years that had changed everything.

  Harland glanced over at Aaron and wondered if he noticed the pause. "He's almost three."

  A ghost of a smile hovered around the other man's mouth. "That's a good age. They really start getting into everything and learn how to test your patience."

  "I've, uh, only seen him once."

  "Oh." Aaron shifted his weight again then ran one large hand over his mouth. His eyes seemed to drift out of focus, like he was seeing something that wasn't there. Maybe he was because he gave himself a shake then fixed those dark eyes on Harland. "So what are you going to do?"

  "I don't know."

  "Maybe I should rephrase that. What do you want to do?"

  "About what?"

  "Listen, you brought this up for a reason. The way I see it, you only have two choices: you either claim him as yours and become part of his life, or you keep going on like you did before you even knew about him and stay out of his life."

  The words were nothing more than a harsh echo of his own mind's ramblings. Hadn't that been exactly what he was thinking? Exactly what he was struggling with? Maybe his mind had phrased them a little differently but the meaning stayed the same.

  But hearing them spoken out loud didn't help with his struggles, his fears. He risked another glance at Aaron but the man wasn't watching him. "I don't know anything about being a father."

  "Shit. You think it comes with a fucking handbook? You just do the best you can for them based on what you know and hope you don't totally fuck things up."

  "Yeah, well." Harland ran his thumb along the edge of blade, picking at the worn tape. "My father wasn't—isn't—exactly a good example. I don't have shit to go on, you know?"

  "First, you have to ask yourself what you want to do. If you decide to keep things the way they were before you found out, then you're worrying over nothing." Aaron tossed his stick onto the bench then grabbed the bucket by his feet. "If you decide you want to be in the kid's life, then you just do the things your old man didn't do. Or don't do what he did. Either-or. Learn from his mistakes and try not to repeat them."

  "Is that what you did?"

  "I'm not exactly the right one to ask. My kids are with their mother, remember?" Aaron turned away and busied himself with picking up the pucks scattered around them. Harland didn't miss the flash of regret and pain in the other man's eyes, though, and he mentally kicked himself for asking. But he had one more question he needed to know, one more question he had to ask.

  "What about you? If you could go back and do things differently, would you just, you know, choose not to have them?" And fuck, could the question have come out any more wrong than it did? Aaron spun around, his eyebrows lowered in an angry slash over heated eyes. Harland half-expected the other man to take a swing at him. He wouldn't duck, wouldn't avoid it, figuring that was the least he deserved.

  But Aaron didn't take a swing, didn't lunge, didn't flinch. He just watched Harland with those dark intense eyes for a long minute, his face carefully blank. And when he spoke, his voice was filled with regret—and with a fiery emotion Harland didn't quite understand.

  "What would I have done? I would have fought my ex. Hard. With everything I had. I would have kept fighting until there was nothing left. And after there was nothing left, I still wouldn't have stopped fighting."

  Chapter Eight

  Courtney gathered up the empty bottles and tubes of color and tossed them in the trash, then peeled the gloves from her hands. A little soap and water, a little lotion, and she was ready for her next client. Her eyes drifted to the clock on the wall beside her. Not quite time for the next appointment, which meant she could finally take her break and relax.

  Well, maybe not relax. She hadn't been able to relax for a few weeks, not since Harland had barged back into her life and sent her world spinning. Harland's intrusion had been bad enough, with all the phone calls and banging on the door that first week. That had stopped, filling her with an odd sense of something that should have been relief but wasn't.

  And then the calls from the attorney started. At least once a day, until they had finally just unplugged the phone. There had been a few letters, too, but those had gone promptly in the trash. Courtney didn't want to look at them, couldn't bear to see what they might say. If she didn't open them, didn't read them, they didn't exist.

  Because it wasn't just her world anymore—it hadn't been just her world since the day Noah was born. Harland had no right to come storming back into it and turning everything upside down, not after everything he'd said.

  She moved down the hall to the small breakroom, stopping in front of the tiny cubby that housed her bag and jacket. The aspirin she was searching for wouldn't do anything to alleviate the knot of tension she had been carrying between her shoulder blades but it might help the headache. Right now, she'd take all the help she could get.

  "You're going to give yourself an ulcer if you keep taking those. They're not good for your stomach, you know that."

  She looked over her shoulder and gave Beth a small smile, then shook out three of the plain w
hite pills. "What makes you think I don't already have an ulcer?"

  "It wouldn't surprise me, as tense and jumpy as you've been. Are you ever going to tell me what's going on?"

  "Nothing's going on."

  Beth snorted, the sound entirely too delicate to carry as much sarcasm as it did. Her friend stepped behind her and placed her small hands on Courtney's shoulders, her fingers digging in to the knotted muscles. "Damn, girl. You're tighter than my last boyfriend's ass."

  Courtney's eyes drifted closed and her head dropped forward. "Which boyfriend was that?"

  "The firefighter."

  "Adam?" Courtney raised her head, only to have Beth push it back down. "I thought you liked him."

  "I did. But he lives too far away. That, and he started looking for more than a booty call. I wasn't interested." She heaved a dramatic sigh. "But damn, I will miss that ass. And everything else he had to offer."

  Courtney laughed, surprised at how foreign it felt. Beth yanked the end of her hair and tugged her over to the small table. "Sit down if you want me to keep rubbing. You're too tall for me to do this with you standing up."

  "I am not tall."

  "Okay, I'm short. I said it. Are you happy?"

  Courtney laughed again and settled into the hard chair, leaning forward so Beth could continue working the knots from her back. "I really thought you and Adam were going to be a thing. Don't you ever want to settle down?"

  "Who, me? Nah. I'm allergic to commitment, you know that." Beth pushed against one stubborn knot, causing Courtney to hiss and hunch her shoulders. "Sorry. What about you? Don't you ever want to take a break from your self-imposed celibacy?"

  "Beth! You did not just say that!"

  "Sure I did. I mean, seriously. When's the last time you went out on a date?"