He braced himself for a question about Lainey.
“Cooper, tell me, what’s it like to be a meme?”
She’d softballed him, and he tried not to let his gratitude show.
“It’s been quite an experience. The guys give me a hard time about it.” He shot a winning smile at the camera. “But it’s better than having no one know your name.”
“Care to tell us the story behind that photo?”
“I think this might be one of those moments when the mystery is more interesting than the story. Besides, I like seeing the captions people are coming up with.”
“Well, there you have it, Cooper Mead, Man of Mystery. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule. As a sports journalist, I’m impartial, but off the record, I happen to have a vested interest in cheering the Storm on to victory.”
Cooper grinned at the reference to her relationship with Luke. “Well, it’ll be our little secret then, even though I know a certain team captain who will be glad to hear it.”
They shared a chuckle for the camera, and Holly wished him luck. Then her camera guy signaled they were clear.
“Jay, I’d like to grab a comment from Eric before we wrap.” Holly handed the mic to him.
“Sure thing, Hols. I’ll go set up.”
With her business taken care of, she turned back to Cooper, holding her ground amid the rest of the reporters jostling to shove their own microphones in his face. “Listen, Cooper, I’d love to have you on my show for a full hour sometime when you’re not in the middle of the playoff grind, if you’re interested. I think my listeners would love to ask you some questions of their own.”
“Yeah, sure. That would be great.” The Women’s Sport Network was one of XT Satellite Radio’s biggest draws, and that didn’t even include the numbers her website brought in. In fact, his agent—ex-agent, Cooper reminded himself—had tried to get him on a few times when he still played for New York.
“Speaking of being on the show...” Holly trailed off, but her tone had Cooper bracing to return the favor he owed her for letting him off easy in the interview. Although he couldn’t imagine who the hell on the team he had more sway over than her boyfriend did. Maguire was the captain for a reason. The guys respected the hell out of him.
“Luke mentioned that you and Elaine Sillinger...know each other.”
That was one way to put it.
“We’ve met,” Coop confirmed drily.
“I know she’s a little shy when it comes to reporters.”
“If ‘shy’ is code for hating all media with the passion of a thousand rabid badgers, then yeah. She’s a little shy.”
“Look, I know she got her ass handed to her after Vancouver, but now that the cat is out of the bag, the hounding isn’t going to stop. Can you let her know if she ever wants to make a comment on the record, she only needs to call?”
Holly handed him her business card, and Cooper took it, even though he wasn’t sure Lainey would be interested.
“No bullshit, no sneak attack, just a chance to clear the air.”
“I’ll let her know. But I wouldn’t cut the promo reel yet. And if you want a chance in hell at scoring this interview, then you’d better not call her Elaine to her face. She prefers Lainey.”
Holly smiled. “I appreciate the tip.”
Cooper answered a few more questions before it was time for the reporters to leave the dressing room. Not that his night was over. After the team hit the showers and were looking respectable in their suits, they’d file out for the more formal interviews and the postgame press conference. It would be another couple of hours before he got home, but he couldn’t wait that long to talk to Lainey. After he’d tugged off his jersey, shoulder pads and elbow pads, he grabbed his phone and headed to a quieter corner of the dressing room to call her.
“Hello?”
“Hey, we won.”
“That’s amazing. Congratulations, Coop.”
“Thanks. Actually, I wanted to tell you that I got some good news before the game. You know the kid from the Children’s Hospital I was telling you about? Danny? His doctors have cleared him to come to a game as long as he has some equipment and a nurse on hand, so the team has agreed to give him and his family one of the luxury boxes. I get to tell him tomorrow, and I was wondering if you would come with me?”
There was an awkward silence. Cooper knew the idea of being seen in public, especially with him, was not high on Lainey’s list of priorities right now.
“I’d like you to meet him,” he added, hoping to sway her in the right direction.
She was quiet for another few seconds before she relented. “Yeah, okay. I’ll go.”
“That’s great. Thank you. I’ll pick you up tomorrow around noon.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“Oh, hey. Before you hang up—do you know what happened to Brett’s face? He’s strutting around here being all mysterious and low-key with his busted lip. And he had his best game of the season. It’s not like him at all.”
Another silence, but this one held no awkwardness. In fact, Coop was pretty sure Lainey was smiling when she finally spoke.
“No idea. Maybe he’s growing up. I’ll see you tomorrow, Slick.”
* * *
THE WOMAN WHO met them outside Danny’s room looked both thrilled and exhausted to the core. Lainey’s heart went out to her. Having a sick child was a strain she couldn’t even imagine.
“Danny. You’ve got a special visitor.”
“Coop! What are you doing here?” The boy’s excitement was adorable, and when Lainey glanced over, Cooper’s smile was almost as big.
“Lainey,” he said, as the two of them approached the kid’s bed, “this is my buddy, Danny. Danny, this is—” There was a weird pause as Cooper grappled for how to introduce her, but the owl-eyed youngster saved them both.
“Elaine Sillinger. Number 42. Nickname: The Ice Queen. Defenseman. You scored on your own net and cost your team the gold.”
