Rain Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 5)

by Catherine Gayle

  Carter was flying in this morning. He’d been in Michigan with Kinsey for the last couple of weeks, but he had a long weekend off from school that coincided with the T-Birds being at home for a few days, as well as Natalie’s release from the hospital. I knew he’d be excited about bringing her home with us. Every time I talked to him, the first thing he wanted to know was how Natalie was doing, even before he asked me about Snoopy.

  And while I was on the subject of my son… I made a mental note to remind Carter that he needed to stick to the upstairs bathroom. There would be no crutches slipping in toothpaste on my watch. Boys would be boys, but that didn’t mean he had to be a heathen in spaces that would endanger Natalie’s safety.

  I headed back into the living room to figure out what else I needed to rearrange or tidy up before bringing her into the house. Snoopy barked and followed close behind me. He seemed to be aware that something was changing. With any luck, he’d adapt to the changes as well as the rest of us.

  The smell of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese wafted over me, so I followed my nose to the kitchen. London had just brought in a few huge aluminum foil pans full of food that she was putting into the oven.

  “Kid food,” she said, not bothering to look up at me. “If Carter’s anything like my husband, he’ll be hungry from the moment he arrives until you put him in bed tonight. This way you can always have something ready for him, since I have a feeling you’ll be distracted by getting Natalie settled. There’s also some adult food in the fridge. Made a pasta salad, a spinach salad, and there are sandwich fixings. Figured I’d keep it simple for everyone.” She wheeled around me with ease, her lap loaded with paper plates and plastic ware, taking those to the dining room table.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at me. But then she angled her head toward the other room, where her husband was still working on assembling furniture with the other guys. “I made brownies. Turtle brownies, with lots of caramel. I put those on the counter. They’re for Natalie because she told me they’re her favorite. If anyone so much as takes a crumb from that pan before she gets here to eat them, I will personally cut his dick and balls off with a rusty spork, you hear me?” She said that last part with a raised voice.

  “You won’t cut my dick,” Dima shot back, coming into the room with us. Then he grinned and winked at her. “You like it too much.”

  “You’d better hope you’re right if you dare to go near the brownies before Natalie gets here. But maybe you’re feeling lucky.” She shrugged. “Your loss if you want to test me.”

  “Viktoriya won’t let you,” Dima said.

  “I think you mean Harper, but I’m not afraid of a two-year-old getting in my way. Viktoriya knows well enough to leave me to my own devices.”

  “Aren’t you the one always protecting Tori and not the other way around, anyway?” Tallie shouted from the other room. “You might just hope she’d protect you.”

  “My wife’s not going to protect anyone’s balls but mine,” Razor put in, just as Harper Fielding rushed in from the backyard and tugged on Dima’s hand.

  “Up!” she demanded.

  And of course, he immediately picked her up. And she then proceeded to tug on his beard and giggle like the lunatic toddler she was.

  “I want a ball!” she demanded, which led to all the guys snort-laughing except Dima, who calmly rolled his eyes and waltzed into the kitchen, sniffing the pan of brownies as if to test his wife.

  London brandished a plastic knife in his direction, wheeling toward him with one hand.

  I tried not to burst out laughing at those two, but it wasn’t easy. They had the most contentious relationship, but somehow it worked for them.

  But now it was time for me to go. I had to stop at the airport for Carter before going to the hospital. I shuffled toward the front door, eyeing all of my teammates still hard at work preparing my house for her. A few of the guys had started moving my living room furniture off the rug so they could roll it up and get it out of the way, and I could hear the sounds of others in the bathroom installing a detachable shower head and putting together a shower chair.

  A little over two years ago, we’d been a huge band of misfits. Yeah, we were all NHL-caliber hockey players, but we weren’t exactly a team in the truest sense of the word. But now, everything was starting to come together.

  At least off the ice. On the ice, we were still struggling to find our identity and the way we fit together.

  But if we could keep working together like this, we’d get there.

  CARTER AND HIS dog, Snoopy, stuck to my side the whole afternoon, despite there being numerous other kids around they could have gone off to play with. Every time I shifted positions or tried to stretch out the leg that wasn’t in a cast, Carter asked me if he could get me a drink or a snack or if I needed a pillow or if I wanted him to fetch his dad to come and help me get up. One time, he even offered to bring me one of his stuffed animals, “Because my teddy makes me feel better when I’m sick, kind of like Snoopy does.”

  I’d never spent much time around kids before, but if most of them were anything like Carter, I wouldn’t mind doing more of it. He was such a sweetheart. Kind of like his father, only in a much smaller, less intimidating package.

  Come to think of it, I was almost positive that Carter’s sweet, generous demeanor had an awful lot to do with Ethan’s example to him, which was why I was so comfortable around them both. How could any kid be so thoughtful and caring if he didn’t have a strong role model in his life to demonstrate that sort of behavior for him? Carter was going to grow up to be a good man, every bit as kind and strong and selfless as Ethan.

