“You’re a second-rate hockey player whose dumb luck landed you where you are today,” he bleated out, getting more irrational with each poisonous word slurred.“You couldn’t build your way out of a wet paper bag if you tried—”
Wolfe disconnected the call, shaking his head in disgust.
Disgust in the fact that he thought the phone call would be any different.
Disgust that he attempted to connect with his dad, knowing full well how the conversation would end.
Every.Single.Fucking.Time.
Wolfe swiped his scotch-filled tumbler from the counter and slammed the amber-colored liquor in two giant gulps.His breath heaving while anguish ripped through him at the memory of his dad’s words, like a shredding machine obliterated paper into tiny pieces.
His true words.
Hewasa shitty brother.All he had to do was watch his little sister while they played at the swimming hole.But twelve-year-old Wolfe couldn’t be bothered.He was too busy splashing around and swimming with his friends so he ignored Elle’s begging to return to the shore to get the snacks from his backpack.He didn’t even notice when she left the pathetic inflatable raft she was sitting on while he played a vigorous game of keep away with his buds.He also didn’t notice that she’d taken off her life jacket that laid stiffly on the bright yellow raft, her small body nowhere to be seen.
It was then he heard her tiny voice call his name as her elbows, forearm, wrists and then fingertips flayed and then dipped under the water.
Wolfe could feel that sense of weightlessness only pure fear produced in the body as he worked to swim the thirty yards to where he’d seen her go down under the water.
He arrived at the spot he thought she went down and started an endless cycle of diving to find her, but he couldn’t.He couldn’t see well under the water and tried with all his might to feel for any sign of her.
Each time he surfaced, Wolfe would suck in a gigantic gulp of air, knowing that the next dive would result in locating Elle.
But it didn’t.
Some of his friends went to the shore to call for help while Wolfe continued his efforts to find his sister.His baby sister who so loved sweets that she probably took off her life vest, thinking she could make it to the shore quicker to get to the stash of treats he’d packed for her when their parents demanded Wolfe take her swimming.
Even with the dive team from the fire department onsite, Wolfe, now standing on the shoreline with a scratchy wool blanket slung around his shoulders, knew his sister was gone.
Days later at the funeral, he sat between his parents who cried uncontrollably during the service as the priest talked about his sister’s love of sweets.It felt like a knife was being driven deeper and deeper into his heart.
Home was never the same.His dad drunk himself to oblivion every night and his mom simply went through the motions of life.She died of a massive heart attack when Wolfe turned sixteen, but he knew deep down that her heart broke to the point it could no longer beat after Elle died.
Filling the tumbler with more scotch, Wolfe took another mighty gulp, then placed the bottle back in the cabinet and the glass in the dishwasher he’d installed a few years back.
He felt a little more relaxed thanks to the effects of the quality alcohol.He certainly felt the rage coursing through his body, but he refused to succumb to the life his dad chose of spending each night in a drunken stupor.
Thank fuck that Wolfe found hockey.He stumbled upon a men’s league when he was working at a local ice rink to make money for his truck and somehow ended up playing with a team that was short a player.Although he never admitted it out loud, especially with the chip the size of Gibraltar on his shoulder, being on the ice broke the chains of grief that consumed him.
It also turned out he was good.Very good.
He joined his high school team and was drafted right out of high school to play in the minors.He left his childhood home, his dad cussing him out as Wolfe drug a duffle bag across the floor and out the door and into a new world.
A few years later, he made it to the Show and met Dante, who was facing his own demons having to raise his little sister after their parents died in a car crash.
Dante was his best friend and his sister, Mia, was as close to flesh and blood as it came, but Wolfe never got close to anyone really.
He never called people by their names—always a nickname.He should probably get some serious psychological help to figure out the shit bouncing in his brain like bumper cars but the bottom line was he was broken.
And he hid his brokenness with an I-could-give-a-fuck attitude whether it be on the ice or in life.
Wolfe’s phone pinged with a text notification, which ripped him from his depressing as fuck and useless pity party.
Dinner—6 at Hinsdale Park.Aspen
Wolfe bowed his head and released a long breath.
Why he pushed for dinner on all days, the anniversary of his sister’s death was beyond all rational thought.
