by Avery Flynn
This was fucking ridiculous. He was a grown-ass man. Who he texted or didn’t text wasn’t any business of anyone else’s—not even the guy who was his coach. And who had gone to bat for him when the front office hesitated about signing him. And who got the team to cover his living expenses. And kept the secret about what Zach’s parents had done. And was more of a father to him than his own dad had been. And…oh, for the love of Wayne Gretzky’s and Martin Brodeur’s love child.
“Fine.” He let out an exaggerated sigh and grabbed his phone from the bench. He didn’t have to scroll long to hit her number in his contacts list, there weren’t enough names in there for that. Then, he thumb typed a quick message.
Zach: U have 2 tickets for tmrw game at will call.
He hesitated and went on.
Zach: Sorry about pics.
He ground his teeth together at the whole rah-rah friendliness vibe of this conversation and took one for the team.
Zach: And thanks for not letting me die.
There. That just about said it all. Hallmark couldn’t have done it better. Also? He wanted to go throw up again. That exchange was about as close to touchy-feely as he got and for damn good reason.
He put his phone back on the bench and looked up at Coach. “Happy now?”
“Not until we beat the Rage tomorrow.” Peppers went to take a drink from his cup and then scowled at it, no doubt because it was empty. “Be sure your Lady Luck is there.”
“She’s not mine.” In fact, Fallon Hartigan was not shy about the fact that she pretty much hated his guts.
Coach shrugged. “But she is lucky. How else do you explain the change in your play?”
He picked up the roll of white tape because in a hockey locker room there was no shame in being superstitious. It was weirder if a member of the team wasn’t. “This.”
“Nope.” Peppers shook his head. “For that one-eighty you needed more than tape. You needed Lady Luck.”
That was a bunch of bullshit. Still, he couldn’t help but let Coach’s words roll over and over in his head as he watched the older man walk away to go have what Coach called “little chats” (translation: bossing-around sessions) with another player.
Fallon Hartigan as his Lady Luck? No way. No fucking way. And he’d prove that against the Rage tomorrow night.
…
Fallon stared at her phone.
Two tickets?
For her?
From him?
Thank you?
She flopped down on her bed, trying to get her brain to process this information. Leaving her thank-you tickets did not sound like something the most-hated man in Harbor City would do—at least not voluntarily. Maybe he was in a good mood for once after he’d had his best night on the ice since he’d gotten traded. The whole team had. They’d crushed the Kodiaks. No doubt, each one of the superstitious players was working the magic of their own particular good luck charm. As a card-carrying Ice Knights fanatic, she knew them all. Coach Peppers had a special tie he only broke out after a win, Stuckey did a handstand walk around the perimeter of the locker room, and—
She jolted into a sitting position, her brain whirring as everything clicked into place.
He hadn’t left two tickets as a thank-you. He’d left two tickets as a bribe for her to be his own human rabbit’s foot. Yeah, she wasn’t the fuzzy bunny type, even if it did get her team a win. A woman had to have standards.
She started typing.
Fallon: Thanks, but no can do on the tickets. Great game last night, though. That check on Nitski was killer.
Zach: Thx Why not?
Fallon: Some of us have to worry about paying bills so we take shifts on our day off.
Not a lie. If she was ever going to stop being her brother Finian’s roommate, she had to save up enough for first and last month’s rent.
Zach: Can’t u get someone to cover your shift?
Probably, but there was more to it than that.
Fallon: I’m volunteering at the clinic after.
Zach: To pay the bills?
She rolled her eyes at her phone, even though he couldn’t see it. It was that or suffer a fatal case of ingested annoyance. The man needed to stop acting like he had the brainpower of a box of rocks. No one who could read a play on the ice like he did lacked in the IQ department. Of course, she wasn’t about to tell him that.
Fallon: Volunteer = no $$$ Did Antoni’s dirty hit rattle your brain before you got sent to the box?
Her blood pressure got jacked up just at the memory of that vicious hit. She’d screamed so loud at the TV that even Finn had told her to calm down.
