In the Zone (Portland Storm 5) (30 page)

“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.

B
ETWEEN 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 the 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.