Page 9 of Omega’s Forward

The house was supposed to have somebody in it by now.

I’d bought the house thinking I’d have a mate in it one day, and then one day just seemed to be a little further away until it seemed like it was never going to happen.

My sister has two kids who are amazing. I’d kind of assumed that I wasn’t going to end up having any of my own. Today that’s changed.

Most nights I don’t hear the empty. Tonight it’s loud.

I get a beer and sit down with my laptop and type his name.

I’d done it when I knew he was the new owner. That was different. Now I know that it’s him.

Everett Rourke gets me a private equity firm’s leadership page. London. The photograph looks retouched but probably isn’t: dark hair, gray eyes, an expensive suit.

His bio tells me that he has two degrees and has lived in multiple cities. There’s stuff about corporate banking that goes in one ear and out the other. Nothing about hockey. Nothing about a father.

I keep snooping. He’s all over LinkedIn, a site that I’ve never seen the point of. He doesn’t seem to have much social media or none that I can find.

Finally, in my second hour of unashamed investigative work I find a clip of him mentioning Gordie.

He’s at some conference answering questions from the audience about leveraging something or other.

Someone says: “You’re Gordon Rourke’s son, aren’t you? The Barons? What was that like?”

On the video, something crosses his face, quick and cold, there and gone. Then: “We’re not close.” And a look down that straight nose that closes the topic so completely the moderator apologizes. The accent catches me off guard. American underneath, London laid over the top of it, like he packed the Rourke out of his voice along with everything else. Prim. That’s the word for it. He’s prim and about as far from Gordie Rourke’s open grin as a face can get. I don’t see the resemblance much either. Maybe Everett looks like his mother.

I put the empty beer bottle into the recycling, then I wipe down a counter that’s already clean.

I haven’t replied to JP. I need to tell him what happened. This is going to affect the team, no matter how it goes. He deserves to know.

I get as far as picking up my phone before I put it down again.

All I can think of is the moment that scent hit me. The floor tilting. The way I instinctively stepped toward him.

And his face. I keep coming back to his face, because I’ve spent fifteen years reading men across the ice and I know what I saw.

Shock first. Then horror. Actual horror, the kind nobody can fake, aimed straight at me.

He gripped that desk like the room was moving, and he screamed at me to get out.

So that’s where it stands. Whatever hit me in that office hit him too, and he hates it.

Hates me, maybe. Although he doesn’t know me, clearly he didn’t like the look of me.

Not surprising. I’m a thirty-three-year-old hockey player on the tail end of my career, scars on my face and a false tooth. I wouldn’t pick me either.

For the record, I know how that sounds, and I’m not a sad case. I like my life. I’ve got a letter on my chest, a room that would skate through a wall for me, a house I paid for with a game I love, and a best friend who’d hide a body for me. It’s a good life.

Doesn’t mean some random person wants to automatically be stuck with it.

I go to bed and lie there for an hour, and then I give up and take a shower hot enough to hurt.

That’s where it gets away from me.

I’m not thinking about anything. I’m standing in the steam with my eyes shut, and the scent memory arrives anyway. Orange peel.

The exact line of his throat above that white collar. His voice cracking on the second get out, split right down the middle. He was losing control. Water is drumming on the back of my neck.

I should turn the water cold.