And his future was right here, right now, and he’d never seen anything more perfect.
“I’ll see you next week, Dad,” he said.
“We’ll all see you next week,” Victoria said, and then Eli gathered his family up, pulling his wife under his arm, his son against his hip, and walked out, into the bright day waiting for him.
For Pam Hopkins,
who had faith and confidence
when all I had were dirty diapers.
Thank you so much.
Did Billy’s run-in with Madelyn Cornish
intrigue you?
You won’t want to miss the story of how
this one-time couple is thrown together
by unexpected circumstances.
Read on for a sneak peek of
This Can’t Be Love!
Billy Wilkins sat on the bench bone-dry. He might as well have been wearing slippers. A freaking robe. All he could do was sit there and watch the second-rate team he’d been traded to give away their shot at the playoffs.
If the coaches weren’t going to play him, the skates, the pads, the stick in his hand—all of it—was totally useless. Worthless. Just like him.
“Yank Leserd!” he shouted over the screaming in the Bendor arena. “He’s done. That’s the fourth goal he’s let in in five minutes.”
But Coach Hornsby wasn’t listening. He never listened to what Billy yelled during the games, whether the advice was good or not, didn’t matter. Hornsby wouldn’t even look at him, much less reply.
But that was Coach Hornsby. Stubborn, righteous, and probably deaf.
Billy waved off the water bottle one of the trainers held up. No need to hydrate. He hadn’t even broken a sweat tonight.
And what was worse, worse than the dry pads, the clear visor, the body he’d recuperated back into prime shape only to have it sit unused on the bench, was that he didn’t care. He didn’t care that the coach didn’t hear him. Didn’t care that the kid in the net was totally overwhelmed and the Mavericks’ rally to get into the playoffs was going to die a pitiful death right here. Right now.
“If you stopped being an asshole, he might listen to you,” Jan Fforde, their injured first-string goalie said, his consonants blunted by his Swedish accent.
“Not much chance of that.” Whether Billy was talking about being an asshole or their coach listening to him, he wasn’t sure. Being an asshole was his way of life, it’s why hockey teams for over fifteen years had been paying his way. The sport needed assholes and Billy was the best. Used to be anyway.
Until he landed in Dallas, with a coach who preached respect and integrity.
Someone should have told Hornsby that respect and integrity didn’t win games. Didn’t turn momentum. A good fight did that. Let Billy get out there and drop gloves with that big Renegade center, Churo, and then the game would turn around. The crowd that booed them would cheer.
The Renegades, who were killing the Mavericks on their own ice, would have blood on their faces and they’d know the Mavericks went down swinging.
The Mavericks’ top line—O’Neill, Blake, and Grotosky—surged back into Renegade ice, skating their hearts out. Blake wound up and hammered a slap shot that ricocheted off the post. A mob in front of the goal scrambled for the puck and everyone on the bench stood, screaming. A goal right now would tie up the game and they’d have a shot in overtime.
“Come on!” Billy whispered, willing his fight into those young guys out there with the fast legs and the strong arms and barely managed talent, “come—”
The buzzer silenced the crowd for a moment and then the few Boston Renegades fans in the arena roared.
The Mavericks were out.
Disheartened, silent, the team skated back toward the bench, knocking fists, defeat riding their young shoulders. This team had fought longer and harder than anyone expected, keeping the playoff dream alive for a community that barely cared. Despite losing tonight, they’d fought like demons.
Hornsby was silent. Billy could think of a thousand better coaches. His grandma for one. And she was dead.
“Good effort, guys,” Billy said, slapping shoulders. His teammates grunted, unsmiling.
Blake, their captain, finally led the team into center ice to shake hands. Billy stood at the end, the only guy besides Fforde without ice time. Without the sweat and blood and heaving lungs of battle. For a second the grief nearly took out his knees, that his career was going to end this way was such a sucker punch, he could barely breathe through the pain.
