Page 6 of Moms of Mayhem (Mayhem Hockey Club #1)

I jerked awake Monday morning to the sound of music blaring from outside. After the laziest weekend I’d had in years, it took me a minute for my brain to come online, blinking into consciousness against the early morning sun streaming through the windows to my right.

The windows rattled with the bass line of Welcome to the Jungle , and I dropped my legs over the side of the full-size bed, ready to investigate.

My mom’s house was in the foothills with no neighbors, but I’d gifted her a speaker system out by the pond several Christmases ago.

My crutches sat across the room, so I put my good leg down, pushed off the mattress, and hopped to the window.

Pulling apart the cheap blinds, I squinted through the dirty glass at the fresh snow that had fallen over the weekend. It sat heavy on the evergreens surrounding our property, painting the peaks behind in white.

Plans to go see Mom in the hospital were trashed when the snow had closed Vail Pass for two days, locking us all in place.

So, I’d spent the weekend on the phone with the Yeti’s team administration, my training staff, and every doctor involved in my recovery to figure out how I could manage to be here for my mom this week and not mess up my recovery to be back by March in time for the end of the season and be ready for playoffs.

I wasn’t sure what I expected to find outside, but a kid skating around my pond by himself wasn’t on the list. I leaned against the windowsill, the glass cold against my bare arm, and watched him set up cones, then push a net out onto the pond.

Snow was piled three feet high all the way around the ice, a giant mound separating it from the trees and mountains behind.

A shovel rested on top of the heap, and I glanced back at the kid, my head tilting to look for anyone else out there.

A bike with fat snow tires rested in my cleared driveway, but I hired a service to handle that for Mom every time there was a snowstorm.

However, I did not pay them to make a path to the pond, and I sure as shit didn’t pay them to clean off the ice.

I let out a low whistle, staring down at the shovel-wide path this kid must have done himself to get to the pond before he could even begin to clear it off.

“Damn, son,” I said aloud, my voice gravely with sleep but full of awe.

Shoveling snow was a hell of a workout, and that was without riding a bike in the snow here. Add the way he was moving around my backyard with a comfortable familiarity to tell me this was certainly not his first time out here? This kid was something else.

I wasn’t mad he was trespassing. Hell, I was glad it got some use. Anyone willing to put in this much work for some free ice time deserved it.

Once everything was set up the way the kid wanted it, he sat on the stump Ty and I had left for exactly that reason, tightened his laces, then pulled out a phone from his pocket, fiddling with the screen until the song switched to Enter Sandman .

His head bobbed along to the Metallica song for a few seconds, then he pulled on a pair of hockey gloves and hopped on his skates, flying across the ice in a warmup.

My phone vibrated on the nightstand nearby, but I ignored it, arms crossed over my chest as I watched the kid move.

He was quick, skating laps around the outside of my little pond, before switching and doing it all backward.

His stick dragged across the ice as he moved, then eventually grabbed a puck from the pile he’d dropped in the middle of the makeshift rink.

With quick flicks of his wrist, he pulled the puck back and forth between the cones, holding perfect control of it before launching it into the top right corner of the net. Over and over, he did the same moves, hitting different invisible targets, and I watched with rapt attention.

I hadn’t seen Ty’s nephew without a helmet at the game, but I could tell by the way he moved, this was the same kid. Emmy’s son .

The last time I’d even seen Emmy, she was a freshman in high school—the same age as her kid down there on the ice.

Fuck, that was a weird thought. Then, she’d just gone through a huge growth spurt, all gangly legs and braces.

She had a penchant for oversized 90’s country band tees and an obsession with everything peach, right down to the color she constantly painted her fingernails.

With her so close in age to Ty and me, our friend groups crossed often, but she was perpetually my best friend’s little sister.

I’d never seen her as anything but a target for our stupid teenage pranks just to hear her fiery comebacks, so it was hard for me to reconcile that version of her with the one I’d seen at the rink on Friday night.

That one had been full of the same sassy soul I remembered, but I did not remember the curves she had on her. No, those were new, as were the not-so-PG thoughts about my best friend’s little sister. After everything Ty had done for me, that was the last place my mind needed to go.

I cleared my throat, looking back down at the ice at Emmy’s son.

Like his mom, he had brown hair that seemed to catch the sunlight, glowing with a golden hue where it peeked out from under his green Mayhem hat.

Here in my bedroom preserved in time, it was easy to picture Ty, Mason, and I out there instead of him, a snapshot of a past that seemed so very long ago.

My phone buzzed again, and I hopped across my bedroom to retrieve it, not so much wanting to talk to whoever was trying to get ahold of me, but desperate for a connection to my long-lost friend again.

When Ty’s name popped up on the screen, I grinned. Maybe he was thinking the same, too.

Ty

Motion sensors are going off at your pond. You home?

Ty

Shit. Jace skipped school again, didn’t he?

I glanced back out the window at the kid circling the ice, his face shuttered of all emotion except for sheer focus.

Beckett

He’s here. Guessing he’s not supposed to be?

Ty

That sneaky fucker. I’ll come get him.

Beckett

I’ll handle it.

Ty

You sure? I can be headed that way in 10.

Beckett

I got it. Take him to school?

Ty

Yeah.

And thanks

Grabbing the black sweats from the top of my suitcase, I awkwardly got myself dressed, then reached for my crutches and headed downstairs. Luckily, I’d remembered to set up the coffee pot last night, so I filled a stainless Denver Yeti tumbler with coffee.

