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CHAPTER 17

ALEXEI

I’m calmer by the time I step on the ice, fully dressed in my goalie gear.

Emery is skating a looping warm up pattern on one half of the rink, her skates leaving a carved path in the fresh ice.

I skate right to the middle of her path and start to do my own warm up, getting a bit of cardio in while finding my edges. She’s faster than me, and picks up extra speed as she rushes past.

I grin.

She narrows her eyes at me on the next pass. “What are you smiling at?”

“You,” I say, but it’s quiet and I don’t think she hears it under the slice of her blades against the crisp surface.

The cure for being jealous of my teammate wasn’t stalking away from her and getting dressed on my own—it’s being alone with Emery on the ice and giving her a chance to be mad at me.

She hasn’t had that chance yet, because we had other things to worry about. But my mother is recovering, and in good hands. Seeing her this morning, knowing my dad has a place to stay…it lifted some of the panic that had consumed all of my thoughts.

And in the quiet that replaced it, I felt Emery’s thigh flex against my knuckles. I felt the loss of her when Inessa wasn’t agreeable to skating. And I saw another man want her the way I have always wanted her.

The way I can’t have her.

And all of that made her justifiably mad.

I think of how my mother sometimes yells at my father when he frustrates her.

I would give anything for everything to be different, for us to be in a place where Emery could lose her shit at me, to trust that our relationship was rock solid enough for her to snap and know it’ll be okay.

Like a toddler having a tantrum.

Another unexpected lesson I’ve learned as a parent—we are at our best, and our worst, with those we trust the most.

Nobody else gets Inessa’s sweetest side. Her hugs and kisses, her sweet little worry when I’m in an ice bath, the way she curls up against me when I get home from a road trip, as if my heartbeat against her cheek is all she needs for the world to be right again.

Nobody else gets the worst of her tantrums, either, because she tries to be so good for everyone else. But me? She knows I will always love her, no matter what, and so it’s with me she can truly fall apart.

Toddlers need to fall apart more often than one might think. They’re little powder kegs of learning new things, getting frustrated, not understanding why they can’t say what they need yet…

And they aren’t alone in that. Grown-ups have powder keg emotions sometimes, too.

I’m reminded of how I started to cry in the kitchen yesterday—and the grace Emery gave me.

“Speed up, old man,” she yells as she zooms by.

I swing my stick out and tap her ass. “I was just thinking about how nice you are,” I holler back.

She laughs and tightens up her circle, spiralling around me now.

I stop skating and switch into some side-to-side drills, opening up my hips as I drive to a hard stop to the left, then to the right.

Emery matches my shift in pace and finds a puck to do some tricks with. “When was I nice to you?”

“You taught me to appreciate asparagus.”

She trips over her feet as she reacts—“Alexei!”—but catches herself and keeps skating.

I’m undeterred. “Does Zondi like asparagus?”

“Stop.”

“I don’t think I will.”

She flicks a puck at me, thumping it hard off my left pad. “He’s just a friend.”

“And Rusty?”

“ He’s in love with Shannon. You know that. Has been since forever.”

“I know you have dated a lot of people, Emery. I accept that. But?—”

She comes to a sharp, ice-spraying stop in front of me. “But what ? You accept it? My dating life is none of your business.”

“I know .” I’m a foot taller than she is, and I use every inch of it to glare down at her. “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that about asparagus.”

“Nobody knows about that night,” she says quietly. “If you’re going to act like a jealous asshole, people will ask questions.”

Fuck. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“I could tell.”

“It’s just that…You were not experienced when we were together. I cherished?—”

“ You were hella experienced,” she snaps, cutting me off. “And you forgot to tell me about a pregnant girlfriend. ”

“Ex,” I bite out. “Very much ex. I told you that.”

“I asked for clarification and you decided to dip instead.”

“I had to leave.”

She tips her head back, staring up at the ceiling of the arena high above us for a long, angst-filled beat. “I know.”

“Do you know?” My voice is tight and tense, and this isn’t the place for this conversation, but somehow, the door to it has swung open, and I’m taking the opportunity to set the record straight. “I swear, Emery, I didn’t know Tatyana was pregnant. Everything changed in that moment. I wanted to stay, but I couldn’t.”

She makes a face.

I take a deep breath. “I had to leave quickly that night because I didn’t know how long she would stay at the hospital.”

Emery sucks in a breath, her gaze jumping to meet mine. “What do you mean?”

I choose my words carefully. “I never speak badly of Inessa’s mother. Never. To anyone. This is another secret, yes? Between us?”

Her head bobs carefully. Yes.

