Comeback (26 page)

WE HAD ANOTHER
home game against the Chicago Blackhawks on the schedule for Monday night, before the league was set to go dark for the Christmas break. Hunter was still experiencing some issues with his groin, so after Sunday’s practice, Bergy let me know that I’d be in the net.

“Are you ready?” he asked. He skated alongside me while the most of the team headed off to hit the showers. Bergy was almost as tall as me and still just as fit as he’d ever been. If not for the bits of silver in his hair and the lines on his face that couldn’t be seen until you were right next to him, no one would ever know he was in his mid-forties, and not still in the prime of his playing days. If he decided to come out of retirement and lace up his skates, I had no doubt he’d still be one of the better defensemen in the league, even today. “Because he can go if you can’t,” he added. “I just thought getting him an extra day of rest would be good. And I thought getting you some playing time would be good, too.”

“I’m ready.” I had to be. The longer we waited for me to get my head straight, the more time I had to let everything in my head get screwed up instead.

He clapped me on the back of my shoulder. “Good man. The boys will all be out there with you. It’ll be good for you to get back on the horse.” Then he skated away and off the ice.

I debated whether I wanted to follow him or stick around here. Babs and a few of the other young guys had hung back when everyone else had gone into the locker room. Now they were shooting pucks at the empty net, working on their backhand shots, wraparounds, and the like. Not only that, but Jacks was at the other end of the ice talking to Hunter.

I wasn’t in any big rush to go home after my conversation with Jessica last night. She’d stayed in her own room instead of with me, and I had hardly slept a wink. I hadn’t been able to shut off my brain. I’d replayed our entire conversation incessantly throughout the night, trying to figure out what to do and where to go from there. I’d thought I was starting to come to terms with the direction our relationship had been heading, but now I felt as if we were back at “Start.” Then this morning, she’d gone about her business, making breakfast and talking with the kids as though nothing was wrong, but she hardly looked at me or spoke to me. When she did, it was only to tell me she had made plans with Rachel to take the kids to watch Tuck’s hockey game while I was at practice.

That only made me realize I hadn’t done anything to help the kids get settled in their new life here. I hadn’t signed them up for any sports or after-school activities. Nothing. They went to school and came home, and that was it. I was going to have to correct that before too long.

But at least today, they would be doing something, even if they weren’t going to be involved in the sport themselves. That was thanks to Jessica, and I supposed thanks to Rachel, as well. Either way, my house would be empty when I got home. Even once they all returned, I wasn’t sure what sort of reception I could expect from Jessica. I’d promised to give her the time she needed to think, and I wouldn’t go back on that promise, but it was going to make life miserable for me in the interim. As if my life wasn’t already difficult enough.

If I wasn’t going home, though—and I really had no desire to do so—I might as well give the boys a target to shoot at. I skated over, pulling my mask back into place as Otto Raita spun around while he came from behind the net at high speed, shoving a puck on his backhand between his feet and in the net on the far side. The boys hooted and hollered, cheering him on. It
was
a sick move, I had to give him that. But no one had been trying to stop him. He hadn’t had a defenseman on his heels trying to get that puck away from him, and there wasn’t anyone in the goal.

“Easy enough with a wide-open net, Otter,” I shouted, moving into the crease and ignoring the fact that there wasn’t a damn thing easy about what he’d done. “No chance you’ll do it again, though. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Otter laughed. “You’re good, Nicky. But I’m better.” His Finnish accent was thick, but women found it sexy for whatever reason. As a Swede, I couldn’t say I agreed.

Babs passed a puck to Otter, who skated toward me, pushing out wide to my glove side. So he thought he’d try it from the other angle, then. I reached for it with my stick as he made his move to go behind the net. No good. He managed to avoid my poke check with maybe an inch to spare.

I swiveled my head, following his progress. His eyes stayed on the puck; he was oblivious to me. I pushed over to close off any chance for him to beat me on the near side. Otter made his move, spinning around and shifting the puck to his backhand. He looked up, but it was already too late. I knew exactly where he intended to put his shot and got my glove up just in time for the puck to sail straight into it.

“Robbed,” 501 shouted.

“More like schooled,” Ghost said, laughing.

“Nicky’s a fucking brick wall,” Babs added, tapping a stick on my pads. “Keep that shit up. We need it if we’re going to get in to the playoffs this year.”

“We’re getting in to the fucking playoffs,” I said.

Babs just eyed me for a long minute. “Deal?” he finally said.

I’d made a deal with him once before. We’d promised each other that the two of us would do whatever it took to get the team to the playoffs the next year. He’d kept up his end of the bargain. I hadn’t. I’d let pills get in the way.

“Yeah,” I said, putting all the conviction I could into the word. “Deal.”

He nodded. “Good.”

No time like the present to start proving it, either. We were all out here staying late to work on our skills, and there was no reason I couldn’t give these younger guys a few pointers from a goalie’s perspective. Goal scorers could help one another out with certain things, but there were other things they never thought about.

I tossed the puck back to the ice in front of Otter. “Keep your eye on the goalie, not the puck,” I told him. “You’ve been playing this game long enough that you can feel the puck on your stick. You know where it is. You need to know what the goalie’s going to do, though, because you can bet he’s going to be watching you to get a read, figure out your plan.”

He gave me a go-to-hell look, but then he took the puck and tried it again without another word.

Jacks came over after he finished his conversation with Hunter. He started giving me pointers the same way I had been helping out the guys, making sure I was staying focused on the present. “You are one with the puck,” he’d say to me every now and then, or some other random Zen sort of thing that shouldn’t make any sense but really worked with my mindset. “Tune out everything but the shooter. No crowd. No coaches or teammates or anything else. It’s just the two of you and the puck.” He broke out a tennis ball at one point, replacing the puck with it, and had us keep going. As crazy as his methods might be sometimes, I couldn’t deny the fact that he was helping me get my head where it needed to be.

