In the Zone (Portland Storm 5)

by Catherine Gayle

  “I don’t have any intention of getting involved. If you’d calm down for a minute—”

  “I am calm,” I growled.

  “Bullshit. You look like you want to hit something.”

  “Maybe you.”

  “Hit me then, if that’ll make you feel better.”

  Hitting him wouldn’t make me feel better, though. Maybe letting him hit me would. “Just stay the fuck away from Brie,” I muttered.

  “Fine.” Shane crossed his arms, glaring at me. “No, not fine. Because I saw how you watched her last night and I’m not going to sit here and let you fuck that up like you’ve tried to fuck everything else in your life up.”

  “Screw you.”

  “You’re not my type, but that’s beside the point.”

  “So what is your fucking point, then?” I shouted. Pepper got off my lap and ran out of the room when I raised my voice, and both Dexter and Shadow followed her. Maybe it was better if they weren’t around. I didn’t want them to think they were in trouble, and I pretty much never raised my voice around them. “Would you get to it, already?”

  “The point is you’re my fucking brother and I fucking miss you, you ass,” he shouted in return. “I need you, and I’m sick and tired of fucking sitting around waiting for you to get over yourself and come home. We’ve been trying to give you your space and let you deal with your grief in your own way, but it’s been years and I can’t do it anymore. I need my fucking brother back, and you’re the only one I have left.”

  “You’ve been doing all right without me.”

  “Says who?” he scoffed. “Gran told you I’m gay, but I guess she forgot to mention that I’m bipolar, huh? Did she tell you I’m on all sorts of meds, and they’re the only thing that keeps me from pulling the same shit Garrett did?”

  “You’re bipolar?” I vaguely recalled Mom using that term to describe her depression years before. I had never noticed her problem much, other than a few times over the years when she would get really down for a while, or maybe she would have these crazy bursts of energy and she wouldn’t level out until she went back to the doctor and got her medications adjusted.

  “Same as Mom and Garrett,” Shane said. “I probably still wouldn’t know, if not for Mom insisting I go get checked out after Garrett died. She said she’d seen the signs in both of us for years, but she’d always told herself that it was all in her imagination, that it was only her own disease talking and trying to convince her she wasn’t alone in it all.”

  Not much of what he was saying sunk in for me. One thing kept repeating itself in my head over and over again, though: Garrett was probably bipolar. And undiagnosed. So he wouldn’t have been taking anything to help keep him straight, to keep everything level.

  “Did you hear me?” Shane demanded, pacing again. “Garrett was depressed. For a long time.”

  “Because of me,” I argued feebly, but the argument was getting old, even to me.

  “He knew you didn’t mean that shit, same as I did. You were our fucking brother. We knew you loved us.”

  “But I—”

  “You said a bunch of stupid things. I’m not going to deny that.” He plopped down next to me on the sofa. “Hell, I called him a pussy, too, and a lot more than that. We were kids. We were trying to be tough and cool, we acted like idiots, and we hurt each other. That’s what brothers do. Don’t you think it’s time we grew up and stopped, though?”

  He really meant it. Shane wasn’t trying to throw punches. He wasn’t here to get back at me. His face was all screwed up, as though he was fighting to hold back his emotion. The same as I was.

  “Why don’t you hate me?”

  “Why don’t you hate me?” he said in response.

  I could never hate him. He was my brother. “Because I love you.”

  He gave me a well, duh sort of look. “Well, I love you, too, you fucking asswipe.”

  “You really think Garrett…that it wasn’t because of me?”

  “He always gave you back as good as he got. Me too. We all went at each other like boys do. He didn’t kill himself because of you.” Shane reached down to scratch Pepper’s ears since she’d come back after all the shouting had stopped. “Look, you weren’t around much the last few years before that. You’d gone off to play in college and then you were here. You didn’t see what he was like. I did. He was pretty fucked up. I think dancing was the only thing keeping him even a little bit okay.”

  And that hadn’t been going as well as he would have liked, according to Brie.

  “Damn.”