  By the time midafternoon rolled around, I was beyond exhausted. Every day over the last few weeks, I’d been more active than the day before and stayed up longer, but this was ten times more excitement and activity than I’d been exposed to in the hospital. I tried to keep up with the various conversations going on around me, but my mind kept drifting and my eyes started to close of their own volition, no matter how much I wanted to keep them open.

  London startled me awake again by setting a saucer bearing a turtle brownie on my lap and handing me a fork. She placed a glass of milk on the end table next to me. “I wouldn’t let my husband have any until you got some, and he’s about to drive me crazy. Anyway, it looks like you’re done in, so I’m going to make him take his to go. Want me to shove everyone else out the door with him?”

  “Oh, I…” I didn’t know what to say, because I absolutely wanted everyone to leave so I could rest without feeling bad about ignoring them, but I didn’t want to be the one to tell them to go.

  She gave me a silent chuckle. “Eat your brownie and leave it to me. I have no problem being the bad guy.” Then she backed her wheelchair away from me and let out a whistle that pierced my ears, only stopping when the people closest to her fell silent and turned to look at her.

  Snoopy barked excitedly at my side, Carter squinted his eyes and put his hands over his ears, and Harper Fielding blinked at London in shock.

  “All right,” London said, her voice loud enough to split through the chatter that was still raging. “Time for everyone who doesn’t live here to head out. Natalie needs to get her rest, and she can’t do that with all of you here.”

  Within moments, everyone started to get up and gather their things.

  Ethan caught my eye from across the room and held my gaze. I wished I could interpret the looks he gave me, but I could never seem to. This one was full of intensity, but why?

  Dana Zellinger tossed a bunch of kid things into a large tote bag and handed it to her husband before making her way through the crowd to my side. She handed me my cell phone, which I hadn’t realized wasn’t in my pocket until that very moment. But then again, I didn’t have pockets in the pajama pants I’d worn out of the hospital.

  “All of our numbers have been programmed into it for you already,” she said. “And we’re working on putting together a
rotation for when the team’s traveling, so you won’t be alone. Either one of us will come here to stay with you or we’ll bring you to one of our houses.”

  “And you’d darn well better use it,” Tallie added. “Doesn’t matter if you got your pants stuck on your cast or if you need company. Call someone.”

  “I got your number transferred onto my account,” Ethan said, alleviating that worry before I could give it voice.

  I nodded, blinking hard so I wouldn’t start crying. I didn’t know what to think of so many people trying to help me out. My own parents had cut me out of their lives a few years ago, when I’d started seeing Hayes. At this point, I just expected everyone to turn on me. But now that Hayes wasn’t in my life anymore, the opposite was happening.

  Gradually, they all herded their families out the door—London, Dima, and their little boy were the last to go, with London threatening Dima again because he’d gone back for another bite of brownie—until all that remained were those who would be living in the house and a tornado-like mess.

  Ethan looked around for a moment, scanning the chaos they’d left behind before shaking his head and collapsing into a chair. “Cleaning up can wait.”

  “I can help,” I said automatically, determined to do exactly that even though I could barely get myself up off the couch. Actually, that might be an exaggeration. After a couple of attempts at standing, I crumpled back against the cushions in defeat.

  I didn’t even have the energy to get myself up. How had I lost so much strength in such a short amount of time? It was as if all my muscles had forgotten how to work.

  “You,” Ethan said slowly, eying me from across the room, “can rest. Leave the cleaning to us.”

  I didn’t want to be a burden, though, and I was already feeling like one. “But—”

  “But nothing. You’re exhausted, and there’s no point denying it.”

  “Maybe you and Snoopy should go take a nap,” Carter put in. “He likes naps.”

  As much as I wanted to argue with Ethan, he was right. I was worn out. No matter how much I’d hated lying in a hospital bed all day, other than the brief times they’d had me in physical therapy or made me walk the halls of the hospital, the truth was I didn’t have the energy for much more than that. And being discharged today, then coming to Ethan’s house and having most of the team and their families here had combined to drain me—physically, mentally, and emotionally.

  I was beyond exhausted, and it had to be obvious.

  Ethan pushed up from his chair and crossed over to me, grabbing my crutches on the way. He held out a hand for me, the crutches waiting in the other, and practically lifted me to my feet.

  “Thanks,” I murmured, taking the crutches from him.

  He made sure the path ahead of me was clear and opened the double doors to my room. “You need anything? Some water, or…”

  “I don’t need anything,” I replied. At least not anything he could give me. He’d already done so much more than I ever could have imagined. My arm brushed against his abdomen as I made my way past him. I shivered slightly at the contact.

  He waited until I was at my bed and pulling down the covers to climb inside. “I’ll make sure Carter lets you rest,” he said. Then he closed the door behind him, leaving me alone with nothing but my thoughts.

  I wished he hadn’t closed the door. I knew he was just trying to give me privacy, but what I needed now was a sense of safety.

  I rested my crutches against the wall and sat on the edge of the bed, carefully placing my broken leg under the sheets before arranging the rest of my body.

  Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how uncomfortable hospital beds were. Yeah, you could raise them and lower them at all sorts of different angles, but the mattresses didn’t have much give, and they made me sweat because of the plastic coverings under the sheets. And the sheets weren’t terribly soft, a realization driven home by the silky feel of these sheets beneath my fingers.