Coop swallowed a laugh, and Lainey shot him a quick frown before she stuck her hand out to shake Danny’s. “Charmed, I’m sure.”
The kid accepted the handshake without missing a beat. “What a lot of people don’t know is that you were also the top-scoring defenseman for three years running in the NCAA.”
Lainey’s gaze turned assessing. “Huh. Maybe you’re not so bad after all.”
“I grow on people,” Danny announced without a hint of guile.
“Like a fungus,” Cooper teased. “Well, Lainey and I are here with some good news. Looks like you and your family are going to be my special guests at one of our playoff games!”
It took a moment for the news to sink in. “You mean I get to go? To the Portland Dome?” Danny looked at his mom for confirmation, waiting for her to nod before he let the smile work its way across his freckled face.
It didn’t quite make it to fruition before he looked far too serious for a ten-year-old again. “Is this because I’m sick?”
“It’s because we’re friends,” Cooper countered.
The kid didn’t bite. “Yeah, but we’re only friends because I’m sick.”
“Then yeah, I guess it’s because you’re sick.” Cooper’s tone was matter-of-fact.
Danny nodded, and Lainey got the impression that the kid appreciated being told the truth. “All right, I’ll go.”
They stayed for another ten minutes, talking hockey while Danny’s mom took photos to commemorate the occasion.
“Hey, Coop? Before you go, can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Anything.”
“How come you haven’t asked me why I’m in here?”
Cooper sat back down. “Because it doesn’t matter why you’re here to me. And I figured you’d tell me if you wanted me to kno
w.”
Danny sat quietly for a moment, absorbing that. “Can we still be like normal even if I tell you?”
“Definitely.”
“I have os-te-o-sar-coma.” Danny said each syllable slowly and with extreme precision. “That’s a fancy world for bone cancer. If chemotherapy doesn’t work, they might have to amputate my leg.”
Lainey’s heart sank, and she could see the sadness in Cooper’s eyes. “That’s rough. Scary, I bet.”
Danny shrugged. “I used to play hockey when I was little, you know. Before. But if they cut off my leg then I’m not going to be able to do anything.”
“That’s not true!” Coop wrestled his emotions back under control. Lowered his voice. “You know who Luke Maguire’s brother is?”
Danny didn’t disappoint him. “Ethan Maguire, Number 10. Centerman. Nickname: Flash. Gold medalist. Played for the Wisconsin Blades. Hockey career was cut short when he got hit from behind.”
Cooper leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Then you know he’s in a wheelchair now.”
“Yeah.”
“And you also know he’s on the playoff hockey panel for Portland News Now and he writes a bunch of stuff for Sports Nation. And I’ll bet he doesn’t know half the stats you know. So you’ll probably be able to take his job in a few years. Because you don’t have to play hockey to be part of hockey.”
“I guess.”
“Or get some other amazing job. You’re really smart.”
“Nobody cares about that. People make fun of me for reading all the time.”
“Those guys are jealous.”
Danny looked skeptical. “I don’t think so.”
“I do. Because I know I’m jealous of it.” Something about the way he said it caught Lainey’s attention. It wasn’t patronizing. It wasn’t flattery. It rang of truth.
Danny face was the picture of confusion. “Huh? No, you aren’t.”
Cooper glanced up at her, and she could see the indecision in his eyes. The weight of his stare was palpable, almost like he was asking her for something. She sat back down in the chair beside him.
His next breath was so deep it seemed to strain the material of his T-shirt.
“Kid, I’m gonna tell you a secret. And you can’t tell anyone.”
Danny’s eyes widened at the prospect. “I won’t. Cross my heart.” He did, to prove he meant it.
Cooper stared at the kid for a moment, but when he finally spoke, he looked right at her. “I have dyslexia.”
His words stunned her. Snippets of their time together played through her memory like a flipbook: how he asked the server for suggestions at the restaurant, how he called instead of texting, how he always asked what she was reading instead of looking at the titles himself.
All endearing gestures on their own, but now she could see they went deeper than the veil of charm she’d always attributed them to. They were tactics that had been carefully honed over a lifetime of secret keeping. Survival skills. She recognized them well.
She reached out and squeezed his knee, leaving her hand there as his shoulders relaxed and he turned back to Danny.
“You know what that is?”
Danny shook his head.
“It means I have trouble reading.”
“You can’t read?”
Cooper smiled wryly. “Not exactly. It’s more that my brain gets the letters jumbled up, so it’s tricky for me to figure out words. I have to concentrate really hard to make words make sense.”
“Like a puzzle. You know when you dump it out of the box, and you know it’s gonna be a picture, but it isn’t one yet.”
“Yeah. Like that. And that’s why I didn’t want to read you that magazine the first time I was here. And I didn’t want to tell you...” Again, Cooper met her eyes and she knew his words were for her as much as for Danny. “Because I used to get made fun of pretty bad when I was your age. People called me stupid, knocked me around. And it made me believe that I was dumb. That I wasn’t as good as them.”
Danny considered that for a moment. “Yeah, I feel that way sometimes, when people make fun of me for reading instead of playing with them. They don’t understand I’m too tired.”