  “Damn doesn’t even begin to cover it. Can you let yourself off the hook already?” Shane asked. “It’s been way too long.”

  Just like last night, tears stung the backs of my eyes and threatened to press through to the front. At first, I tried to fight it down, but if I couldn’t cry in front of my brother, who the hell could I cry in front of? I stopped trying to fight it off, letting the damned wetness fall.

  I wasn’t the only one crying, either. Shane was as much of a mess as I was when he reached across the space between us and pulled me in for a hug. It was a real hug, not a guy hug. It had been so long since I’d hugged anyone in my family but Gran that I didn’t want it to end. I held on longer than he might have been prepared for, but he initiated the whole damn thing so he was going to have to deal with it.

  I wasn’t sure how long we held on to each other, crying like that. It was only when all three of my dogs tried to get in on the act, three huge animals trying to smother us and join in the hug fest, that we separated, laughing.

  “You tell Cole that I cried all over you and I’ll kick your ass,” Shane said, laughing.

  “I’d like to see you try. And if you fucking make me cry again, I’ll kick your ass so hard that you won’t be able to sit for a week. Brie already got me started with that shit last night. I’ve had enough.” I punched him lightly on the shoulder, and then I got up to grab a box of tissues from the kitchen. Once I’d pulled a couple out for myself, I tossed the rest of the box at him.

  “So…” he said after a minute, once we’d gotten ourselves under control a bit. “Brie. Tell me about her.”

  “You mean tell you how I’ve already royally screwed things up with her and now all I can do is kick my own ass?”

  He laughed. It was good to hear my brother laugh.

  “Something like that. But I don’t get the feeling it’s as bad as all that.”

  I hoped he was right.

  BETWEEN THE BRIEF hockey lesson that Keith had given me recently and sitting with Shane in the owner’s box now, I thought I was following the action of the game fairly well, particularly since I still considered myself very much a novice in terms of understanding how the game was played and why. I wasn’t anywhere near as lost as I might have been, at least, and I was actually enjoying myself.

  It was pretty crowded in here, with all of the wives and girlfriends and kids who’d been at Keith’s party yesterday, along with parents, siblings, and friends. There were more people here than you’d typically expect during a regular season game on a weeknight, but this was the Storm’s last game before the Christmas break, Shane had explained to me, and so a lot of people had come to town to spend time with the guys on the team, like he had. They were scheduled to play on the road a couple of days after Christmas, so the next few days was pretty much all the players had to spend with their families and loved ones.

  Keith had chosen to spend as much of that time as he could with me.

  I’d thought that with his brother in town and the fact that I’d insisted we could only be friends right now—and especially considering that Keith had finally opened up to his brother about everything surrounding Garrett’s death—he would want to spend the whole time with Shane and not have me around. They were brothers, and they’d hardly said two words to each other in years. Why involve me? But Keith had put it off to the fact that I wasn’t going back to Illinois to visit my family because I couldn’t afford th
e trip right now. None of them were coming here to spend the holiday with me, either, so he wanted the two of them to be my family this Christmas.

  Shane had laughed when I relayed that to him earlier, not long after we’d arrived in the owner’s box. He might just want you to be a buffer between us, he’d said. And maybe he’s right to want that. It’s been a long time. We can’t jump back into things as they were.

  I wasn’t sold on the idea of being the go-between for them, but I did like the idea of getting to know Shane while he was here, not to mention getting to know Keith as he was with his family. One thing I’d learned over the years, particularly during my time with Val, was that you could take the true measure of a person when they were with their family. Thinking back on it now, Val had been loud, belligerent, and verbally abusive to his mother and sisters when I’d spent time with them all together. There was little wonder he’d started behaving that way toward me after a time. I just hadn’t recognized it soon enough. I hadn’t gotten away when I should have.

  The clock showed that there were thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds left in the second period. It felt weird to me to call it a period. Until Keith had explained hockey to me, I’d thought all the big sports were played in halves or quarters. Not hockey, though. Three periods, each twenty minutes long.

