Page 34

CHAPTER 33

GRADY

W e missed our ferry. And the one after. My mom wasn’t at all upset by the chance to put us up for the night, though she made sure to give me a long, pointed look when I told her we’d only need one room.

I wasn’t any more ready to clarify things for her than I was sure of them myself. This summer thing with Jill wasn’t supposed to go like this. It wasn’t supposed to turn into anything more. And from where I stood there was a chance that—for Jill—it hadn’t. She was just as warm, just as sweet and kind. But every time I tried to get a read on whether or not she was as wrecked for me as I was for her, I came away unsure.

As we got dressed the next morning to head back to the mainland I was ready to get her alone and ask. I’d never been in that position before and I didn’t like it. Was she with me in this or not?

My phone lit up on the bed, the muffled vibrations tweaking my nerves as I snatched it up.

AJ: You better get down here

Grady: What’s up?

AJ almost never texted me. And if he did it was usually stupid shit to get me fired up for a game, like a video of some sick shot one of my rivals made. He liked to stoke my competitive streak, but that was about it.

AJ: Daly got arrested

“Holy shit,” I muttered, drawing Jill’s attention from the other side of the room.

“Everything okay?”

“Not sure,” I answered, my eyes on my phone as I typed.

Grady: For what? How bad?

AJ: Bad. Coach is calling in the local guys and conferencing in the rest. You’ll probably get a ping this morning

It pissed me off that AJ knew something about the team before I did. Aaron Daly was our left wing—the other piece of our starting forward line with me and Cooper. He’d been added to the roster a couple of years ago and we were just starting to gel. We didn’t have a great backup for him at the moment, after Gordon Harding had decided to retire early.

Grady: I haven’t heard anything

AJ: It just broke this morning. Cooper called me in a panic

Grady: Figures

AJ: Yep

AJ: You coming?

I sighed, scraping my hand down my face as my eyes landed on Jill who was still watching me from her spot on the window bench, a worried expression on her face.

Grady: Yeah. Be there in a few hours

AJ:

“I have some bad news,” I started, walking over to sit beside her. “I’ve got to head straight to Boston when we get back to Portland.”

“What’s wrong?”

I took her hand, looking down at how tiny it was compared to mine. “One of my players got into some kind of trouble. Coach is calling a meeting.”

She sighed nodding as she asked, “What kind of trouble?”

“Not sure yet. He got arrested for something but AJ didn’t specify. I’m guessing if Coach is calling us in, though, whatever it is will be bad enough to keep him on the bench.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “What could be that bad?”

“Well, the league has some rules. But Coach has more. If it was a violent offense, he’d be benched pending dismissal. It’s one of his lines you can’t cross. And we all know it.”

Jill’s back straightened. “So hitting Adam really would have ruined your career.” She wasn’t asking, and I could see the regret in her eyes as she said it.

“If I’d hit him, it wouldn’t have been your fault.” I took ownership for my actions, and I’d be damned if she blamed herself. When she cast her eyes down I knew what she was thinking. “I’m a big boy, Jill. I knew the price and I didn’t hit him, so we don’t have to play out that scenario.”

I flipped my wrist over to check the time and sighed. “I’ve got to get on the next ferry. Can I see if Lexi can give you a ride back to Holden Cove?”

It wasn’t a real smile that she offered me, but I appreciated the attempt. “Of course. I can call LeAnn, too. If Lexi’s busy.”

Shaking my head I stood up and walked toward the door. “She’ll make the time,” I said, hating that I wasn’t going back with her myself. “Be ready in ten?”

Jill popped to her feet, her head whipping around the room as if looking for all the stuff she had to pack before laughing at herself and picking up the only thing she’d brought with her—her purse. “I’m ready now, hot shot,” she smirked, making me feel a little bit better for abandoning her.

Almost as soon as I got on the road in Portland I got the call from Coach. He was pleased to hear I was already on my way south, but he cut the call off before he gave me any more information. I had a hard time imagining Daly doing something egregious enough to get him kicked off the team, but that was the vibe I had as I walked into our offices in Boston.

All I’d been able to find online was that Daly was in police custody following an incident that had happened at 1:00 a.m.. Little else was being shared, but I got the sense by Coach’s scowl that he knew more.

“Daly’s gone,” he announced gruffly the minute the door to the conference room closed behind him. The handful of players sitting around the table mumbled and shook their heads while the ones on the screen, each in their own tiny square from places all over the world erupted in questions.

“This information doesn’t leave this room,” Coach barked, silencing everyone. “He was intoxicated and hit a pedestrian crossing the street in Brookline.”

My gut dropped out. How the hell? Daly wasn’t an angel, but imagining him being that reckless, that negligent—it sucked all the air from the room.

“He’ll be brought up on charges before the day is over, but management and I are in agreement. He’s out.”

“Coach,” Cooper interrupted carefully. Blaise didn’t say a word, but held Coop’s gaze long enough that he went on. “Did the person make it?”

Blaise dropped his eyes to the conference room table. “It doesn’t look good.”

Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

We’d all made stupid fucking choices at one point in our lives. There wasn’t a soul at that table that hadn’t chanced it at least once. But knowing that Daly could have killed someone was hard to wrap my head around.

“We’ve got a counselor,” Blaise said, waving his hand at the door. “Talk to them if you need to. This shit is going to get real before it goes away.” Scratching his hand through his hair he looked around the room. “He was one of us, but he fucked up. So, now we’ve got to bring it in. We can’t let the noise from this get into our heads or into that locker room. You hear me?”

Blaise wasn’t an unfeeling guy, and we could all see him trying to work out how to navigate something none of us was prepared for. There was nothing we could do for Daly now, but it still felt like shit to just cut and run on him.

“Training camp is less than a month away, but we’ve obviously got some work to do to fill that gap. I’m bringing up a couple of guys from Providence starting this week.” He leveled a hard glare at me and I sat up a little straighter. “If we could get some ice time with them, that would be good.”

I nodded, my stomach twisting because this meant my summer was over early. I had one more event to do with Jill, but I’d need to be back here in Boston full time now if we were going to break in a fresh wing from the feeder team.

“Let’s focus on what we can control,” Blaise said, taking his time to look each of us in the eye. “Starting today we regroup. Stay true to the basics and build on what we’ve got. Got it?”

Heads nodded in the room and mumbled agreements filtered through the computer screen.

“All right. More to come.” He gave one final nod to the fellas online before clicking to end the call. AJ and Cooper and I started to head for the door when Blaise stopped me.

“A minute, Holloway?”

Cooper looked between me and Coach like someone had just stolen his favorite crayon, while AJ didn’t react at all. After they’d both left Blaise sat down in one of the chairs and leaned back with a deep sigh.

“You ready?”

He didn’t know about my head being fucked up, but it wouldn’t have mattered; whether my shoulder or my mind, the answer was the same. “Yes, sir.”

“The guys from Providence are decent. I was already looking at one before all this. Danny Michum. I think he’ll do well, so focus on him. But give the others a chance. We’ll sort out the final direction in camp.”

“Okay.”

Blaise swiveled back and forth in the chair, a heaviness to his expression that wasn’t his normal kind of pissed off. “If you need more time, Grady, tell me,” he said, his eyes landing on mine as he let out another sigh. “I need you to be honest right now, cause we don’t have a lot of room to fuck around here.”

“My strength is back,” I said, gripping the chair in front of me. “Range of motion is eighty-five percent, but it’ll be one hundred by the time we get to camp. And everything else is good. I never let off on conditioning, and I’ll get on the ice every day between now and then to be ready.”

He nodded, his scrutiny unrelenting. “And everything else? You’re feeling good?”

Blaise was as ignorant to my nightmares and panic attacks as everyone else in my life, save Jill. He had to be talking about captain. “You mean leading the team? Cause I can do that right now.”

There was a flicker of something in his eye as he huffed out a half-laugh. “I don’t doubt it.” It felt like I’d sufficiently passed his test, so I straightened, preparing to head out when he said, “It’s gonna be harder now.” With his pause, he rose to his feet. “The fucking Daly thing, it’s going to boil over. The press, the victim’s family.” He shook his head. “You better be ready.”

“I am.”

He moved past me toward the door, giving me one more look before he pulled it open. “Good.”

AJ and Coop were waiting for me in the lobby.

“Drinks?” AJ asked, his expression as flat as it always was, but he was frowning more intentionally than normal under his beard.

“Yeah,” I sighed, even though it was barely noon.

The little pub around the corner, Shammy’s, was used to us, though not typically among the lunch crowd. Still, they gave us our table in the back corner, which helped us hide.

“I can’t believe it,” Coop said, picking up his seltzer. He was one of the few among us who didn’t drink, but always came out to the bar anyway. “Can you imagine running someone over?”

AJ shook his head, scowling at him. “No. And I don’t want to. Jesus.”

Coop sat back, deciding smartly to keep whatever else he might have wanted to say about Daly’s situation to himself.

“You both good to meet with these Providence guys?” I asked, taking a sip of my beer. “We’ll keep it informal to stay away from the regulations, but I don’t want to wait until the official start of camp. Let’s see if we can get a read on them early.”

“I’m around,” AJ said, drinking his beer without looking at either of us.

“Same,” Cooper added, leaning his elbows on the table. “Should we do it one on one or just bring them all in at once.”

I considered our choices. It wasn’t an ideal situation no matter how you looked at it, but it felt like we’d get a better sense on them all at once. “Let’s do the lot of them at the same time. See how well they handle the pressure looking the guys in the eye who want the same thing they do.”

AJ opened his mouth to say something, but stopped short when my phone lit up on the table with Jill’s name.

Jill: Hope everything is going okay down there. Lexi was full of stories on the ride home. You have some explaining to do . . .

I laughed, my mind filling with options for what my little sister might have thought prudent to share in my absence. If I knew Lexi there was no way I wasn’t going to be embarrassed.

