Well, fuck that asshole. If he thought that was going to take me out of the game, he hadn’t counted on my team rallying around me and the power of pissing me off.
Maybe his plan might have worked had Evan been truly hurt but since he wasn’t, all it accomplished was to further bond us in our desire to annihilate his team. RIP the rest of them, but they had chosen to play with a couple of snide, selfish asshats.
I knew when Alan sent me down the ice to provide a target for Robbie’s practice shots that he had done it to distract me. It was a good move on his part and I leaned into it, giving Robbie a few harder shots to execute because I could see the lines and knew if he got his weight right, he could make them even without sweepers.
And he did because as he’d said at the press conference, he had our backs. He was ready and I loved this for him, being an even more real part of our path to the Olympics.
I probably should not have taken quite so much glee in the anticipation of watching Jason see his plan backfire in his face. But I was only human and he had come after one of the guys I loved, so…
Well, shit. I straightened as Robbie released his last practice shot, and searched out Alan. The other guy I loved. He smiled at me, like he knew exactly what was going through my head.
Jason Darren would not know what hit him when he realized he’d messed with the wrong family.
CHAPTER 30
EVAN
Watchingmy team from the stands as they strove to win the final game that would get us to the Olympics was arguably more exhausting than being out there with them.
But because I had been removed from the play due to injury—it was just a standing thing that falling and hitting your head on the ice meant you got off the ice for the next forty-eight hours—I wasn’t allowed in the players’ area.
I had never been so grateful for my brother. He asked once if I was okay, accepted my assurance that I was, and proceeded to cheer louder than any other person in the stands for every good shot my team made.
And they made a lot of good shots.
They had to, because despite the Pickering team clearly unhappy with Jason, they played a good game, each one of them rallying with difficult shots and smart strategies. The difference was, they weren’t working as a team so as hard as their Skip tried to pull them together, when each player was calling his own shots or overriding his suggestions, even if they made most of the shots they took, it wasn’t a winning strategy.
They tried to force us to take a point, and with someone less talented than Alan on the hammer, it probably would haveworked. But Alan did what Jason had once accused him of, and took the glory shot, throwing hard and fast, slamming not just our shot rock, but also the other team’s only rock in the house, as well as his brick out of play, allowing us to keep the hammer going into the ninth.
His shot had the fans on their feet and that was all I needed to know about where their hearts were.
The next end was a string of takeouts. Predictable, and what we needed to do to preserve our lead.
It made Pickering desperate to score in the tenth end and it looked like they might by the time Perry was delivering his stones. They had the shot rock, three other stones in the house, and a fairly easy shot to remove the one stone we had there that would open it up for all four of theirs to score.
Now was the crucial time for Perry to keep his focus on the game.
So when he looked into the stands for me, my heart sank. Was he too distracted by my not being there?
I gave him a thumbs up and he smiled back.
I could have hugged Robbie when he slid over to my boyfriend, shook his shoulder slightly, and pointed his attention down the ice. When Perry’s attention had gone back to the play, Robbie caught my eye and grinned.
“I got this,” he said—I think, since I had no hope of actually hearing him from where I was—and I chose to believe he did have it, so I nodded.
CHAPTER 31
PERRY
“It’s tricky,”Robbie said, standing next to me as we waited for Alan to pick my shot.
I pulled my attention away from the stands where Evan was sitting, and onto the ice, where it should be. “Yeah. No one ever said they weren’t good curlers.” I pulled in a deep breath and watched. “He’s going to say guard our stone. If we keep them to one point, we still win.”
Robbie nodded. “It’s what I would call.”
“I can take out their shot rock.”
“That’s an outside curl.”