Zach: Antoni’s an asshole.
Fallon: Some might say it takes one to know one.
She swings. She hits it out of the park. She cackles in her bedroom while texting a guy who had this thing about him that made her nipples stand up and say hello. What? No. That wasn’t it. Not at all. Zach Blackburn was Lucy’s client, and she’d done a solid for a friend. That was all. Nothing more.
Zach: Coach wants you at the game against the Rage. Says ur lucky.
All of the bubbles of giddiness in her chest went flat. Fallon let out a long sigh and fell back onto the bed. And there it was. Confirmation. For once it would be nice if she were wrong about the way things were going to go down.
Fallon: Oh yeah, I’m sure.
Zach: I won’t beg.
Shocker. Next thing he’d be telling her the sky is blue.
Fallon: Good that makes things easier.
The text bubble with its blinking three dots appeared and disappeared several times before his next message finally came through.
Zach: Are you always this bitchy or is it just me?
Wow. If she wasn’t used to being called difficult, bossy, bitchy, a nag, or just a general pain in the ass—which, to some degree, she admitted she was—then his question just might have hurt. Instead, it hit more like a mosquito bite than a bee sting.
Fallon: Some of the latter but definitely more of the former. I have a reputation to uphold. I’m the Wicked Bitch of the ER.
Zach: That doesn’t bother you?
Truth? Sometimes. A weight settled onto her chest, one that she’d learned to live with long ago. She wasn’t about to bend or change her ways just because her personality made other people uncomfortable.
Fallon: As if I’d worry about what a snot-nosed resident said—especially after he said I had to be a bitter dried-up cat lady since I wouldn’t go out with him.
Zach: Are you?
She looked around her room in the bungalow she shared. It used to be Frankie’s room, before he moved in with Lucy. There were still boxes stacked in the corner, because this living arrangement was only temporary, but there weren’t any kitties.
Fallon: No, I just don’t go in for the girlie-girl shit and some assholes see that as an affront to themselves personally.
Zach: People are assholes.
That made her snort-laugh as the invisible rock sitting on her chest shrank.
Fallon: True. Story.
Zach: So what’s the harm in calling in sick to be at the game?
Fallon: Because there are actual lives on the line. Gotta go. Long day tomorrow and no pre-game naps for me.
The text bubble appeared and disappeared a few times again as she got under the covers.
Zach: Night
Fallon put her phone on the nightstand and turned off the lamp. And as she snuggled down into her pillow, she realized she was smiling. Obviously because she was glad to finally be getting some shut-eye during which a certain Ice Knights player would not be making a dream appearance. Her subconscious wouldn’t do her like that.
Chapter Six
Heeeeeeeeeeeeee’s Back…Unfortunately
For a minute, we had a glimpse of the Zach Blackburn that could be. One who sacrificed for his team. One who stopped the puck, set up plays, and delivered the big checks. Last night, the only quality hit the defenseman delivered was one to Harbor City
hockey fans that left their collective hope for a winning season bleeding out on the ice.
Harsh? Yeah.
True? You bet your butt.
Last night, against the most-hated Rage, Blackburn biffed it. Big time. He missed checks. He made bad passes. He took dumb penalties. It was the trifecta of rookie mistakes. But Blackburn isn’t a rookie. He’s an overpaid disappointment—one who seemed more concerned with two empty seats up against the glass than the puck moving down the ice.
According to the whispers, the tickets to those two coveted seats Blackburn was obsessed with, the ones he looked at before almost every play? They were left at will call for Fallon H. and friend. Name doesn’t ring a bell? You’re not alone. However, my well-placed sources tell me that you might know her better as Lady Luck. Yep, that’s right, hockey fans—Lady Luck ditched Blackburn.
Last night’s dismal outing is exactly what we can look forward to for the rest of the season unless Blackburn can figure out a way to make it work without Lady Luck. Because if he doesn’t? That’s when we start a GoFundMe to buy out his contract just for the pleasure of banishing him from town.