“Who’s Jill?” Cooper asked, his eyebrows up when he saw me laughing.

I ignored him to type back.

Grady: Things are not great. But I’m glad you got home okay. Please forget everything she told you immediately

“She’s someone,” Cooper answered his own question, his curiosity morphing into a stupid smirk.

“Yeah, she is.”

“From back home?” AJ asked, giving me a sideways glance I didn’t appreciate.

“Yes. Why?”

He gave me a lazy half-shrug. “Bad timing if you ask me.”

I hadn’t asked him, and I didn’t care what he thought. But his comment irritated me. “What’s your problem, McCaffrey?”

Cooper’s expression was lit up with entirely too much amusement for this and he almost laughed out loud when my phone lit up again.

Jill: I wish I could forget. No one wants images like these in their head. Sorry it’s not going better. Feel free to slip under the covers here when you get back, I’ll help make it better

Blushing typically wasn’t my thing, but it wasn’t everyday my non-girlfriend—whatever she was—sent me an invitation like that. I put my phone down, unable to try and come up with an appropriate response with these two watching me.

AJ was shaking his head.

“What’s your fucking problem?”

He sat back giving me the evil eye for a beat before he huffed out a breath. “You’re about to be made captain, you’re not fully healed, we’re coming off a losing season, and now our left wing just got shit canned. That last one only just happened, but all the rest should have been more than enough to keep your eye a little more on the prize.” He took a drink before adding, “And she ain’t it.”

It had been years since I’d had the urge to clock AJ McCaffrey, but the impulse rose strong and quick as he talked that way about Jill. But given the shit place we were in as a team, knocking out our goalie was not on my list of options.

“Fuck you.” That one was, though.

His stoic mask faltered, his brow lowering as he looked at me like I was nuts. “Come on, Holloway. Now? With a hometown chick? Please, even you know better.”

Of course I knew better. Any other day and I’d have been the one delivering this lecture to some other sorry sap who’d been foolish enough to let himself get distracted by a woman on the eve of his greatest career achievement. For his part, Cooper didn’t seem surprised or disappointed at AJ’s mention of me becoming captain instead of him—which only made me respect the guy even more.

The fact that I hadn’t set out to fall for Jill, or that I’d actually thought it would never happen at all, seemed like a pretty big failing at the moment. But I still didn’t think I’d change anything about what had happened this summer.

“She’s not some hometown chick,” I said, even though she very much was. But she wasn’t the puck-bunny climber he was talking about. Jill couldn’t have been further from the type.

“Even still,” he grumbled, his scowl back in place. “Cut her loose.” He looked me up and down, assessing me and sniffing out another laugh. “Cut yourself loose, actually.”

“Maybe it’s not the best timing,” Cooper interjected, his positivity grating on AJ so much the goalie drained the last half of his beer in one gulp. “But it’s not the worst thing in the world.”

Cooper had been dating the same woman since high school. Evie. We all knew her name, even if we almost never saw her at games. I’d met her once at a holiday party, but she’d cut out early and taken Cooper with her. It was no secret AJ and the rest of the guys thought their relationship was a little odd. So, naturally, he was exactly who I wanted giving me relationship advice.

“Yes it is,” AJ said. “How the hell were you going to make that work, anyway? You driving three hours every night after a game? And then three hours back when we have morning workouts? And how does she feel about the fact that you’re on the road more than half the year? She cool with that?”

AJ was speaking as if he had some experience with this but I knew better than to ask him about it. Nothing he’d said was wrong. It was just all shit I hadn’t thought about. I’d been distracted by Jill, and happily so, but I never looked any further than the summer. But after last night—fuck, after the last few weeks, if I was being real—my feelings were not going to be as easy to walk away from. But the hockey life wasn’t for most people. I didn’t have to ask how well Jill would take to it, because I knew with almost certainty she’d hate it.

“That’s an awful lot of time in a car for a relationship that’s not likely to last anyway.”

“Hey, man, project your own past fuck-ups on someone else, all right? You don’t know shit.”

He laughed, the sound of it almost foreign to me I heard it so rarely. “Fine. Give it a whirl. See how it goes.” He pushed his chair back, standing and looking down at me. “It’s none of my business till you start fucking up on the ice, man. So don’t.”

AJ wanted to win the Stanley Cup as much as the rest of us. He’d been with Boston for almost ten years and I wasn’t sure how much longer he planned to play. It was just his own fear of losing another chance at that cup that got him so riled up. At least that’s what I told myself as he gave Cooper and I a half-assed salute and walked out of the bar.

“I’m sure you two would be fine,” Cooper said, trying to clear the air as I finished my own beer. “If you want it to work, you’ll figure it out.”

I tossed him a nod, appreciating the words of encouragement even if they tasted stale and limp after the sting of AJ’s doubt. Because it wasn’t just whether I wanted to keep seeing Jill. It was her call too. And given the price she’d have to pay for being with me, I wasn’t sure it was even fair to ask her if she wanted to.