I straighten at the sound of my name. Beck is waving an arm in the air from over near the swings. Of course he would be there; Rosie is an adventurous four-year-old who loves the swings more than anywhere else in the park. Gordie and I trot over to them.
“Gordie!” Rosie screams, jumping off her perch on a swing and running to her furry best friend. Gordie is a perfect gentleman, sitting and letting the little girl throw her arms around his neck. Her white-blonde hair looks ghostly against Gordie’s dark fur. She mutters, “Glad you’re here,” into Gordie’s neck.
Gordie licks her face and she giggles. I grin at Beck, who grins back. “Hey man.”
“Hey. She’s looking extra angelic today. Look at all that blonde hair.”
He smiles as he looks at her. “That’s all her mom.”
“Yeah, I know. You grew your beard out a few years ago and it was practically orange. You and Mollie are both redheads and pale as shit..”
“It’s called auburn. My hair stylist told me.” He purses his lips.
“Your hair stylist was obviously flirting with you.”
His cheeks color a little bit. “Yeah, he made that pretty obvious. Still counts, though.”
“Alex!” Rosie says, calling my attention to her. She runs up to me and hugs my legs. I squat down and embrace her while she beams at me. She’s a happy kid. “Can we walk Gordie?”
“Yep. Here, you grab his leash right here and I’ll take the handle.” I hand her a section of the leash in the middle. It’s not like I expect Gordie to get a wild hair up his ass and run off, but better safe than sorry.
“Okay.” She takes the leash and puts a hand on Gordie’s shoulders, giggling when his response is to lick her face. “You’re a good dog.”
We start off at a snail’s pace, walking exactly as fast as Rosie’s tiny legs can go. She starts telling her best friend a rambling story about god knows what, laughing the whole time. Again, she’s really fucking cute.
“So did you hear this crazy rumor about the Seattle Havoc hunting for a trade?” I ask Beck.
His expression flattens. “Where’d you hear that? I thought you stayed off social media.”
“This journalist just asked me about it. I called it a rumor and shut her down.”
“But you’re actually worried about it?”
“Maybe. The rumor is about the Havoc hunting for offensive talent. And you know as well as I do that whenever teams are trying to find space in a budget to bring in hired guns, the first place they look is with the team’s vets. That’s you and me, in case you forgot.”
“How could I?” His lips lift, but the smile is humorless. "I hate the casual gossip about our careers. But what I hate more is that there's no way to know if it's real or not. That part slays me." He slides me a look. "You're thinking about Kuznetsov."
"Hard not to." I roll my neck. "You looked into the Los Angeles thing?"
"The teammate? Dabrowski." He presses his mouth into a thin line. "Four days inpatient. Nobody will say what started it. Dabrowski won't talk. Neither will Kuznetsov's camp. The Sharks' front office put out some statement about a personal conflict that escalated and then never mentioned it again."
"His own teammate." I shake my head. "Whatever Dabrowski said or did, whatever started it, you don't put your own guy in the hospital. That's not a hockey fight. That's something else."
Beck looks at me for a long moment. "Cross knows all of this."
"Obviously."
"So, either Cross thinks it's manageable, or he thinks the upside is worth the risk." He shrugs, which is Beck Tate for ‘this situation is deeply unresolved and I'm going to pretend otherwise for the sake of my blood pressure.’ "Either way, it's not our call."
"It becomes our call," I say grimly, "the second he sets foot in our locker room."
He scrubs a hand over his chest.
I clap his shoulder and shake my head. “Sorry, man. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“You’re not exactly telling me anything I don’t already know. The fact is, every season is likely to be my last. But there’s not a single thing I can do about it. Staying up late at night worrying whether it’s going to happen this year or the next isn’t a good way for me to spend my time.”
“That’s a pretty grounded view.”