As he shook hands with the other team, about to go into the first round of the playoffs and get slaughtered by the defending champions, not a single Renegade looked in his face. It was salt in the wound.
Billy Wilkins, second-round draft pick fifteen years ago, was a non-fucking-issue.
Might as well be dead.
Bullshit, he thought and his temper roared through him in a brush fire, burning lesser emotions into dust. Everything about this was bullshit.
Churo, the freakish Russian giant, was the last guy in line. As he skated past, barely touching Billy’s outstretched hand, Billy—a good foot shorter and thirty pounds lighter, but blessed with a temper that leveled every playing field—coldcocked him. Snapped the big man’s head back so hard Billy could see his third-world dental work.
For a moment, Churo wobbled in his skates, and Billy braced himself to be crushed, but then Churo went down on the ice with a thud.
The arena roared, the sound music to Billy’s cauliflower ears.
Victory was sweet but short. Grisolm, the hardworking Renegade captain, landed a right hook across Billy’s face. Billy swung back, feeling the satisfying pop of nose cartilage under his fist. Someone wrapped him up, using his kidney as a punching bag. But out of the corner of his eye he saw the Mavericks skating back from the dressing rooms, dropping gloves and sticks, throwing off helmets, all that defeat melting into raw bloodlust.
Billy smiled before someone punched the back of his head and bells rang in his skull.
Hitting Churo was dirty. A cheap shot after the game was over, the sports journalists would go crazy. No doubt Billy would get suspended. That pussy Hornsby would probably send him to counseling or some shit.
But he didn’t care. As the melee continued, his face getting punished, his knuckles splitting against the ice and helmets and pads, he didn’t care about what was going to happen when this fight was over. Because, for guys like Billy Wilkins, there would always be another fight.
An hour later, after the mob scene with the press in the locker room, he sat in front of Hornsby’s desk, showered and changed, Kleenex shoved up his nose to stop the blood from dripping on the collar of his shirt.
Billy arranged the ice packs on his knuckles while the coach paced the hardwood floors behind him.
Coming up in the minors, half Billy’s coaches had been not just old-school hockey, but old-school Eastern Bloc hockey. Giant men with forests of hair in their ears, who kept bottles of vodka in their desks and after a fight like Billy just caused would have bought him a steak dinner. And a hooker.
His first coach in the NHL, Bleu St. Georges, a French-Canadian force of nature, would have told the press that he was embarrassed and that steps would be taken to reprimand Billy. But behind the locker room door, he would have shaken Billy’s hand and applauded him for knowing how to give a beaten team back their pride.
But over the last fifteen years the league had changed. The last five especially. All this talk of taking the fighting out of the sport? These were not friendly times for guys like Billy.
Outside the big window to his left, the crowd, the few hundred stalwart hockey fans left in Dallas, stood on the sidewalk, hailing cabs, putting away their playoff excitement until next year.
Suckers, he thought. This team wouldn’t get any closer to the cup next year, or the year after. Front office called it “rebuilding.” Billy called it “being a shitty team.”
“What were you thinking?” Hornsby a
sked. Billy would have rolled his eyes if they didn’t hurt so bad. “You’re suspended, you know that, right? You’ll be out at least the first four games of next season. Maybe more. The GM wants to trade you.”
“How is that any different than the end of this season?” Billy asked past his fat, cracked lip.
Hornsby stopped pacing and the silence changed, got all loaded, like Billy had fallen into Hornsby’s trap. Billy pressed his bruised knuckles, the ice pack between them, up to his lip, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut.
“You don’t like sitting on the bench?” Hornsby asked questions like he was a six-foot-four, slightly balding Oprah.
“I don’t like watching my team lose.”
“And you think you would have stopped that?”
“Yes.”
“By what? Fighting?”
“Maybe.”
Hornsby sat down behind his desk, a sleek metal and glass table he kept annoyingly clean. Desks were supposed to be cluttered, covered in coffee cups and scouting reports. Hornsby clearly didn’t read the NHL coach handbook.
