Comeback (9 page)

I had faced him plenty of times before. I knew his game well. Big guy. Lots of speed. Delicate hands. His eyes were on me, not the puck. He barreled in down the left wing side with a full head of steam. I knew he liked to deke a couple of times, and he might pull it to his backhand in an attempt to fool me.

I skated out of my crease, cutting down the angle. Backed in with him. He moved it to his forehand. Backhand. Forehand again. I made my move about a half-second too soon. The puck sailed over my glove.
Clang
. Spun my head around to see the puck shooting off into the corner. No red light. Harry finally caught up to the play and regained possession of the puck. He turned it back up ice. I made a mental note to kiss the crossbar for saving my bacon during the next stoppage of play.

In the blink of an eye, Eberle puck-jacked Harry and turned it into our zone, and then our boys were all in scramble mode, trying to race back so they weren’t caught out of position. Too late, though. It was a three on one, all three of the guys on their top line. Burnzie was our one defenseman not caught flat-footed. I focused on the puck carrier as Burnzie picked his moment and dove down to the ice to block a pass. But he picked the wrong moment. The puck floated just past his stick and onto Hall’s. I scrambled over to the other side of the net. The crossbar didn’t save me this time. The puck went five-hole, right between my legs before I could close it down. Red light. The Oilers who were on the ice had a little celebration, but we were still up by one.

“Sorry, Nicky,” Harry said as he skated behind my goal. “I fucked that one up.” He tapped my pads with his stick before skating off.

He
had
fucked up, but it wasn’t his fault. Not entirely, at least. Pretty much every guy on the ice could be blamed for some part of that foul up. Everything had fallen apart the moment I lost focus and 501 took a bad change. In the stats columns, though, it was going to look worse for me than for anyone else.

It was just one goal. Not the end of the world, I reminded myself. I focused on the guys at center ice getting ready to take the next face-off. Bergy had sent out our top line of Babs, RJ, and Luddy, clearly wanting to regain the momentum. It didn’t exactly work out that way. The ref dropped the puck, the Oilers won it, and they were streaking in on me almost before I was set.

The first shot went high, glove side. I got a piece of it but wasn’t able to snag the puck and stop play. The rebound went straight to another Oilers’ forward. Even their defense had activated on the play, pinching in and pushing hard for the tying goal. They made a couple of crisp passes while my guys flailed to get things under control. Not a good combination.

Babs blocked a shot from the point and came up with a broken stick and the inability to put any weight on his left leg. His shout of
Fuck!
had probably been audible all the way up to the owner’s box because the whole arena seemed to take a collective breath. We needed to clear the puck for him to get off the ice, but none of our guys could get a stick on it. A couple more passes, then a shot from the slot. I got just enough of it with my toe to keep it from going in. Couldn’t control the rebound that time, either. Kicked it straight at an Oiler, who pulled it to his backhand and went high stick side. The crossbar saved me again, but we still couldn’t gather in that damn little piece of rubber.

Eventually, Babs was able to put some weight on his leg again. He stayed with the point man, trying to kick the puck out of the zone with his skate every chance he got. At one point, he got his skate blade on it and shoved it out, but he didn’t get enough on it and only cleared it to center ice. The Oilers got out of the zone, changed a few players, and immediately brought it back in. None of our guys, including Babs, was able to get off the ice for a change, but he got a new stick, at least.

The onslaught continued until they got the puck into the crease. I tried to snag it, but too many bodies came crashing in around me and I couldn’t get it covered. The Oilers kept poking at it, and my guys were trying to push it underneath me so the ref would blow the whistle. I kept my eye on that little black disk, constantly trying to draw it in so I could cover it. No use. Burnzie and Babs somehow ended up behind me, both of them pretty much thoroughly in the net. An Oilers’ stick tipped the puck just before I got my glove over it, pushing it behind me. I had gone down in a split at some point, and I tried to flip and twist my body around to grab the puck, but it was too late. It crossed the line, the goal light came on, and we had a tie game.

I dropped down onto my ass while the bodies surrounding my crease cleared out.

“Well, fuck. We’ll get that one back for you, Nicky,” Burnzie said, cuffing a gloved hand over my helmet.

I didn’t say anything to Burnzie. What was there to say? I wasn’t really paying much attention to him, anyway. My eyes were on Bergy as I tried to figure out what he was thinking. Did he want to pull me and put Hunter in? Was he blaming me for the way the game had turned around?

Babs was the last guy to clear out, gingerly putting his weight on his left leg.

“You all right?” I asked.

He grunted. “Just a stinger. I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t have enough padding on to be blocking shots like that.”

“What are you saying?” he asked, feigning offense but with a huge grin on his face. “I should leave stopping pucks to your sorry ass?”

“My ass might have been the way to go with that one. I tried everything else in the book and nothing worked.”

He tapped my pads with his stick. “It’s fucking big enough, you’d think it’d work. Your ass, I mean.” Then he skated over to the bench.

I couldn’t help it. I busted out laughing, probably because that was the first time one of the guys had really picked on me in a long time. Maybe, at least as far as Babs was concerned, I was still the same Nicky he’d known when he’d first come into the league. Maybe I was starting to earn my way back.

I took off my mask and rolled my head, stretching my neck to get ready for the game to start up again. I’d let a couple pucks in, but this game wasn’t over. We still had a chance to win, and fuck if I was going to roll over and let them beat me that easily.

NILS HAD FALLEN
asleep on my lap late in the second period. I wasn’t really sure how to feel about it. I mean, I’d just met these kids, and he was already climbing up in my lap and making himself comfortable enough that he could fall asleep on me.