Chapter Seven
There were few things worse than participating in a hard, blades-on-the-ice practice with a monster hangover; however, getting tag teamed at nine in the morning after a loss via video chat with his agent, Kyle Harrison, and Lucy topped it. The two of them managed to snipe at each other almost as much as they offered up advice to keep him from fucking up his career any more than it already was.
“Zach baby,” Kyle said, not a bead of sweat on his forehead as he jogged on the treadmill in some expensive, elite gym somewhere on the city’s east side. “You have got to do whatever it takes to turn things around or the Ice Knights’ front office is going to run you out of town.”
“You don’t think I tried?” Zach shoved his hands through his hair, trying to keep it out of his face after another night of sleeping like shit thanks to the gut-gnawing dread eating away at his stomach lining.
“What did you do in the Kodiaks game that was different than before?” Lucy asked before taking a sip of her Mountain Dew, even though it didn’t look like the sun was all the way up yet where she was in Missouri.
What was different? A bunch of shit he didn’t know how to put into words, so he went with the same thing he’d told Coach. “I used the white tape.”
“So you need more?” Kyle asked, his words coming out quick like an overeager puppy. “I can send Mikey down to the store. I’ll send him all over town to get you the brand you want.”
“Holy shit, Kyle. Calm the fuck down.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “You’re worse than Gussie.”
“Who’s Gussie?” Kyle asked.
Lucy looked right at the camera and deadpanned. “My dad’s dog that tries to hump everything.”
“Real classy, Lucy,” Kyle said with a huff.
She shrugged. “Whatever, Kyle.”
One of these days these two were going to get in a cage match to finally fight it out. Zach’s money, what little was left of it, was on Lucy. The woman was a shark in a world full of minnows. Still, as fun as it was to watch them chip away at each other, there was business to discuss.
“Children,” he said as he got out of bed and walked across his room to his closet to grab a hoodie. “Shall we get back to the issue at hand—mainly that trash site The Biscuit and how it’s trying to get me shit-canned?”
“Zach, I love you but you’re doing that yourself,” Lucy said. “You want to shut up the most read hockey blog in Harbor City? Get back the magic you had the other night.”
“You don’t think I’m trying?” Hockey was pretty much the only thing he thought about when he wasn’t trying to figure a way out of the debt-ridden shithole his parents had shoved him into. “I’m the first one on the ice and the last one to leave. If I’m not watching game tape, I’m in the workout room. Hell, I even tried yoga. I’m doing everything I can think of.”
“Are you feeling okay?” Lucy asked, her forehead wrinkling with concern. “I could have Fallon check you out on the down low.”
He yanked the dark blue hoodie over his head before Kyle or Lucy could spot the smile tugging his lips upward at the mention of Fallon’s name. “I’m fine.”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed at something she saw on his face. “What if everyone is right, and The Biscuit is onto something?”
Zach closed his eyes and tried to shut his mouth before a groan of disgust came out, but he whiffed that almost as much as the check he’d tried to put on Fahey the other night.
“Not you, too,” he grumbled as he headed out of the mostly barren walk-in closet toward the kitchen. “I’ve heard enough from Coach already.”
“Peppers thinks there’s something to this Lady Luck thing,” Lucy said as if that solved everything.
“Zach, baby.” Kyle’s voice echoed off the walls of the empty hallway—unless you counted his slides abandoned outside of the kitchen. “Peppers knows his stuff.”
“This isn’t stuff.” Zach strode to the fridge and yanked it open, setting his phone against the gallon of milk so he could maintain eye contact with Lucy and Kyle while rooting around for something to eat. “It’s a woman who hates me.”
“Oh, don’t take that personally,” Lucy said with a laugh. “Fallon hates everybody.”
His agent narrowed his eyes, and the first hint of sweat dotted his forehead. “Not helpful, Lucy.”
