“Boys, I’d like to say it was a great season, but it wasn’t,” Dante stood and moved to the center of the room, where the eyes of the Crush team found him preparing for a powerful speech.Dante rested his hands against his hips, sweat drenching his compression shirt tucked into his breezers, the hockey pants worn by the players.A glimmer of disappointment and anger flickered in his deep-brown eyes shared with many of his fellow Italians.“I want you to remember this feeling.Let the anger...the pain...drive you this off-season.But know one thing; there isn’t going to be any fucking off-season.Our road to the cup starts now.”
Dante remained in the middle of the room, surrounded by his Crush teammates sitting on the benches in the visitor’s locker room.Dante’s piercing gaze swept to each player, demanding their commitment for the quest on which they were about to embark.
When Dante’s stare met Wolfe’s, a silent conversation passed between the two teammates and best friends.
Let’s do this.
I’m with you, brother.
Wolfe took a few minutes following Dante’s decree to let the loss on the ice and the resonating pain of defeat wash over him so he remembered just how shitty this moment felt when he trained his ass off in the coming months.
And train he would.How else would Wolfe keep memories of the past at bay and away from that hole in his chest that used to house his heart?
Chapter 2—Aspen
“Suh guhd,” Aspen’semployee-come-friend, Mia, sighed and even moaned with pleasure around a mouthful of a triple-chocolate muffin.This definitely pleased Aspen as she had been baking long before the sun welcomed the day that morning.
“I take it the ‘Godiva This is Good” muffin hit the spot?”Aspen quizzed Mia in a serious tone, but couldn’t keep the smile from dancing across her lips.
Aspen would take Mia’s passionate response as high praise for her latest recipe.Especially since she focused on feeding the wants and needs of the most addicted chocoholics who visited her shop.
But alas, Aspen couldn’t savor the moment too long.She began working on another batch of batter showcasing her own spin on carrot cake cupcakes.The treats featured perfectly pulsed carrots in her food processor, crushed pineapple and rich spices that made her‘What’s up Doc?’cupcakes topped with cream cheese frosting a customer favorite in her bakery.
Mia had only worked with Aspen a short time, and only part-time at that, but what had started as a desperate need for an early-morning barista so Aspen could focus on her baking and business side of things had shifted to a wonderful friendship with the cute-as-a-button-come-sassy grad student.Mia may be several years her junior but was wise beyond her age right down to the tips of her glorious mane of mahogany hair.
Mia performed lifesaver duties on so many levels, both professionally and personally.In fact she became one of Aspen’s closest friends in a short period of time.
On the business side of the house, Mia’s meager salary, along with two other part-timers, prevented Aspen from fixing some of the many, many things in need of repair around the shop.However, she required the small staff to help elevate the bakery from struggling to successful.There just weren’t enough hours in the day to perform the things on Aspen’s to-do list to run the business solo.
And there wasn’t much left after paying her small staff to return capital back into the bakery.That, combined with a hit to her bottom line when a national coffee chain recently opened up down the block, presented even more challenges to Aspen’s skimpy profits in recent months.
Aspen did have a plan to expand the bakery by forging into catering for meetings and small events, all while preserving her loyal customer base. She’d then have the money to slowly invest into the business.Something her parents probably should have done when they owned the business before moving to Florida a few years ago, but never got around to.And although they continually told her, er,guided her, in how they thought she should run the bakery, the reality was they failed to invest in the bones of the small shop in all those years.Aspen paid the price for their procrastination as the building showed its age and wear from the battered flooring to an oven on its last leg.
Aspen’s plan to expand into catering was solid since she had far too much debt to qualify for any more money due to covering much of her parents’ own debt when she assumed their loan.She figured she should have enough capital to inject into her business by the time she turned...sixty.
So, while most of Aspen’s pennies headed toward whittling away the debt her folks amassed who were now forging ahead with a meager retirement in Florida, she’d limp her way through some of the worn – heck, who was she kidding – broken parts of the bakery like the handle she had to jiggle on her oven to ensure the interior light turned off.