“Sorry about that,” Emma had said through her computer, but she hadn’t looked sorry. The look in her eyes was pleased, which only confused things even more in my head.

There was a part of me that was nearly giddy about Nils taking to me so easily, too, but I tried to shake the sensation. The thing was, I’d always wanted kids. Steve and I had almost started a family, too, but I’d had reservations about having children with him. Mainly because of his drinking. I hadn’t wanted to bring kids into this world and then subject them to an alcoholic father. But there hadn’t been anyone since we’d divorced—at least no one I would have thought about having a family with—and it was getting pretty late for me to think about having babies. I was thirty-six and not in a relationship, so I was starting to resign myself to the fact that if I was ever going to have children, I was going to have to marry a man who already had some or adopt. They weren’t going to come from me. And that was all right. I wasn’t dead set on doing the whole pregnancy-slash-childbirth thing. It seemed messy and uncomfortable and incredibly painful.

But again, these weren’t my kids, and they couldn’t be. They were Emma’s, and once she passed they would be with Nicky, and whether I was willing to have a relationship with him or not, he wasn’t in any position to start one. He saw me more as a mentor or counselor or something like that these days. Our relationship was similar to that of a sponsor and a newbie in a rehab program. I was someone he could talk to about his problems without worrying what I would think of him. That was all we were, and it was all we could be.

His nephew was still asleep in my arms, though, and I was loving every second of it.

I’d spent some time talking with Emma and Henrik during the game, and I’d introduced them to some of the guys’ wives that I had gotten to know through various events and fundraisers. Rachel Campbell was probably the one I knew best, since she was also Jim Sutter’s assistant and I worked with them on a somewhat consistent basis, but she’d had her hands full with her twin one-year-olds and, of course, her son, Tuck.

She wasn’t the only one with little ones, these days, either. It was practically a nursery up here, and being around the team was starting to feel like I was in a baby factory. Just about all of the wives in the owner’s box tonight had been popping them out like crazy in the last several years. The d’Aragons had three teenagers, and Julianne didn’t seem ready to add to their brood anytime soon, but she was pretty much the only player’s wife up here not drinking from the baby-making Kool-Aid. I supposed I could add Brie Hayden to that list, but likely only because she and Keith Burns hadn’t gotten married yet. Their wedding was slated for this summer, though, so by this time next year…

Brenden and Rachel Campbell had their twin baby girls to go along with their two older kids, Tuck and Maddie; the married, then divorced, then remarried Quinceys had Marley and Mason to chase around, both toddlers; the Zellingers had recently added Ryan to the family, who joined older sister Emily; Cam and Sara Johnson’s two-year-old son, Connor, had a sibling on the way; Ilya Demidov’s wife was in a very advanced state of pregnancy and looked like she might burst at any moment. Heck, even Liam and Noelle Kallen had joined the baby train, even though he wasn’t playing any longer and they weren’t here right now. Little Oscar was always trying to keep up with the other kids when they were here instead of in Sweden. It made me want kids even more, being around all of these little ones.

It also made me uncomfortable. Being up here, surrounded by all of the players’ families, only emphasized how much I didn’t belong with them. I didn’t have a family. I wasn’t part of this family. I shouldn’t have agreed to come up here with them tonight. I should have just gone to my usual seat, out with the crowd.

But now that the game was over—the Storm had pulled out a win for Nicky in overtime, thank goodness—they were starting to clear out and take their kids home to their beds, and it was once again quiet enough for conversation. Rachel hadn’t left yet, so Maddie was keeping Elin entertained and Tuck was dreaming up some trouble to get into with Hugo. They were oblivious to the adults, and Henrik was keeping a good eye on them all.

Emma wheeled closer to me and started typing into her computer. “You’re single?”

“Divorced for seven years. He was an alcoholic and it just—” I shook my head. “It didn’t work.”

“It’s hard to love an addict.”

“You have no idea,” I said, and wished I could take it back. “Or maybe you do,” I amended.

“I do. But my brother is easy to love. He’s just hurting, and then he does things that hurt himself even more.” She waited a moment before typing some more. “Soon he’s going to hurt more than he already does. I’m worried about him.”

“I am, too.” More and more worried with each day that passed. That was why, despite all my misgivings, I couldn’t seem to keep my distance. It was why I’d come up here with his family in spite of it all.

“Nicky really respects you,” the robotic voice said. “And my kids like you.”

“I like them, too,” I said, but I was immediately on my guard because of the turn in the conversation. Where was she heading with this?

“He’s going to need help when I’m gone.”

“Yes, he will.” I’d been trying to help him find a live-in nanny, but so far we’d struck out. Either they didn’t have enough experience, or they weren’t willing to take on three kids, or they refused to take the job because Nicky would have to travel and they wouldn’t be able to have time off while he was gone. Nothing was panning out, not even the recommendations Jim had given us.

“The other guys’ wives all have their hands full already with their own kids,” she said. She and Nicky had the same eyes, I noticed—brown, expressive, and so deep you could drown in them. Those eyes were boring into me now. “He won’t ask you. He thinks he’s already asked you for too much. He thinks it all has to be his burden.”

I had been right to be wary, then. “What kind of help are you asking me for?” I asked. The direct route seemed to be the best. Emma certainly wasn’t beating around the bush, so why should I?

“You know what I’m asking.”

I did. She wanted me to live with them. She wanted me to be the mother figure in those children’s lives. She wanted me to let Nicky and those kids past all of the protections I’d built up around my heart. And she was also right that there was some part of me that wanted it, however crazy that made me. But I was a stranger to these kids, and little more than one to Nicky. I knew
him
, but I hadn’t exactly let him get to know
me
. I couldn’t just step in and fill her shoes.