I stayed out with Jacks and the guys for another half hour or more, letting them shoot on me. Then we finally called it quits and headed in to clean up.

“Coming to lunch?” Babs asked me. “Just you and me? I think they’re trying to plan some sort of last-minute birthday thing for me, and I am really not in the mood. Help me out. Give me an excuse.”

“Yeah, sure.” Since the kids weren’t likely to be there, I wasn’t in any big rush to get home. I wasn’t sure what was going on with Babs and why he didn’t want to hang out with the boys on his birthday, but I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Jim stopped me and Jacks in the hall so we could talk briefly, and the rest of the guys went on ahead.

“I’ll catch up in a minute,” I said to Babs when he looked back at me.

Jim apparently just wanted to check in, make sure that I felt good about being in the net tomorrow night and that Jacks felt confident I could handle it. Bergy had told him the plan once he’d left the ice a little while ago, and while it was ultimately the coach’s decision, Jim always liked to get a read on the situation surrounding his players. He had been keeping pretty close tabs on me all season, but particularly since Emma’s death.

Part of it was because he was just that kind of guy. He ran the organization as though we were a family more than a business. But I had to wonder how much of it was because his job could be riding on the outcome of this season, and he had taken maybe the biggest chance of his career on me. I didn’t want to let him down.

The Storm had been in the playoffs now for several years running, but so far we hadn’t ever made it out of the second round. That wasn’t good enough for Mr. Engels. He wanted a Stanley Cup. Hell, we all did. But the rumblings coming from the hockey media all pointed toward Jim being on the hot seat if we didn’t do better this year than we had in the past. They said he was too stuck on his hard-luck cases, on giving guys a second chance and a third chance and even a fifth chance when really he should have moved on already.

None of those had been a bigger risk than me, though, and I knew it.

Once Jim was satisfied and let me go, I headed for the locker room, only to run into Babs in the hallway talking to Katie Weber. She was the oldest daughter of David Weber, who was currently one of our assistant coaches and formerly a teammate. Not only that, but she was the girl Babs had been half in love with and pining after for years while she’d been trying to get her acting career off the ground in Hollywood. Her TV show,
The Cool Kids
, had hit it big about three years ago, and she and the other young stars had been getting the full Hollywood glam treatment ever since.

Since Webs was one of the coaches here, her parents and siblings still lived in Portland. She dropped by for the holidays usually, and sometimes, by the time we got into the playoffs, she would be finished with filming for the season, so we would see her around. Katie must be home for Christmas now. I knew her family would be glad.

But her visits always did a number on Babs. He did all right as long as she wasn’t around, but having her here where he could see her all the time just reminded him he was still a mess over her but couldn’t have her. He’d dated a few girls in the last couple of years—maybe in an effort to get himself out of a funk—but to my knowledge none of them had ever become anything serious. He had plenty of girls throwing themselves at his feet, though. All he had to do was pick which one he wanted and I had no doubt she’d drop everything and anyone to be his girlfriend.

The problem was, the only girl Babs seemed to want was Katie Weber.

“Nicky!” she said as soon as she saw me. She pulled me into her arms and hugged me, planting a kiss on my cheek. She pulled back to look at me, her blue eyes glittering with excitement. “Merry Christmas. I’ve been so worried about you ever since Mom told me— Well, never mind about all that. The point is I’ve been worried. Are you doing all right?”

“I… Yeah, I’m okay.” If people didn’t stop asking me that soon, I was going to lose my shit. I was sick to death of telling people I was all right. “Have you been home long?”

“Just flew in this morning and came out to surprise my dad. I was on my way to his office when I ran into Jamie and had to stop to say hi.”

Babs looked like he wished she hadn’t run into him. Or at least that she hadn’t stopped to talk. That was something he was going to have to deal with, though.

I slapped him on the back. “I’ll leave you two to it, then. See you in a bit for lunch?”

He nodded, his expression unreadable. “Yeah, be there soon.”

I headed in for my shower and left him to figure out how to get through Katie’s current visit with his heart unscathed. By the time I was finished getting dressed, Babs was ready and waiting.

“You sure you still want to go out with just me?” he asked. “I doubt I’ll be good company right now.”

“I’m not very good company right now, either. Come on. We can be miserable together.”

Misery does love company, after all.

“SHE’S DATING SOME
asswipe named Beau,” Babs said across the table. “Who the fuck names their kid Beau?”

He set down his fork and looked at me as if I was going to be able to address all the problems in his life. I was tempted to tell him he’d brought the wrong guy to lunch because I couldn’t even sort out my own problems. But he already knew that. Or he should, at least.

“Is it serious?” I asked. It was nice to be able to focus on his problems instead of my own. I was hoping to keep the conversation geared in that direction, at least for a little while.

“She brought him home for Christmas, so you tell me how serious it is.”

Something told me Beau might not make a return trip to Portland anytime soon, after spending a few days with the Weber family. Katie’s father was not one to make it easy on guys who wanted to date his daughters, and I doubted the fact that Katie was a grown woman would change his mind on that score. Beau would likely hightail it out of there as fast as he could and not look back.

“She’s dated a few guys lately,” I said, ignoring the fact that none of them had warranted a trip to meet the family. She’d been plastered all over entertainment TV shows and magazines, hand in hand with several different guys in the last few years. They were always quick to point out who she was with now. “Hell, you’ve dated a few girls lately,” I added.