I could still see Jace working his way around the ice through the window over the kitchen sink, endless energy driving his moves. Once upon a time I’d been that way too— unable to stop—but watching him made me realize how old I was.

Sure, aside from my hip injury, I was in peak condition, but I was still in my mid-thirties. Still a veteran player. Still a constant topic of discussion on Hockey Tonight about if I can even come back from an injury like this “at my age”.

The black coffee was as bitter as my thoughts, burning its way down my throat like the dawning realization that the kid out there was the future, and I was the past.

With a sigh, I grabbed a crutch and limped my way out onto the back porch, watching my footsteps to make sure I didn’t eat shit and set myself back several months.

The music was loud, scaring off any stray predators nearby, but also keeping this kid’s head down.

I stood there for several more minutes, watching him skate, before I swiped across my phone to the sound system’s app, and killed the power.

The silence was deafening after the volume he’d had it at, and the kid’s body jerked upright as if electrocuted.

He glanced around the driveway, then to the storage shed where the sound system was housed, before I put two fingers to my lips and whistled.

It echoed through the mountains, the sound as piercing as a gunshot, and Jace’s head snapped my direction.

“Trespassing is illegal, you know,” I called out.

“So is breaking and entering,” Jace answered, pointing at the house behind me. “Pretty sure that’s way more jail time, pal.”

A low chuckle rumbled through my chest. I shouldn’t have been surprised Jace was just as quick-witted as his mom, but damn, I hadn’t expected that. “Hard to get me on breaking and entering when my name is on the deed.”

Jace jerked upright, the butt of his stick slapping against the underside of his hat. “Holy fucking shit, you’re Beckett Conway.”

“Manners, son. Watch your mouth.”

Any of the awe that was there a second ago disappeared, his gaze hard once more. “I’m 15, not 8. You can’t tell me what to do, and I’m not your son.”

“Really?” I raised my brows, pointing at his setup out here. “Should I check with the Sheriff about that? I’m pretty sure he’d agree with me, considering you’re on my property illegally, pal.”

“Ty said I could use it whenever I wanted,” Jace shot back. “And I’m also not your pal.”

“Damn, what a shame.” I mock-frowned, holding a hand to my chest. “And here I thought you might want to be friends with an Art Ross Trophy winner.”

“Manners, pops,” Jace shot back. “Watch your mouth.”

A laugh burst out of me, and I shook my head. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

“I don’t know.” He shuffled back and forth on his skates, gloved hand resting on the top of his stick. “Aren’t you supposed to make it past the first round of the playoffs?”

Hot damn, this kid had fire. Without thinking, I shot back, “Says the kid who was ejected out of the first game of the season, and let his team lose 0-6.”

That must have been a step too far. Jace looked down at his skates, his jaw ticking.

“Let me take you to school. They’ll make you miss practice if you’re caught truant, right? Is that still the Mayhem’s rule?”

“Can’t practice for a week, and I’m sitting out the game on Friday, anyway.” Jace turned his back to me, skating around the ice again, obviously done with this conversation .

The snow on the deck had been cleared along with the driveway, but it was still covered in a thin sheet of ice. I grabbed the railing and slowly inched my way to the stairs, headed toward the garage. “Missing school will just add days to that sentence, won’t it?”

Jace shrugged. “If Coach even shows up, maybe. He doesn’t care about us.”

That gave me pause. The Mayhem Hockey Club under Coach Mikaelsons’s leadership had been a tight-run ship, demanding the most from its players both on the ice and in the classroom. Hell, if I hadn’t been required to attend in order to play, my high school years would have looked a lot like this.

“Does your mom care?” I asked, hedging my bets.

Jace whipped his last shot into the net, then turned to look at me. “Why do you care?”

I shrugged, pushing the garage door opener in my pocket and then the remote start on my truck. “I don’t. But she probably will.”

“You know my mom?” he asked, opening the shed door and pulling out a backpack.

He dropped to a squat just above the ice, unlacing his skates in a move that I wasn’t sure my old and broken body would allow, even healed.

Once they were off and a pair of unlaced Timberlands were on his feet, he stored the gloves, stick, and skates in the shed, then padlocked it once more.

“Why has she never mentioned you before last night?”

Well, that cut in an unexpected way, but Emmy’s and my relationship was non-existent these days.

I breathed in the crisp mountain air, the smell of pine overwhelming me with its sense of familiarity and comfort even though it had been years since I’d been home.

“Small town, kid. We all know everybody. But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen her. ”

“That’s right.” Jace snapped his fingers, then hurried past me toward the garage. He spun around and stared at me with a hard set to his jaw. “Because you’re a washed-up has-been who abandoned everyone you ever cared about. Now I remember.”

Of all the cheap shots this kid had taken at me, that one hurt, and he knew it would.

Maybe he expected me to leave, to call the Sheriff like I’d threatened, to turn my back on this grumpy, smart-mouthed kid.

From what I’d seen on Friday, he had a dad who didn’t show up, and I knew how shitty that felt.

Like it was easier to keep everyone at a distance so they couldn’t hurt you like that again.

But he also didn’t know me. He didn’t understand that, like him, I refused to give up. Every single newscast, especially those led by Jace’s daddy dearest, said I was done. Cooked. Finished. A washed-up has-been. But I wasn’t done until I said I was done, and I’d do anything to prove it.

“Get in the truck,” I said, limping my way into the garage with these stupid crutches.

The door slammed as he climbed into the cab, but I’d take it.

Beckett: 1.

Jace: 0.