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Be scared on your own time, Varg. Your twin is the one fighting for his life.
Hold it together, buddy. You have Robbie and his girl, Vera, and the other guys on the team. Your mom has no one but you. Be the one she can count on, not another person she has to take care of.
I saw something once about glass children, kids born into families where a sibling has a chronic condition or disability. How they’re often overlooked or their needs aren’t met because their sibling takes up the time and attention. I looked into it after a girlfriend called me one during the argument that ended our relationship.
“What do you evenwant,Vic?” she’d yelled at me. “Do you even know? Or are you so busy trying to balance everyone else that you don’t go after the best thing to ever happen to you?”
She meant herself. Our relationship. Two of my teammates had proposed. Another was having a baby. She wanted a ring and a promise and thought I was too afraid to take what I wanted—aka kick my mother out of my house and move her in. She thought I needed to be goosed in the right direction.
She was wrong.
But after she blamed it on my horoscope—“you aren’t a Libra? Cancer maybe?”—she decided it was because of my brother. Because I hadn’t had my needs met enough as a child. A child whose twin developed bone cancer in his left tibia.
The research, while valid in its own right, didn’t fit me or Erik or our situation at all. First, my brother wasn’t diagnosed until sixteen. That means over a decade and a half of a childhood where I had everything I needed, no matter how hard my mom worked to make it happen. Second, when Erikwasdiagnosed, I wasn’t ignored or forgotten about—no matter how unintentional it is for most of those families—becauseI’mthe one who made the choice to be as easygoing as possible. It wasn’t my leg and my future. It wasn’t my child. I didn’t need to add my complaints to the pile of shit our life became overnight.
I kept playing.
I got drafted.
I could do whatever was necessary to ease the way for other people. Why not?
The relationship ended that day. Not even because I walked away from her—I wasn’t invested enough to care one way or the other—but because she was fed up with me. So I went back to my regular life of ibuprofen with a side of caffeine, pasta by the pound, endorsements that only asked me to strip to the waist for the occasional photo shoot. Easy peasy fresh-squeezed lemonade.
So yeah, if Robbie is trying to corner me to make me admit once again that I want Tristan Grant splayed across my sheets as I make her moan, but also that I want her smiling and tucked into my couch as I bring her a mug of hot tea and a warm blanket while we watch British baking shows… well, it doesn’t matter much now does it. Because even though I could still try to install the woman on my couch even if she was out of a job—and I could supply her with anything she might need—Tristan is not the woman who’d say thank you and smile around her first sip of chai. Nope. If I impede her professional career, she’ll castrate me with my skate blades on her way to fuck right out of my life forever.
“Vic,” Robbie says as I glide past him, the clock now flashing down the last minute of the warmup, “You can’t ignore me forever.”
“I’m not ignoring you,” I say, as if I haven’t skated in the opposite direction almost every other time he’s tried to pin me down today. Or locked myself in my single room at the Park MGM after morning skate under the guise of taking a nap instead of going to eat a mountain of carbs with him. I ate those alone on my king-sized bed thanks to room service. Something I’m sure I’ll hear about later when the GM wants to know why I skipped team lunch.
“I’m not going to mention Tristan,” he says and I lift my hand to give him the finger—something no one else will recognize since my gloves get in the way, but I know he reads my message loud and clear. “I was just going to tell you to look at the bin.”
I know better than to fall for whatever he’s doing, but my eyes are moving toward the penalty box before I can stop them, and there—I’m not sure how I missed her in the first place—is my kitty cat.
Between her white blonde hair and her light blue sweater, she glows like a radioactive dial on one of the World War Two watches the radium girls died for—Quinn was in charge of movie night the other month—and my mouth goes dry around my mouth guard.
“She’s here?” Pelletier asks, skating over, eyes locked on my social media manager who still hasn’t noticed that we’re all three staring. Four, Spaeglin is on his way over, too.
Tristan almost never comes to games, and if she does, she sits in the box with the families. There are plenty of people collecting footage for her to use, and her primary focus is drumming up excitement. I’ve never seen her in the stands before, and I don’t know how she got a prime seat at the last minute for an away game. I’m just grateful she did.
I skate toward the net and snag Rag’s water bottle from the top, squirting a healthy stream of water into my parched throat. It’s fine that she’s here. It’s good. Right? She’s probably working.
“Cap,” Spaeglin calls to me, “What is… she doing here?”
The pause tells me he almost called her Elsa. And I would have high-sticked him myself if he had. Off the ice, of course. Where no one would see. It’s apparently also my job to teach the infants on my team some manners. Later, if she asks, I’ll tell her it was a move calculated to put my teammates at ease. It’s not entirely a lie. There’s a tremor weaving through Jack’s voice and his blue eyes are wide as he stares out into the crowd. The kid is about as superstitious as they come. It won’t be the real reason, but I’ll go to my grave pretending Spags’ nerves are why I skate over to the penalty box, my steps loose and unhurried, even as the clock counts down the last minute.
She doesn’t look up until I tap the glass right in front of her face, and then I almost forget why I skated over because I’ve never seen her this casual before. Even when we film, she’s in office clothes. Slacks, blouses, dresses. Her makeup flawless and her heels both tall and expensive. But here she is in front of me, blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, wisps escaping to frame the pale, smooth skin of her cheeks. Her nose is pink from the cold. She’s not in a jersey, but her sweater is Arctic blue and she’s paired it with simple black leggings. Her feet are in those fuzzy brown boots again, andI don’t think she’s even wearing makeup.
She’s fucking stunning.
“Hey,” I call to her over the roar of the crowd. The fans on either side of her are watching us, mouths open in shock. It’s not unheard of for players to interact with fans, but it’s ballsy in someone else’s arena. I doubt they recognize her as a member of our organization. She isn’t in team gear. For all they know, she’s one of them and I’ve skated over with my cockiest grin. So of course I follow it up with a pickup line.
“Come here often?”
Her brows furrow as she frowns at me and then glances side to side like I’m not Vic and she’s not Tristan and as if there’s anyone else I could be talking to.
“No,” she says. I can’t hear her, not over the crowd, but I can read the word on her lips as a hint of what might be a smile tries to break through. Her head shakes side to side and some more hair slips out around her face. If I wasn’t seconds away from the buzzer and the national anthem, seconds away from—for all intents and purposes—a work event, I’d have a real problem on my hands. Popping a stiffy in front of twenty-thousand people should be the stuff of nightmares, but seeing her like this… casual, softer, almost like someone took their thumb and smudged out her hard edges… well it’s almost enough to overcome decades of self-preservation. Almost.
A puck slides toward my skate and I lean down to scoop it into my glove. From the corner of my eye I see Robbie with his skates pointed my direction and his chin dropped to the center of his chest in a nod. I toss the puck, letting it flip and fall into the center of my black glove. Then, with the grin I know drives her crazy, I flip it up and over the solid glass that separates us.
