August did as he was told, slumping into one of the uncomfortable chairs facing the man’s desk. He figured that when Fedorov had become the coach three years ago, they had let him redo the office, and he’d chosen the most uncomfortable chairs on purpose. He wanted them sitting up straight when they faced him.
God knows, the previous Bigfoot’s Coach had had a warmer office, but that man hadn’t gotten them to the playoffs, especially not the last three years in a row.
August was as impressed with the man as he was intimidated by him.
“So,” Coach started, staring at August through thick, bushy eyebrows. “You came to play today.”
Biting back a false response about how healways came to play, August nodded.
“Good, everyone have bad day. Too many bad days, no longer bad days, but just days. You understand?”
August nodded again, trying not to let his mind wander back to the altercation before practice. He was sure that Callahan was going to start something on the ice, but other than shoving him into the boards a few times, he’d mostly ignored August.
“You are big, strong man, yes, but if you were my son, I would leave you in snow to die.” A pause, then, “I assume you have no Russian blood? That is not how you got name?”
August bit back a laugh and shook his head. “No, Coach.”
“Good. Embarrassment to Russians.” He levelled a look at him. “You keep up good days, yes?”
Coach continued to talk to him, going over plays he wanted to try with Gomez, the other d-man on his line. While August listened at first, he found his mind drifting, and the sense of dread surrounded him as he sat in the coach’s office.
The room was too warm, the air stale, the faint scent of rink ice and old hockey gear lingering even in the expensively furnished office. It wasn’t the cramped room from high school, where his knees had brushed the underside of the desk, too big for the space.
It wasn’t dimly lit likethatone, either, with the single swinging bulb overhead casting a weak glow, and the red blink from the bookshelf the only other light source in the room—
Coach Fedorov slapped his hands on the desk, causing August to jump, both physically and mentally. His brain suddenly returned to the West Coast in the fancy office in the Bigfoot’s arena.
“Cool off, keep mind sharp for game tonight, yes?”
Coach hadn’t appeared to notice August’s attention slip. He waved him out and picked up his desk phone, talking to someone almost immediately.
Numbly, August went to the gym, past the equipment where several teammates lingered, and into the next room, where Gomez and a fourth-liner named Ayres were taking ice baths. Gomez shrieked as he sank in, Ayres laughing at his misery.
August moved to the far side, where an assistant was filling the hot baths. He waved in greeting and began to strip, hissing as he lowered himself into the water. His muscles would thank him later, but right now,he only wanted to feel clean—to peel a layer of skin away and, with it, everything clinging beneath.
Chapter 9
Quinn
It had been a long night. He’d been in class all day, then picked the girls up from their after-school group around 4 o’clock before bringing them home and making supper. Sometimes they were the sweetest angels, and other times, like tonight, he realized that going back to school to get his master’s degree in fine art was a thousand times easier than raising twin girls.
He’d been in the midst of cooking when a fight broke out over a now headless doll, and by the time he’d gotten to their playroom, Alara had gotten out the paints and somehow decided that was the best weapon to be used against her sister. Then two six-year-olds and their play kitchen had become covered in red paint, and everything else looked like a fresh crime scene straight out of Law & Order.
When he’d finally broken up the fight, by which time there was a lot of hair-pulling and one punched nose, the house had filled with smoke because he’d left the stove on in his hurry to get to them.
Two hours later, he finally had them both clean again. He gave in and made them bologna sandwiches for supper since it was the only thing they agreed to eat, and then it was bedtime.
It was close to 10:00 pm by the time Quinn settled down with his take-out pasta dish and a glass of wine, catching the end of the hockey game before he turned Netflix on to watch a reality show he’d been binging.
Something about pretty people and their drama soothed him because it was so far from his own reality of part-time nanny/full-time uncle, and mourning brother.
Next thing he knew, the sound of keys in the door and footsteps startled him awake, and he sat up groggily from his nest on the couch. Rubbing his eyes, he gave Eren a little wave as he walked in.
His brother-in-law set his bag down in the entryway, kicking his loafers off and pulling his tie loose as he came to sit in the living room.
“Good game,” Quinn told him, nodding his head toward the TV.
“You watched it?” Eren asked, surprised.
