Shit, I think, but smile because she must know they’ll be okay. “That’s a good thing.”
“It is. I truly think it’s going to be okay. Kyle and his bitch won’t press for custody that he didn’t want to begin with, if it could expose them for who they are. He cares more about his image than our little Savannah.”
“I’m going to miss her little smile and hanging out with?—”
“Oh no, you won’t, you’re on the list. Any game you can make, you’d better be here.”
She hands me an envelope, “This is for you.”
I hate taking money for doing a good deed, but I am so close to having enough for a security deposit and first and last month’s rent at… wherever my doctorate takes me.
“Oh my God, take it,” Sofie laughs.
So, I do.
Chapter 2
Game Time
Faulker
The locker room buzzes with half-whispered exchanges, the distant pulse of a bassline playing in the arena, and tape tearing. I settle onto the bench, roll my shoulders, and indulge in the quiet before the storm.
Hank Marshall flicks me a sideways look. “You’re too damn relaxed for being thirty minutes to puck drop.”
“Time’s a human construct.” I shrug.
He snorts.
I’m never in a rush to tighten my skates. Hurry breeds mistakes, and mistakes always get blamed on defensemen. I like it here. Like my contract and my lifestyle, so it’s better to wait until the last possible second in hopes to avoid the inevitable from coming too quickly.
Across the room, Kozlov is stretching out in nothing but compression pants, feet propped up on his duffel, scrolling through something on his phone with indifference. Callahan sits backwards on a folding chair, chewing a grimy mouthguardand eyeing the headlines on the wall-mounted TV, but his ears are clearly tuned to Kozlov. The two are locked in a low-stakes competition for Most Aggrieved Tenant—each story more grotesque than the last, and everyone else in the room an unwilling juror.
“My last place, landlord left a meat freezer unplugged in the garage all summer,” Kozlov says, voice carrying easily over the clatter of sticks. “By July, could smell it in the street.”
“Mold is technically not alive after it’s been microwaved,” Callahan retorts, deadpan.
Kozlov considers this, nods judiciously. “Microwave was broken. Used the oven.”
Several rookies glance up, unsure if this is the setup to a prank or a confession. Hank snickers, but he’s careful not to join in too loudly— he, too, is a rookie, but has been pulled in from the fray by our veteran goalie, Deacon Moretti. I meet Kozlov’s eyes above the phone and raise my brow. He winks, as if to say: All performance art.
Callahan leans back, chair creaking, and points his stick at me. “Faulker, you’ve lived everywhere. Bet you got stories.”
I shrug, reticence mistaken for coolness. “I summer in the guest house of an old estate. The worst thing that ever happened was the gardener left a wheelbarrow in the driveway.”
Hank laughs. “Of course you do. And I bet your landlord brings you strudel.”
I shrug and pretend not to notice that half the team is waiting for me to elaborate. I don’t. Revealing the truth of your living situation is a minor form of exposure, and I prefer not to let the reality of my other life scorch the ice.
Callahan makes a show of sighing. “Lease ends in May,” he says. “I’m thinking of somewhere less…alive.”
Kozlov nods sagely toward me. “Same. Those rooms cleaned out yet at The Puck Pad?”
Hank grins because he took over Deacon’s room when he moved out. “Almost.”
Kilovac and I were ‘lucky’ enough to have found a place when we were drafted. Lived very much like Callahan and Kozlov are now. I could have stayed in a suite at any number of the five-star hotels in the city, and that was the plan, but Kilovac refused to move into a place that pricey. He doubled down on that when I offered to foot the bill. He did not want to owe anyone else. He had already set a budget that would enable him to live a decent life and still help his brother do the same. We found a place within his budget, and I found myself discovering the depths of the privilege I was born into. It was an adventure. One that horrified my family, which of course is why I reveled in it.
That adventure only lasted a year. When Koa and Dash were drafted, they found a place and had mentioned five bedrooms, the location, and well, the Puck Pad became all of our homes. When Koa moved out, we had a very unlikely roommate move right in, Paul Bronski, the legendary hockey player, who everyone had believed to be long gone, but was in fact still residing in the City. He was tucked away in a brownstone affectionately referred to as the Hen house. When it needed major repairs, he became ours. The man does not hold back. He has since moved out, and it’s just Marshall and me.