“You know why I wanted you here?” Hornsby asked, adjusting his glasses up over the bump of his broken nose. That broken nose saved him. Billy didn’t like the guy, but he’d never be able to trust him if it weren’t for that nose. Men who’d never had their nose broken shouldn’t lead men who barely had cartilage left in their face. It was a rule.
But then the guy went and ruined that broken nose with turtlenecks. Tonight it was a black one, under a gray coat. Made him look like a sissy.
“I have no idea, man,” Billy said, twisting the toilet paper higher into his nose.
“I wanted a leader. Some experience on a young team.”
“Yeah, well, put me on the ice and I’ll lead the shit out of these guys.”
“No, Billy. You’ll fight. You’ll shoot your mouth off, you’ll piss everyone off.”
“Sometimes that’s what a team needs.”
“Sure. Sometimes. But what I need all the time is someone to use their brain, show these kids how to play their way out of a 3–1 deficit.”
Blood trickled down the back of Billy’s throat and he coughed it up, leaned forward and spit it into the garbage beside his feet. He’d learned at a very early age how to walk the very fine line between rude and insult, between disgusting someone and getting the crap kicked out of himself. And spitting blood into Hornsby’s fancy garbage can rode that line pretty hard.
He looked up right into Hornsby’s eyes so the guy could make no fucking mistake and said: “I’m not that guy.”
“You used to be.”
Billy laughed and wondered when. Because he’d missed it, entirely.
“I’ve watched you, Billy. And you know, you used to play like a high scorer with thug tendencies and then somehow over the years that balance changed—”
Oh Jesus. This Oprah shit had to stop. He stood up. “You want me to pay a fine or something for starting that fight? Do some community crap?”
“I want you to grow up and be the player I need.”
“I’ve got one year left on my contract, Hornsby. My body is beat to shit, and frankly, I don’t like you. I don’t like Dallas. I don’t like being here. Keep me on the bench next year, let the General Manager trade me, do whatever you want, but I am who I am. Nothing’s changing that now.”
“That’s too bad, Billy.” Hornsby folded his hands over his lean stomach. “Most players wouldn’t want to go out that way.”
Billy’s temper snarled and spat and the urge to tip the desk right over was a tough one to control, especially since he wasn’t used to trying to control anything. “We done?”
“You live in tunnel vision, Billy. And until you realize that everything’s not about you—”
“Are we done?”
Hornsby sighed. “Yep.”
Billy stood, turned, his kidneys throbbing, his eye swollen, and walked out of the office. The concrete hallways under and around the arena were still full of staff. Most of Hornsby’s minions shook their heads as they passed him, like they were just so disappointed in him, they could barely stand it.
Billy smiled real wide at all of them.
Mike Blake stepped out of the PT room, his eye swollen shut and already going black. Even with the eye, he was still a good-looking kid. Farm raised somewhere in the hinterlands of Canada, Blake had the blond hair and blue eyes that women were interested in, and a cocky smile that sealed the deal.
Blake never went home alone.
“Hey, man,” Blake said, stopping in the doorway to button up his shirt, he had to tilt his head sideways to see the buttons out of that busted-up eye. “How’s the nose?”
“Fine.” Billy yanked the Kleenex out of his nostrils, balling them up in his fist. “How about the eye?”
“Doc said I need to have it checked out when the swelling goes down.”
“Ah, shit, man, that’s not right.”
Blake laughed. “I’ll live. That fight was the best part of the whole damn season. Hornsby give you a hard time?”
Billy shrugged.
“Look, we’re heading over to Crowbar tonight, it’d be—” Billy rejected the idea, shaking his head, before Blake could get it out. “Come on, man, the guys—”
“Don’t need another fight.” And that’s what he felt like right now, the anxiety spinning his guts into a ball wanted to put fist to face one more time.
“I don’t know about that. But you should come.”