“Tatyana thought she was an expert at getting my attention. And there is the most attention when one is being chased, you know? But I was tired of that game. I had to make it clear that I would be a father, but nothing else to her. And there were legal steps that had to be taken because she was a visitor here in Canada.”

“Was there a difficult custody fight?”

“No. She realized she didn’t want to be full-time parent. She stayed in Calgary for the first two months, but by the end of that period she wanted my parents to watch Inessa all the time. She signed over full custody without argument.”

Emery’s eyes soften beneath tight brows. “Does she ever see her daughter?”

“Last summer in the off-season, we went to France. I rented a villa where everyone had their own spaces. She brought her new boyfriend, and they didn’t stay very long. She made noises about coming here for Christmas, but their lives are in Europe. Calgary doesn’t really compare well to Monaco. And then I was traded and the plans fell apart, because Hamilton… Even less so, apparently. I hope that when Inessa is older…”

I trail off.

It’s hard to say out loud what I hope for, when I’m not sure it’ll ever happen.

“Of course.” She takes a deep breath and whacks her stick against my pads. “We should practice. What kind of shots do you want?”

“Up high first? Then down low.”

“You got it.”

She twists, my jersey riding up on her hips as her strong little thighs power her away from me.

My name and number plastered above that tight, round ass…I wish we had a photographer on the ice right now, because I’d take a banner of that view for my bedroom.

Mine. All fucking mine.

I shake my head, testing my helmet and refocusing myself on the task at hand.

I settle into my stance in front of the net, and Emery starts skating a predictable pattern, warming me up with easy shots to my glove on one side, then my blocker on the other.

She skates so much like her brothers that I find myself anticipating her moves, coming out of the crease a bit more. But she’s not exactly like her brothers—and she makes that crystal clear when she snaps her next shot high, bar down, and the puck tumbles into the net behind me.

“Look alive,” she taunts.

“So we’re done with the soft warm up shots?” I smack my glove against my blocker. “Bring it on, Buzz.”

She gasps. “Is that how it is, Arty ?”

I grin. “What are you fucking waiting for, solnishko?”

She drills a slapshot right to the centre of my chest.

I’m laughing as she circles around to pick up another puck, but the laughter dies as she shoots low, forcing me to butterfly.

There’s a thread of respect in how she works me over, sticking to the low shots for a bit as my legs get warm. But there’s a competitive edge, too, and I’m not surprised when she’s decided I’ve had enough kindness and starts disrupting the pattern. Really making me work for the saves.

And then, just as one of our trainers steps onto the ice, she shifts her speed to another gear—and now she’s flying.

This isn’t anything like watching her brothers barrel down the ice towards me.

This is something different.

Her edge work is incredible. She shifts directions like a video game player, as if gravity means nothing when stacked against her determination to evade invisible defenders, to get to the net and beat me at my own game.

This is my house.

My barn.

And she’s owning it as she becomes a blur, her shoulder dropping, her knee bending, taking a shot I can barely track—except no , she didn’t shoot, because she’s paused and flipped the puck to the back of her stick.

Time stops as I realize what she’s doing.

I feel every one of my two-hundred-and-ten pounds as I try to fight the momentum in my body and reverse direction to protect my blocker side.

She stares me down, then flicks the puck just below my glove anyway. The original target, after all.

Fuck me.

Our trainer is clapping as she skates over and introduces herself. “Nice shot.”

“Thanks.” Emery shrugs. “I’m just his babysitter.”

I swear in Russian.

She winks at me. “I’m going to go find Inessa now. Can I keep the skates?”

“We’re not done here,” I growl.

“But I’m done,” she says sweetly. “Come find us when you finish.”

Fuck me.

Fuck fuck fuck me.

I need more time with her. I knew she was a good athlete—she’s been on the national team since she was seventeen, I think, and has been to the Olympics twice—but I’ve never seen her skate.

Why is she not playing professional hockey right now?

Why, instead of doing that against the best women goalies in the world, is she my emergency back up babysitter?

There’s something there that doesn’t line up.

I watch her skate off the ice, then reluctantly give my trainer my full attention, because that’s my job and I’m a professional.

Also, I truly do appreciate the Hamilton program.

After coming up slowly through the Calgary system as a prospect who didn’t get a ton of NHL ice time, and more often than not sat on the bench as a backup goalie when I did get rostered, this season in Hamilton has been a revelation—in so many ways.

Calgary has a good program with a lot of history, but they’re in a weird holding pattern right now, waiting for their new arena to get built.

Hamilton, on the other hand, is a brand-new expansion team, and the billionaire owner has thrown money at the team in every way possible. The facilities are extra impressive, the support staff is extensive, and nothing is off the table.

