Dropping Gloves (7 page)

She sipped and lowered her glass, eyeing me astutely. “Why do you think he gave Tim that prom picture, Katie? Why
that
picture, when there were dozens—hundreds, even—he could have given them that would have elicited a big reaction from the crowd?”

That was an excellent question.

To my surprise
, Webs didn’t treat me any differently that week than he ever did, at practice, in games, or anywhere else. I must not have pissed him off as badly as I’d thought I had. I’d been bracing myself for the worst, whatever that might turn out to be, but he acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

He had always been full of threats as far as Katie was concerned, but he’d never actually acted on any of them. At least not with me. I was pretty sure he never had with any of the other asswipes she’d dated over the years, either, despite the fact that some of them definitely deserved it. Maybe I deserved it, too. But…nothing. Nada. No reaction at all.

That said, I would never put it past him to change his mind about torturing me. As soon as I convinced myself I was in the clear, he was bound to follow through, and then my dick and balls might not be where they’d started out anymore, or at the very least, they would no longer be in usable condition. To be safe, I’d been keeping my distance as well as I could manage, considering I still had to go to all the same team functions as him.

We had back-to-back games involving a short trip out of town, and we were going to be without Soupy for the foreseeable future. The doctors were still determining how serious his injury was, but the coaches had let us know we wouldn’t be seeing him for a while. They kept throwing around the term
ACL
, which could mean Soupy was done for the season. That meant we had a young guy called up from our American Hockey League affiliate, the Seattle Storm. Austin Cooper was the lucky twenty-year-old getting the chance to make an impression. I had volunteered to be Coop’s road roommate. I didn’t have to have one anymore, but I figured it would be a good way to get to know the guy and make him feel welcome. If he stuck around for a while, maybe he could come and stay at my house. I’d made the offer, but he still didn’t know how long he’d be with us, so nothing had been settled.

The first game was against the Panthers at home, followed by a match against the Wild on the road. We pulled off a hard-fought win against Florida, partially due to Coop scoring on his first NHL shot, and we came out of Minnesota with an overtime loss. Immediately after that game, we headed to the airport and flew to Dallas for the second and last game on this brief road trip.

After eating the chicken parm and salad the flight attendants served us, I spent the rest of our time in the air playing Texas Hold ’Em with RJ, Burnzie, and Ghost. Or maybe
losing my ass to Ghost
would be more accurate. The guy’s face never gave a fucking thing away. By the time we touched down at Love Field, I was pretty sure he had bluffed me out of at least a few hundred dollars, and both RJ and Burnzie were definitely lighter in the pockets, too, but there was no chance Ghost would admit to any deception.

“If you think I’m bluffing, call me on it,” Ghost said, slinging his carry-on bag over his shoulder before heading up the aisle.

Burnzie filed in behind him. “Every time I stayed in, you took all my money,” he grumbled.

Ghost laughed.

The second I stepped out on the stairs coming down from the plane, the heat hit me like a slap shot to the gut. It was about three in the morning, but it had to be close to ninety degrees out even though we were getting close to Halloween. I wished I had taken off my suit jacket and tie before getting out in the Texas air, but at least I didn’t have on a bulky coat.

Mom had texted me a day or two ago that it was already snowing back home. I imagined that for the guys who played on teams down south, there had to be a bit of a shock to the system. Well, at least for most of them. These days, there were starting to be guys drafted who’d grown up in Texas, California, Florida… They were still the exception, though, not the rule. Most guys in the league came from places where snow was a lot more common than triple-digit temperatures.

We all headed to the waiting bus, which took us to our hotel. I was on my way to the front desk to get the envelope with my room key when Webs came up alongside me and took my arm, hauling me to a stop. He didn’t say anything, only nudging his head to a quiet hallway off to the side of the lobby, but there was something familiar in the crease of his forehead that turned my dinner to concrete.

I followed him until he turned and faced me.

“Katie’s cancer is back,” he said without preamble.

He might as well have punched me in the gut. His words hurt as bad as that would have. Worse, even. Much worse. The concrete that had replaced my stomach had bubbled up into my throat. My lungs were collapsing on me, and that fucking cement block in my throat wouldn’t budge no matter how hard I swallowed.

“Laura left me a message to fill me in. She knew my phone would be off but I needed to know.”

Laura was his wife, Katie’s mom. I nodded, then wished I hadn’t because that small motion was all it took to melt the concrete and turn it to bile.

Webs’s voice crunched over every word, and his fists kept clenching and releasing at his sides. “They have to run a bunch more tests, figure out exactly what we’re dealing with this time. Figure out a plan. Katie didn’t—” He dragged a hand through his hair before punching the wall and pressing his forehead to the same spot.

I might have done the same if I thought it would help. I knew better, though. There wasn’t a fucking thing I could do that would make it feel better. Nothing I could do would help.

After a moment, he turned to me again with shining eyes. “Katie didn’t want me to tell you, but I thought you needed to know. I just— I thought you should know.”