  Play was stopped—a TV time-out, Shane told me—after the puck had gone up over the glass and into the crowd. It was tied at one goal apiece for the Storm and their opponent tonight, the Buffalo Sabres. One of the women I’d met at Keith’s party yesterday—a very pregnant, tall, blond woman—came over and sat next to me in one of the few remaining chairs that wasn’t already occupied.

  “I saw you yesterday but didn’t get the chance to come and talk,” she said, holding out a hand to shake. “Dana Zellinger. My husband is Eric, the team captain. Number nine,” she added, probably due to the look of utter bewilderment that I was certain had swamped my face. I could barely keep track of Keith when he was out there, so there was no chance I knew who any of the other guys were.

  “Brie Hayden,” I said.

  “No need to ask who you are,” she said to Shane with a nod. “You’re the spitting image of your brother. I’m sure Burnzie’s glad to have you here.”

  Shane made a sort of mumbled sound and looked out at the ice. He didn’t seem to have any qualms about talking to me, but he definitely wasn’t making any moves to get to know any of the other people around. I had to wonder if it had more to do with what I’d discovered about him and Cole last night and less to do with anything related to his brother.

  “It’s nice to see him have someone here for him,” she said, making herself comfortable. I got the distinct impression that she had no intention of moving again for a while—maybe not until her bladder forced her to. She smiled at me. “The girls and I”—she nodded in the direction of the gaggle of women she’d just left to come over here— “we sometimes worry about him and a few of the other boys who don’t seem to have anyone around. I know Shane will have to go back to Canada at some point, back to his job…but you live here?”

  “I do.” I didn’t elaborate because the players were lining up on the ice to take the next face-off, and I hadn’t decided yet if I thought she was fishing for information or if she truly wanted to get to know me. I couldn’t put my finger on why I felt suspicious, but I did.

  Dana turned her attention to the ice, as well, and she laughed. “Babs and Razor haven’t stopped jawing at each other this whole game.”

  I didn’t have the first clue what she was talking about.

  She explained before I could ask. “You see number nineteen for the Storm?” She pointed in case I’d missed him. “That’s Babs—Jamie Babcock. The guy in white right next to him, number sixty, is Ray Chambers, but the guys all call him Razor. He played here until he got traded over the summer. Babs and Razor were pretty much best friends. Every time they’ve been on the ice together tonight, they’ve been trash-talking each other like crazy.”

  The official dropped the puck, and the guys on the ice took off in a flurry of movement. Sure enough, Babs and Razor pretty much stayed together. Even from here, I could see that they were yapping back and forth at each other the whole time.

  “How do you know they’re trash-talking?” I asked.

  “Because that’s what hockey players do,” Shane said matter-of-factly.

  Babs got a little separation from Razor, and Keith passed the puck over to him. He skated with it toward the end where they would shoot. He passed it over to one of the other guys on his team. It had barely left his stick when Razor caught up to him again, slamming into him so hard that they both ended up sprawled on the ice.

  “I thought you said they were best friends,” I said.

  “They are.” Dana shrugged when I looked over at her, appalled. “It’s what guys have to do when they play their former teams for the first time. You have to show your new teammates that you’re fully invested, willing to play tough even against your friends. That’s why those two have been going at it so hard tonight.”

  “Plus, it’s fun,” Shane put in.

  Fun, I thought. Right. I couldn’t imagine anything less fun than being banged into at full speed on ice.

  Those two had gotten up again as if it was the easiest thing in the world and skated off, and new players were out on the ice in their places. There was a lot of back and forth action, the players skating from end to end and back again so fast that I felt winded just watching them.

  Play continued at that neck-or-nothing pace for a couple of minutes without another whistle to blow the play down. But then one of the Sabres’ players tripped, allowing one of the Storm’s players to get past him with the puck. Nineteen, I noticed. Babs. And it was number sixty—Razor—who’d fallen and was now racing to catch up to him.