“Not asking your opinion, Kyle.” She didn’t flip off the camera, but she might as well have, considering the amount of fuck-you layered into that five-word answer.
This whole conversation was going nowhere. It was ridiculous. He was as superstitious as the next defenseman, but there was just no way. He opened his mouth to say just that, but that’s not what came out. “You really think Fallon’s my four-leaf clover?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way to her, but she might be,” Lucy said. She took a drink of her Mountain Dew and then leaned forward, her eyes sparkling with intensity even in the ultra-bright light of his fridge. “How about an experiment? You get her to come to the next game. See how it goes. If your playing is still for shit, we try something else.”
Kyle sighed and wiped a towel across his forehead. “You know it pains me to say this, Zach baby, but Lucy’s right.”
A shocked silence filled the kitchen as Zach grabbed a pre-made protein shake and his phone before closing the fridge. He’d been working with Kyle and Lucy since he’d kicked his former managers (AKA his parents) to the curb for gross negligence and malfeasance. In the past year, the only thing Kyle and Lucy had ever agreed on was that Zach could get back the magic of playing hockey like he was doing it for fun and not to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. That they’d just done it again—and about Fallon—shook him all the way down to the squishy soles of his slides.
“Someone talk now, or it’ll be weird,” Kyle said, breaking the quiet.
Looking at the problem like he would an opposing team’s first line, he broke it down to the two things he needed to do first. “She’s ignoring my texts, and I don’t know where to find her.”
“You’ve been texting her?” Lucy asked, her tone all but screaming “tell me everything.”
Fallon hadn’t told her best friend what happened when she’d been over here? Interesting. Instead of answering the question on Lucy’s face, he started gulping down the protein shake that tasted like chocolate chalk with a chaser of putrid spinach.
“You’re no fun.” Lucy shook her head. “It’s Saturday, that’s the day of the Hartigans’ weekly family lunch.”
He pictured his own family meals growing up. They’d been silent, uncomfortable, and painful. Why someone would do that voluntarily once a week was beyond him, but if Fallon voluntarily did that maybe that explained why she made him all jumpy—because she was obviously part alien.
Zach set down his now-empty protein shake bottle. “So I catch her there.”
“You might want
to rethink that.” Lucy paused, looking up at the trees and the pink-and-orange sky above her, obviously trying to find the right words. Finally, she let out a little what-the-fuck kind of sigh and dropped her gaze back at the camera. “The Hartigans are a lot to take in. They’re a little overwhelming in their sweet, overbearing, totally-in-your-business way.”
Whatever. “I face down men armed with big-ass sticks and blades who want to take my head off for a living,” Zach said. “I think I can handle one family long enough to convince Fallon to come to tomorrow’s game.”
Lucy started laughing so hard the sheer schadenfreude joy of it bounced off the cathedral ceiling in his kitchen. “Oh, Zach, you have no idea what you’re in for. I’ll text you the address.”
“I’ll calm down the front office, Zach baby,” Kyle said as he got off the treadmill. “You just get back to playing the game the way we all know you can.”
That was the only thing he wanted right now, and he’d do whatever it took to make that happen, even if it meant persuading one Fallon Hartigan to act as his Lady Luck in this harebrained scheme that just might work.
…
Two hours later, Zach was knocking on the door of a single-story ranch house in a working-class neighborhood that looked a lot like the one he’d lived in growing up. The sidewalks were tree-lined, the houses came in what looked like three or four models painted different shades of blues, whites, and yellows, and there were kids playing a pickup game around a basketball hoop set up at the end of the cul-de-sac. Add in a red pickup truck in the drive and a special shed for his hockey gear to air out in and the Hartigan house could have been the one he’d grown up in. He shivered and swallowed the bile burning the back of his tongue. The whole place gave him the heebie-jeebies.
Fuck this.
He was halfway through his turn away from the house when the door opened. A middle-aged woman with sharp eyes and reddish-brown hair pushed open the screen door.
“Can I help yo—” Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God, you’re Zach Blackburn.”