“Hey!” I call. He turns around and looks up at me with the cutest hopeful look on his rugged features. “I’ll miss you too.”
Chapter 18
Avery
We’re warming up. The music is blaring through the arena—some Eminem song they’ve managed to score a swear-free version of—and each team is skating around, making sure not to cross that centerline. It’s my first game back in Seattle since the trade. I have no idea what kind of reaction I’m going to get. I’ve been told that they’ll do a tribute during a TV time-out. A montage on the Jumbotron. That might be met by applause or by boos. A lot of people are still grateful I led the team to a Cup a few years ago, but a lot are still resentful I didn’t become a franchise player and spend my whole career here. Only time will tell which side is more represented at the game tonight.
I drop down on the edge of the blue line away from where my team is cycling and taking shots on Furry, who will be in net tonight. I lean forward on my gloved hands, my knees splayed on either side as I stretch out my groin. A pair of Seattle skates glide by and stop near my hip, just on the other side of the blue line. Sebastian drops down to stretch beside me.
“How’s my sister?”
I blink and stare at him through my visor. He looks over at me. He’s decided not to wear a helmet for warm-up so I can see his entire face. I’m glad he can’t really see mine, because I’m sure I look stunned and probably guilty.
“How is she?” he asks again. “Is she good?”
I start to blush. Fucking blush! I cough and turn away, staring at ice in front of me, trying to will the heat rising on my cheeks to disappear. He doesn’t mean it the way it sounds, I remind myself. He has no idea I just had sex with her so he’s not asking that way. It just sounds like he is, which is not only disconcerting but downright perverted.
“I haven’t talked to her lately,” he goes on. “I haven’t been able to get her on the phone for about a week. And she barely returns texts. You live next door to her; you must be seeing her.”
I cough again and change my stretch position. “Yeah. I saw her today before I left. She’s good. I mean she seems like she’s happy and everything.”
If I sound as stupid as I feel, Sebastian doesn’t mention it. He kneels and twists at his waist, opening up his back. “Okay, good. I don’t like it when she disappears. It makes me nervous.”
He’s a good brother. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, but I have to say he is a bit overprotective. I have a sister, and I look out for her, too, when I’m home, over the summer mostly, but she’s younger and I feel like my parents pay too much attention to my career at the cost of raising her. So I go out of my way to meet her friends—and the boyfriends—but Sebastian is even more protective than that.
When I was playing in Seattle, the first year Seb came up from the minors, I noticed he was constantly calling his sister—like a couple times a day on road trips. He said she lived in Seattle but was vague about the details, and I didn’t really care to push him. I was busy getting used to the league and my responsibilities as captain.
And then he invited everyone over to his condo right before the start of the second season we played together, and I finally met Stephanie. She was living in his guest room. He said it was temporary until she found a place, which I thought was totally weird because I thought she’d been living here the year before too. Why she had to leave her last place and was looking for a new one, I didn’t know, and once again I didn’t ask. I did notice that she was gorgeous, but that was about it. I was too busy trying to get our team to their first Cup in over a decade.
Stephanie started showing up at games, parties and events. She was funny and nice, but when I first met her, she had this Bambi-like quality to her. She seemed…not so much weak but fragile. And kind of easily startled, like a deer in the headlights. But the WAGs, as we called them—wives and girlfriends—all liked her.
Sebastian gets to his feet. “Next time you see her tell her to call me. Tell her I’m not kidding. I mean it.”
I nod. He nods back, and then the serious look darkening his light eyes, which are incredibly similar to Steph’s, melts away and he’s giving me his best Deveau smirk. “I always dreamed about handing you your ass. My chance is finally here.”
“You wish,” I bark back with a smile, but he’s already skating away.
The game goes well. The tribute happens during the first period and it’s actually pretty cool with a mix of clips of my on-ice accomplishments and the charity work I did with the local children’s hospital while I was here. Luckily, it’s fans and not haters who make up most of the audience. I get a standing ovation, and it almost makes me choke up as I stand and wave to the crowd. Even the Seattle players are tapping their sticks on the boards.
We don’t win, but we take them all the way to shoot-out, so at least we get a point. That’s actually a win with the Saints, who are used to coming in dead last in the league every year. So far this season we’re firmly in the middle and actually only two spots out of play-off contention. And tonight I scored once, assisted once and scored in the shoot-out, so I did my job.
Echolls missed in the shoot-out and didn’t do much of anything during the game, so he’s in a hell of a mood. It was like a dark cloud over his head, so we all just do our best to avoid and ignore him.
I walk to my stall after tossing my gloves into the equipment bin. I yank off my helmet and pull my jersey off so I’m just in my Under Armour on top. I grab my Saints baseball cap and tug it over my sweaty hair. The hat is stiff and new. In Seattle I had been wearing the same cap for postgame interviews since the first game. It was ratty and had permanent sweat stains and it felt…right. This one doesn’t—yet. Kind of like the team itself. I walk over to Furry, who is sitting in his stall, his head down and a scowl on his face. I pat his shoulder pads and lean in.
“You did great,” I tell him. “This is not on you. We got a point because you held them off in the third.”
“Thanks,” Nikolai replies gruffly, but he gives me a bit of a smile.
“Saint Westwood,” Echolls mutters from two stalls over. “Trying to make the guilty feel innocent.”
Is he for fucking real right now? I stand up and glance over at him. “He stopped twenty-eight shots.”
“But he didn’t stop thirty-one,” Echolls barks back. “That’s what counts. We’re not the fucking Smurfs. This isn’t about positivity and rainbows, Westie.”
“Okay, then.” I turn so my whole body is facing him with my shoulders back and my chest out, arms crossed. “Nikolai let in three shots. You took two shots on their goalie that weren’t even close. Then you failed to cover the right guy when they scored the first time and took a stupid penalty that costs us the second goal.”
The room is silent. I don’t need to look around to know that every set of eyes in the room is on me—or Echolls. I try not to smirk like a pompous ass when I ask, “You prefer that type of leadership, Echolls? Feel better now?”