The only downside of getting traded to this region is that the Ontario hockey press is unlike anywhere else. Even in Alberta, where the Calgary-Edmonton rivalry is fierce, there’s only a fraction of the coverage that the Toronto team alone has.

Add in Hamilton’s newness, just an hour around the curve of Lake Ontario from Toronto, aka the epicentre of the hockey universe, and the spotlight is bright. The start of the season was really rough. I was coming into a dressing room that had been rocked by team division—and my trade was supposed to fix that, but the wounds lingered.

As a relative newcomer in every way, I quickly realized all I could do was keep my head down, work with the goalie coaches, and wait for the lines in front of me to sort themselves out.

It was a strategy that paid off.

Hamilton has three goalies on the roster right now. The other starting goalie is a Finnish player named Tuomo Makinen, and we also have a young American named Ryan Monaghan who is waiver-exempt—so he goes back and forth between the Highlanders and their AHL affiliate team in Niagara Falls, as the roster and salary cap require. Right now, he’s travelling with the team for the games in St. Louis and Detroit, but Makinen will probably play both of them.

Makie is four years older than me, and a steady, career goalie, but he’s emotional, and when the team isn’t playing well in front of him, he gets frustrated.

The more frustrated he got as the first half of the season rolled out in rocky chaos, the cooler and calmer I got—which resulted in me getting more games under my belt.

And then the team got their shit together and started winning again.

Now we have less than a month until the playoffs, and I’m in a head-to-head battle with my teammate for who will get the starting net in the first round.

I want it so fucking much.

I spent eight years being reined in, being cautioned that I needed more time, more experience, to finish fully growing into my six-and-a-half-foot frame. On the one hand, I knew I was good and getting better with each year. On the other hand, it felt so fucking far in the future.

But now, suddenly, I’m on a team that doesn’t have a clear number one starting goalie.

And while it’s actually good for us to alternate games in the regular season—we need to rest and save our bodies for the playoffs—once we switch to best of seven series, the coaches will want to stick with a winner in net.

I have carefully constructed my entire career to peak at this moment. Being blindsided by parenthood didn’t knock me off course. Getting traded was a rollercoaster, too, but I hung on.

Now there are fifteen games left in the season. Every single start matters.

I can’t let myself be distracted by my babysitter for God’s sake.

So, I put Emery to the back of my mind and run through a complete workout.

“Good job,” my trainer says when we’re finally done. “Let’s take tomorrow as an active rest day, to mimic the team’s travel day to St. Louis, and then we’ll repeat the same workout day after that. You can bring your babysitter again. She’s a lot of fun to watch on the ice.”

“She played college hockey in Boston for five years,” I say. “Has two Olympic medals. The babysitter thing is a favour.”

“That makes more sense.”

“She is a very good babysitter, though.” Shut up, Alexei.

My trainer also looks surprised that I’m still talking.

I never talk about non-hockey stuff.

But apparently, Emery being thought of as just a babysitter is a dam buster. “She didn’t even want to be my babysitter.”

“Hence it being a favour.”

“Because she’s very kind. When she is not taking shots at me, I mean.”

That makes my trainer laugh. “I know what you mean.”

“I think I should—” Luckily my random train of out loud thinking is cut off by one of our assistant general managers and our travel coordinator appearing out of the tunnel.

They both look worried.

“Alexei, can I have a minute?”

“We’re done here,” my trainer says. She pats my arm. “This guy was a beast today.”

The AGM nods. “First of all, I need to ask how your mother is doing?”

“Very good, thank you.” I tell him briefly about the procedure she had yesterday. “She will be in the hospital for a week, but then will come home.”

“And have you organized childcare?”

“His babysitter is amazing ,” the trainer says.

Which is true, but I’m concerned about where this is going. I frown. “Yes, I have some childcare in place, but I haven’t found a professional yet. Why?”

The AGM and the travel coordinator look at each other. “We know this is a lot to ask, but we got a call from the team on the road. Makie is sick. We can’t dress him tonight, and it’s not looking good for the Detroit game, either. Monaghan can play if you’re still not available, but we’re going to have to call up someone on an emergency basis to be the second goalie dressed.”

I hear Emery’s father’s voice in my head. That’s a no brainer, son. You step up now, and you cement your spot as the starting goalie in the playoffs.

But then I picture Emery, who right now is searching this building for my daughter. Who has only been my babysitter for a few hours.

And my mother and father—fuck, my father still hasn’t slept in his own bed yet.

“I need to talk to my family,” I hear myself saying.

“Of course.”

“How much time do I have?”

“Jack Benton can send a plane to pick you up in ninety minutes.”

I’m already moving past them, heading for the dressing room.