I might have nodded. I couldn’t be sure because after the debilitating blow of his words, everything in me went numb. Maybe I was in shock. Maybe my body was shutting down my ability to feel because pain on that level was more than I could take, and something in my brain knew that better than I did. “Thanks,” I croaked out, but I didn’t know why I was thanking him.

Because I’d told Katie I couldn’t be in her life anymore.

Because loving her hurt too much.

And all this did was make everything else hurt worse.

“I’ll keep you informed,” Webs said. “Once the tests come back. Once we know.”

“Okay,” I forced through clenched teeth, but what I wanted to say was
no
. I wished he hadn’t told me. Not any of it. If I didn’t know Katie’s cancer had returned, then I would have been able to go on nursing my broken heart. Maybe one day it would have healed enough that I could have moved on.

But right now, all I could think about was going back. Back in time. Back to Portland. Back to Katie.

“She’s going to be all right.” His voice cracked over the words, the crunching giving way to emotion like water bursting through a dam. “Right? She’s beat it before, so she—” He couldn’t go on, but there was no need to.

I was torn between the desire to punch something until my knuckles bled and the feeling that I should try to comfort him.

Webs didn’t exactly give me the chance to figure it out, either. He muttered, “Fuck,” and closed the distance between us, tugging me in for a bear hug. He was just as strong as he’d been back when he was still one of my teammates. His arms were like a vise around me. There was no escape.

Out of instinct, I put my arms around him and patted his back.

That was when Burnzie and Ghost ambled into the hall, busting a gut laughing about something. Webs released me almost immediately, but I knew my face would give away my embarrassment at being caught like that. I had always blushed way too fucking easily, which only embarrassed me more than I already was. Pissed me off. Blushing was something that people normally associated with teenaged girls, like the ones who were always following me and Levi around and gushing over how cute we were. I was a twenty-four-year-old man, for Christ’s sake, and I still blushed as bad as I ever had.

“Shit,” Ghost said. “Sorry, we, uh…”

“We were just heading the other way,” Burnzie said, physically turning Ghost around and dragging him back toward the hotel lobby.

“What—” Ghost started.

“None of our fucking business is what,” Burnzie muttered right before they turned the corner.

“Sorry,” Webs said, clearing his throat once they’d disappeared.

“Don’t be,” I said out of habit.

He sniffled, and his facial muscles twitched as he tried to get himself back under control. “You should head up,” he said. “Try to sleep.”

“Yeah.” I shoved my hands in my pockets, wishing I had a rock to kick around with my toes. “You should, too. Sleep,” I clarified.

He gave me a wry half smile. “Not a lot of chance that’s going to happen.”

Not for me, either, but if anyone understood that, it was Webs. I nodded and shuffled off down the hall. Instead of turning for the elevator bay, I followed the signs to the hotel’s gym, stripping off my jacket and tie and rolling up my sleeves as I went.

There wasn’t a punching bag, which was what I really wanted now that I was here, but maybe that was for the best. Bruising my hands probably wouldn’t be my best move at the moment. Regardless of what was going on with Katie, I still had hockey to play and a team to lead. In the end, I got on a bike and tried to wear myself out to the point that I couldn’t think. Letting myself think only led me back to Katie. Should I call her or try to talk to her? The idea of taking back everything I’d said to her about no longer being her friend was weighing on me, and I was afraid I might end up doing just that. And then where would it leave me? She was still going to leave. She’d beat cancer again, and she would go back to Hollywood and date some asswipe who could never deserve her, and I would be left here to nurse my broken heart once more. That was the only sort of leaving I could let myself contemplate; the other possibilities threatened to rip my heart out just by allowing them to flit across the corners of my mind.

I cycled harder in an effort to rid my mind of any thought of her. I don’t know how long I was on that stupid stationary bike. Long enough that I had sweated through my clothes and would have to send them off for cleaning. Long enough that my muscles were screaming for relief. Long enough that I should have stopped thinking about anything but getting off the fucking thing, taking a shower, and going to bed, but I could still think of nothing but Katie. At some point, the gym door opened, and Levi, Burnzie, Ghost, Coop, and half a dozen of our other teammates came in. They should have all been in bed. I should have, too, but that was beside the point.

Levi picked up my tie and jacket from the floor, where I’d tossed them before getting on the bike. “Come on,” he said.

I shook my head. “Go up to bed.”

Ghost grabbed the handle of my carry-on bag, ready to haul it off. “Not until you come, too,” he said.

“Why the hell are you guys even down here?” It had to be four or five in the morning by now, and we had a mandatory meeting and film session scheduled for after breakfast. That was going to be here far earlier than I would want to be up.

Burnzie came over behind me and gave me a cuff on the backside of my head, something he’d been doing since my rookie season. “Because you are, you dumb fuck, why do you think? Ghost and I got Webs to tell us what was going on when he came through the lobby. We were still debating how long we should let you sulk when Coop came wandering around like a lost puppy and said you still hadn’t picked up your room key or headed up. That was when we all got together and decided to figure out where you were.”