2
Note to self: going outwasa great idea.
Broderick’s was exactly what you booked when you wanted the whole city to know you'd won. Low lights and a private section in the back, and a bartender who started lining up shots before we'd even gotten our coats off.
Someone had already put the game highlights on the screens above the bar. I watched myself score from three different angles while a stranger handed me a drink and told me I was a god.
"Thank you," I said, giving him my best smile. A smile that had been on magazine covers and social media stories that went viral the second they were posted. "I know."
This was the good part. This was the part I was actually good at. Someone grabbed my arm. Someone else said my name like it was a complete sentence. The music was loud enough that you couldn't hear yourself think, which was genuinely my preferred setting.
Not thinking was great. Thinking was where things went sideways.
The whole team had come out, more or less. My brother was near the back, standing with a beer he hadn't touched yet,scanning the room the way he scanned the ice, looking for problems before they happened.
He found me.
I gave Dylan a wave. He did not wave back.
Classic Dylan.
Dylan was twenty-seven and looked like our dad—same dark hair, same jaw, same build, same expression of a man who would tell you the truth whether or not you wanted it. He was the biological son and the responsible one and the one who did everything right. He was standing near the back of the bar with an untouched beer, which was what Dylan did at things like this: showed up and watched and didn't drink and went home early.
It had not always been easy to be his brother.
I was fairly certain it had not always been easy to be mine.
Dylan had gotten a fourth-round draft position and a mid-tier junior team and six years of doing everything right before he made the NHL. I had gotten a first-overall junior draft and the highlight reels and the magazine features and a projected top-five pick. Then the Wardens had taken me third overall and put me on Dylan's line like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Dylan's face when I walked into the Wardens’ facility for my first day had been the face of a man processing several things simultaneously and choosing not to say any of them.
I had never asked him which things.
I think I was afraid of what they were.
"TheLittle Lionhimself.” A guy I vaguely recognized had materialized at my elbow, messy black hair, someone's friend, a face I'd signed something for once maybe. “You and your brother are unreal together. Best brother duo in the league, I'm not even joking. Like watching two completely different styles justclick."
I smiled because I was good at smiling.
Dylan had been unreal before I ever laced up. He'd been unreal in juniors, unreal in his first two NHL seasons, unreal inthe quiet grinding way that didn't make highlight reels but made coaches trust you with their lives. Theclickthis guy was talking about was Dylan covering for everything I didn't bother to cover, the same way he'd been doing since I was a kid and running our parents' patience into the ground.
"Yeah," I said. "Completely different.”
I spotted Knox and Matthew coming through the main entrance, Knox with his hand low on Matthew's back, easy and unbothered. A few people clocked them and went back to their drinks because it was the team and nobody cared, which was one of the things I actually liked about the Wardens. No one was going to make a thing of it. Knox would have ended them if they tried, and Matthew would have helped.
Knox saw me and immediately made a face.
Not a bad face. It was Knox's version of concern, which looked approximately like suspicion. He said something to Matthew and they navigated through the crowd toward me, which I appreciated and also slightly didn't want, because Knox had this annoying ability to look at me and know things.
"You look like shit," Knox said, by way of greeting.
"I look amazing," I said. "I just scored on national television."
"Your eyes are doing something weird."
"My eyes are gorgeous."
"Morrison." He said it flatly.