  I tried to get comfortable, to relax enough that I could sleep. Because Ethan was right. I needed to rest if I had any hope of healing and returning to normal. But how could I rest, not knowing what the future held for me?

  Yes, Ethan had opened up his home for me and was giving me a place to stay.

  For now. But how long would it last? And was I really safe here, or was it an illusion?

  I wanted to believe I was safe, and I clung to the hope that Ethan would let me stay at least until I was able to find a job and a way to survive on my own, but neither of us had put any sort of time constraints on our arrangement.

  No matter how perfect this seemed on the surface, there was a lot left unsaid. Too much left unsaid, to be honest.

  On both our parts.

  My exhaustion eventually won out, and I fell asleep to the peaceful sounds of a boy and his father playing fetch with his dog in the backyard.

  IN THE FEW years I’d been playing in Tulsa, the overwhelmingly intense summer heat tended to start dissipating by late September when our preseason games got underway.

  Not this year.

  September had already come and gone, but we still had temperatures well into the nineties most days, and one day last week, the thermostat had threatened to breach triple digits.

  The cooler weather that tended to arrive with fall also usually brought with it some intense thunderstorms, which would mean much-needed rain to soften the parched, cracked earth. Instead, we were still smack-dab in the midst of a months-long drought and heatwave. According to the local meteorologists, there was no end in sight due to a strange weather phenomenon that had occurred in the Gulf of Mexico over the summer.

  The high temperatures were holding on far longer than was normal for the area. Air conditioner repair businesses had rarely been in such high demand so late in the year. Most of my teammates and I had only been around for the tail end of the drought, but the locals had been feeling the effects of it since mid-June. My neighbors couldn’t recall a drought of this magnitude in recent memory, and they told me heat waves lasting this deep into autumn only occurred every few decades in this part of the country.

  I dripped with sweat during each practice, and even more so in games we played at our home arena. The trainers and equipment staff were constantly refilling our water bottles and reminding us to stay hydrated, but cramping and dehydration were still a major concern for almost every guy on our roster.

  The BOK Center’s air conditioners had to work overtime in order for the ice crews to keep the building cool enough to maintain the ice. It was even more difficult for the guys who had to keep our practice ice frozen since we used it during the heat of the day. That the building maintenance crews managed it was nothing short of a miracle.

  Every lawn in my neighborhood looked more brown and brittle than vibrant and green, due to water restrictions that’d been in place throughout the entire state of Oklahoma, as well as almost every part of the southwestern United States, since the early summer months.

  The only thing that kept Carter from complaining about the heat when he came down for his weekend visits was taking trips to my teammates’ houses—particularly the guys who had swimming pools in their back yards. He and Snoopy swam for hours, wearing themselves out.

  Natalie seemed to enjoy those days, even though she still had to stay out of the water due to her cast. She laughed almost as much as Carter did, especially when Snoopy would leap into the pool and send up a huge splash all over my kid.

  Because of that, I encouraged Snoopy to do it some more.

  Frankly, I’d do anything to see Natalie smile, to hear the sound of her laughter. There hadn’t been much of either in recent weeks.

  I kept thinking it would soon be too cool for us to go swimming or to have afternoon barbecues in someone’s backyard, but the punishingly dry heat persisted.

  A few news crews kept bringing up the Dust Bowl, pondering whether we should expect to experience something of that nature in the coming months or years, which led me to Goog
ling it. After a bit of Internet research, I was reasonably certain they were just fearmongering and that a return of those conditions wasn’t something we should expect due to advances in farming techniques, but plenty of locals had already latched onto the idea and were trying to come up with ways to prepare for it. Something told me they were preppers, anyway, so I decided not to give them much credence.

  The land around us might be so parched and brittle that it was cracking, but Natalie was not only healing—she was coming to life. Every time I came home from a practice or a game, I picked up on dramatic improvements in her that she seemed to miss.

  Her bruises had all healed, now existing only in my memory and in the photographs the hospital workers and police officers had taken as evidence. She was sleeping less and active more, learning to get around without assistance.

  But the biggest change was in the way she looked at me when I came home.

  In the early days of our new living arrangement, every time I walked in through the front door, there was unmistakable apprehension in her eyes until something in her brain clicked and she realized it was me. Then she visibly relaxed, the anxiety melting away as she sank back against the couch cushions.

  No matter how accustomed we got to one another, though, there was always something floating just beneath the surface of all her interactions with me. She was calm in my presence, but a layer of unease and wariness kept her distant.

  I understood her wariness all too well—but I didn’t know how to explain my understanding without trivializing what either of us had been through. Because of that, I kept it to myself, biding my time for the right moment.

  And then one night, a thunderstorm rolled in. The air was filled with the crackling of electricity, and you could smell rain, even though nothing had fallen yet.

  Carter was with Kinsey, so it was just me, Natalie, and Snoopy at the house when the first crack rumbled overhead. Snoopy whimpered and tried to burrow into Natalie’s side on the couch.