  Babs was too fast, though. For a big guy, it was insane how quickly he could move. It seemed like he ought to be slow and lumbering, but he was speedy and smooth and graceful out there. The only other player on the ice who was anywhere close, other than Buffalo’s goaltender, was number three for the Storm, but I didn’t have any idea who that was.

  “What the hell is Colesy doing so far up ice?” Dana said, answering my unasked question.

  “The D had a bad line change,” Shane said. “Buffalo thought they’d caught our guys out, but things didn’t go quite the way they’d planned.”

  It looked like Babs was going to be able to get right up on the goal and take a shot, and only the goaltender would have a chance to stop him. He didn’t do that, though. He acted like he was going to shoot, but instead he passed the puck to Cole. Even to my untrained eye, Cole seemed stunned to have the puck. He shot it anyway.

  The goaltender got his glove over just in time to knock it away, but he wasn’t able to catch it and stop play. It bounced back and hit Babs in the skate, and then it slid underneath the goaltender and into the goal.

  Red lights flashed and the Moda Center erupted. Everyone in the box around me was on their feet and screaming. Everyone except for Shane and Dana.

  “Might not count,” Shane told me. “It went off his skate, so they could say he kicked it in.”

  I shook my head, dumbfounded. “But it’s in the goal.”

  “Yeah,” Dana said. “But you’re not allowed to kick the puck in. They’ll review it. It didn’t look like a kicking motion, more like a deflection. It should count.”

  Sure enough, I watched as the guys in black-and-white stripes met in the corner where they seemed to be having a conversation. Then one of them skated over to the scorer’s box and put on a pair of headphones while the other three talked to the players on the ice and to the coaches behind the benches, apparently explaining the situation.

  On the Jumbotron overhead, they showed the video of the goal over and over again from different angles, giving everyone in the arena a chance to see it multiple times. Not once did the crowd settle down. The celebration kept going as long as the review did.
>
  Finally, the official took off the headphones and skated out to center ice.

  “I hope for that guy’s sake he doesn’t have to say it didn’t count,” I muttered. “They might lynch him.”

  “It’ll count,” Shane said.

  The crowd finally quieted down, only long enough to hear the official say into his microphone, “There was no kicking motion. It’s a good goal.” He gave a signal with his hand and the arena erupted again, as loud and full of excitement as they’d been when the goal had initially taken place.

  Once more, the players lined up on the ice for a new face-off. My eye was drawn to the Jumbotron, which had focused in on Babs and Razor. I could see the fire in Babs’s eyes, but more than that, I could read his lips.

  I own you, he said to Razor. I can do this all fucking night long.

  The fuck you can, Razor said. If anyone has you’re fucking number, it’s me.

  Then the puck hit the ice and play resumed.

  Babs was true to his word. But so was Razor. Every time the two of them were on the ice that was where my eye was drawn.

  It was as entertaining a show as I’d ever seen.

  AFTER MOST GAMES, the boys all go out for a meal together, hanging out a little longer, building up that camaraderie and sense of family that seemed to be so prevalent here with the Storm organization. Or at least it had been prevalent since the arrival of Jim Sutter as the general manager. Before that, a lot had been different.

  Tonight wasn’t like most games, though. That was abundantly clear from looking around the owner’s box when I went up to snag Shane and Brie. With the Christmas break arriving, everyone had friends and family in town, just about, and so the guys were all splitting off to do their own things.

  Well, not quite everyone.

  Babs’s parents and his younger brothers—the ones who still lived with them—hadn’t come for Christmas this year, even though Babs’s birthday was only a few days before it. They were in Windsor with his brother Levi. Levi had been drafted by the Storm over the summer, but he was still playing with his major junior team, developing as a defenseman. In a couple more years, he’d move up to play in the American Hockey League, and maybe after a year or two of that he’d get his shot to play in the NHL. I supposed that, as the rest of those boys grew up and spread out to each do his own thing, it was going to be harder and harder to get the whole Babcock family together for the holidays. Every single one of Babs’s brothers played hockey, and if the younger ones got to be half as good as him and Levi, they could be spread all over this continent and maybe even some of them in Europe for the hockey season.