“It’s hard not to care what other people think of you sometimes,” Cooper told him, and Lainey’s heart broke a little.
“But I still like you, even if you can’t read. Hey, maybe during my chemo, you could come by, and I could read to you!”
There was a stinging sensation behind the bridge of Lainey’s nose, and her eyes watered as Cooper patted Danny’s bony little shoulder. “I’d like that, kid.”
They said their goodbyes, and Cooper and Lainey walked through the hallway toward the bank of elevators.
When they stepped inside, Lainey hit the button for the lobby. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
He shook his head, as if he was at a loss. “My parents are both professors—Dad’s an English literature buff and Mom’s a linguist. How’s that for irony? And I know they love me, but I also know that neither of them were hoping their only child would be a dumb jock. They’re good people, and I can’t imagine my life without them, but we don’t have a lot in common, you know?”
The confession cost him. She could see it in the way he kept his gaze on the floor, took up less space than he usually did. “You already made your views on hockey players clear. I guess I didn’t want you to think I was stupid on top of it.”
Lainey grabbed his hand, squeezed it. “You’re not a dumb jock. You’re a world-class defenseman who has dyslexia, and you don’t ever have to feel embarrassed with me.”
It wasn’t until they passed the third floor that he finally squeezed her back.
* * *
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, they were at the Vietnamese place Cooper loved, sitting at a table in the back corner, waiting for their takeout.
The hospital visit had kicked his ass, emotionally speaking, and the fact that Lainey hadn’t laughed at him—or worse, pitied him—meant more than she would ever know. And since he’d already broached one terrifying subject with her today, he figured he might as well cross the other one off the list, too.
“So, I have something for you.”
Lainey sat straighter in the rickety chair, intrigued.
“Don’t get too excited.” Cooper dug through his wallet. “I don’t think you’re going to like it much.”
She took the business card he held out and he could see by her suspicious look that she recognized Holly Evans’s name. “Why are you giving me this?”
“She wants to interview you.”
Lainey shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“I know you don’t, but trust me, as a guy who’s weathered a couple of not-so-great media moments, it might help to get out in front of this. Deal with it and move on.”
“I scored on my own net.” The words came out small and meek.
“Lainey, that’s part of the game. You screwed up. We’ve all done it. So sure, every four years, that video will make the rounds again, and it’s embarrassing and it sucks. But that’s life with the internet.
“Google ‘Cooper Mead fuckups’ sometime. There’s an eight-minute compilation video on YouTube of me tripping over the blue line, winding up for a slap shot and not making contact with the puck—even the time I shattered the rink glass when I went flying into the boards and completely missed the guy I was trying to body check.”
A flicker of a smile wobbled on her lips. “I actually remember that.”
“Me, too. I remember every single one of those moments, but there’s no way that I’m going to miss a game because of them.”
“So the moral of the story is that you love hockey?”
“More than anything in the world.”
&
nbsp; She shrugged. “That’s great for you, but I don’t see how it applies to me.”
Her voice sounded unaffected, but Cooper noticed how she cradled her scarred wrist.
She followed the direction of his gaze immediately and frowned. “I didn’t give up, if that’s what you’re thinking. After the goal that shook America, I went back to my college team. First period of my first game back, there’s a scrum in the corner, I get tripped up and I hit the ice. That scar you’re staring at?” She held out her wrist. “Three hours in surgery, and the end of my career. I didn’t just give hockey up. I tried to fight for it.”
Cooper wasn’t trying to pick a fight. “Look, this decision is completely up to you. But I know how draining it is to hide something about yourself. It eats at you.”
Cooper shrugged. “You keep punishing yourself for a mistake that could’ve happened to anyone. Your teammate has forgiven you. You have to find a way to forgive yourself, because you’re the only one standing in your way now. This interview with Holly might be a good first step.”
Their conversation was interrupted as the pretty Vietnamese girl who’d taken their order brought two bags of food to their table. “Here you go. Grandma threw in a couple of free egg rolls because she thinks you’re handsome.”
Cooper laughed as he got to his feet. “Thank her for me, Linh.”
She frowned at him. “No way. That’ll only encourage her. Enjoy the food, you two.”
Lainey waited until Linh was back behind the counter before she heaved a deep sigh and stood up. “Okay.”
Cooper grinned. “Okay, you’ll do the interview?” he asked, grabbing a bag in each hand.
“Okay, I’ll think about it,” she countered. “Now stop with that stupid, handsome smile that gets you free food and makes people think about things they don’t want to do.”
He did his best to comply.
15
TWO WEEKS LATER, Lainey found herself standing on a picturesque Portland street, realizing how much had changed since she’d agreed to this meeting with sports reporter Holly Evans. For one, Cooper and the Storm had blown past San Jose and were now in the midst of a hard-fought third-round battle with the Montana Wolfpack. Secondly, this street, which she’d wandered often in her youth, had changed so much as to be almost unrecognizable to her. And last but not least, her mind, because Lainey was 99 percent sure this meeting was going to be a colossal waste of time.
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