“Thanks, Blake. But I’m just gonna head home.” He honestly wished the kid would stop asking him to go out with the guys, he was so tired of refusing, made him feel old. In fact, the only thing that would make him feel older would be actually going to the damn clubs.
He said goodbye and made his way back to the locker room to grab his stuff. Security had cleared out the press a while ago, but somehow he wasn’t surprised to find Dominick Murphy lingering around.
“Thought I smelled something bad,” Billy said, grabbing his stuff from the locker. The insult was a weak one, he just didn’t have it in him to try and match wits with Dom.
The air was thick with the slightly nacho chip odor of sweaty hockey pads. The equipment manager had the fans going, but modern technology just hadn’t solved the problem of stinky hockey gear.
“It’s your jock,” Dominick said, sitting on the bench in front of Fforde’s locker.
Billy’s lip curled despite his best intentions. It was hard not to like Dominick.
“I’ve given you my quote.”
“What did Hornsby say? Is he fining you?”
“He’s buying me a steak dinner.”
“Somehow I doubt it.”
Billy sighed and pulled his duffle bag up over his shoulder. His kidneys didn’t like the twist of his spine but he managed to swallow a wince. Dominick watched him through thick glasses, his salt-and-pepper hair was looking a lot more salty these days, and his beer belly had a good thirty years’ experience.
Dominick was freelance, a hired pen, usually for Sports Illustrated, sometimes Esquire or Rolling Stone. As far as sports journalists went, they didn’t get any better than Dominick. He could make you look like a hero in less than ten words. Of course, he could publically castrate you just as fast.
And for some reason, the guy liked Billy.
Maybe because they were both dinosaurs. And dinosaurs had to stick together.
“You want to get a drink?” Dom asked. “Tell me a little more about that fight?”
“I’d rather let the Renegades have another shot at my kidneys.”
Dom smiled and heaved himself to his feet. That beer belly could pass for a pregnancy from the side. Truly a commitment to poor health.
“I’ll take it easy on you, Billy.”
Billy didn’t think much about feelings. Except anger. Anger he made a study of. He was a professor of rage. The rest of them he ignored. Tonight it was hard, though, pretending not to feel anything about the sad state of his life.
Which was the only reason he opened his mouth and asked: “Why you so interested in me? Lots of guys go out the way I do, injured and old, sitting on a bench. Why you want to buy me drinks?”
“Because the best fighter in the league gets traded to a coach who leads the charge for change in the NHL. Hornsby has supported every anti-fighting rule that the league recommends.”
“So?”
“So? What’s he supposed to do with you?”
Hornsby was probably up there right now cleaning out his garbage can, wondering the same damn thing.
“Nothing,” Billy said and it was so much the truth it depressed him. He waved goodbye to Dominick over his shoulder, relieved that Dom was gentleman enough to let Billy go without further hounding.
The season was over. No early morning training to keep him honest anymore. The off-season stretched in front of him, pleasantly empty. His boat down in Padre was gassed up and ready to go. He’d finally teach his buddy Luc how to fish. Tomorrow he’d do that. Tonight demanded something … darker.
“I need a drink,” he muttered.
He thought about picking up a woman. Someone soft, with skin that smelled sweet. Someone who would whisper all the right things in his ear. He tugged on his ear, his fingers brushing the thick ridge of scar tissue that ran from his earlobe, across his cheek, to his lip, where it curled, twisting his lip into an ever-present snarl.
There were certain kinds of women who liked the scar. Who had expectations of what sex would be like with a man like him. And usually he could go with that particular flow. But playing the marauder in bed was getting old.
He thought of Maddy out there in the city somewhere. And the thought of her, her shocked face in the spa eight months ago, was the match to the worst of his instincts.
Punching open the door to the player’s parking garage connected to the arena, the wet heat of the Dallas night wrapped around him like a slimy towel, his white shirt immediately stuck to him. Fforde kept making fun of him for buying such cheap clothes. With his salary he could buy the kind of material that would never stick to him, no matter how hot it got. But he didn’t give a shit about clothes.
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