Page 44 of Omega’s Forward

But I don’t think it is a lie. Rourke has made it clear how he feels about fighting.

I drive home with both hands on the wheel. The latte steams in the cup holder and the whole cab fills up with cinnamon, and I hate it.

The house smells like the two of us.

He’s showered and back against the headboard with his laptop, wearing one of my T-shirts. Yesterday that would have finished me off completely. He looks up and closes the laptop.

“You found it.”

“I found it.” I hand him the cup.

He gets both hands around it and takes a sip, and his eyes actually close. “God. That’s the one.” He looks happy. Openly, plainly happy, over syrup in a paper cup.

“Good,” I say.

He glances up at that. “Everything all right?”

“Fine. I need a workout. Been working you the last few days, but those aren’t the muscles I need to work. Everything’s seizing up.”

“By all means.” The eyebrow goes up. “Go and lift your weights.”

I go down to the basement and shut the gym door behind me.

Nothing down here smells like him. Good. I don’t want it right now.

I load the bar and get under it and push. It doesn’t help, so I add a plate and push again.

I should just ask him. That’s the whole answer and I know it. Walk upstairs, put it in front of him plainly: Dorn says the league wanted two and ownership pushed for six — true or not? He’d tell me. Whatever else the man is, he doesn’t dress things up. He stood in a locker room full of my teammates and told them he’d sell us. He stood in my basement and told me he agreed with the league. He’d tell me this too.

That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.

I rack the bar and sit on the bench with my elbows on my knees, breathing.

It’s one thing to stand back and let the league take its shot at me. I hated it, but I understood it.

He doesn’t like fighting or the code, he never asked to own a hockey team, and he told me where he stood before the suspension ever came down. Fine. That’s a man with a position.

It’s another thing to pick up the phone and ask them to hit me harder.

Because if he did that, it had nothing to do with player safety. Gordie is dead.

There’s no punishing him now. But he loved this team, and everybody in this city knew he loved me — he said it out loud, in front of cameras — and if you want to hurt a dead man, you go after what he left behind.

Upstairs, faint through the floor, I hear him cross the guest room and come back. An hour ago I’d have gone up.

I chalk my hands and get back under the bar.

14. Everett

The gym door slams at the bottom of the stairs, and I’m left sitting up in bed with a pumpkin spice latte and no idea what I’ve done.

He’s clearly grumpy about something. I stare at the cup, anxiety curdling in my stomach, making me want to curl up and cry. That’s the hormonal dumb omega part coming out.

The intelligent Everett part of me isn’t putting up with that crap.

I ignore the way my stomach is twisting and drink the latte anyway. It’s exactly right — too much syrup, barely coffee at all, cinnamon the whole way through. He remembered the extra shot without being told.

He drove across town to get me a drink just because I mentioned it. Then this.