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Chapter Two
Then
“God fucking damn,” I cursed loudly, slamming the blade of my stick to the ice as the arena was silent, except for a few claps from Chicago’s traveling fan section.
Fucking assholes, the lot of them.
I skated into the bench, my good friend Caden Payne waiting for me by the door. He slapped my back twice as I stepped inside. I slammed my ass down to the bench and slid down, making room for both Payne and our roommate, Nick Kolak. The fourth in our apartment, Teague “Ketty” Ketterhagen, was skating in from his perch at goal.
“Alright, men, listen up,” Coach started the moment Ketty’s mitts hit the boards. Ketty was handed a water bottle and he flipped his facemask up onto the crown of his head, as Coach went over how the hell we were going to attempt to win this fucker in the last twenty-six seconds of the game.
We were down by two.
It could happen.
It wasn’t fucking likely, but it could happen.
Coach finished his spiel, and five of our men, plus Ketty, headed back out to the war-torn ice. My eyes glanced around the zones, up to the scoreboard, then over the once-crowded arena.
Once-crowdedwas a stretch, but we sure as shit had more people filling the seats fifteen minutes ago, than we had asses down now.
The Beloit Enforcers were new.
New the area. New to the American Hockey League.
At first, there’d been some excitement at the hockey team joining this small ass town that was known for its Hormel plant. But quite frankly, we weren’t a consistent group of hockey players, and those who started to call themselves fans, were quickly dwindling—and we weren’t even two full months into the season. I’d bet my left nut that all us men would find ourselves in a different locker room next year, because our parent NHL club in San Diego wouldn’t want to keep wasting money on us.
I really needed this season to go off without a hitch, though. I was getting ‘old’ in hockey standards. No, twenty-four wasn’t ancient, but when eighteen-year-olds were coming into camp like Wayne fucking Gretzky, it made a guy realize: one of these seasons, I was going to be a fixture in the AHL and not have a way out. I’d get older, start playing slower, and end up on the lowest of low totem poles.
I didn’t want to play the Big Game for the money. Sure, those zeroes looked fucking fantastic on the contract, but I grew up in a modest house, with penny-pinching parents. Eventually, after working their lives away, my parents bought a gorgeous lake house up north. It was huge, and it was theirs outright.
I wish I could have helped them with it. Given back to the two people who helped get me to where I was at today—the midget club days; the high school days. I’d gone to school on a scholarship, so that at least lessened their load.
I still wanted to give them something in return, but that was hard to do on a forty-K year.
Shit, I just wanted the chance to prove I was good enough, fast enough, tough enough, for San Diego. I wanted to be called up so fucking badly, and I’d do anything to prove I was what they were looking for. I wasn’t asking to be on their first line. I’d gladly take a spot on the fourth line, if it meant showing I had the grit they were looking for.
That I could go out during my shift and be the grinder I’d been labeled as, in college.
A grinder was a player who went out and played hard—whether that was stick and puck handling, or handling opponents against the boards. The grinder could be a heavy hitter, but was more than just a presence on the ice.
I could be that person.
Hell, I was that person.
Bzzzzz.
The buzzer and Kolak’s backhanded slap to my chest shook me from my thoughts, and I realized I missed the last twenty-some seconds, but apparently that was all I’d missed.
We were still down by two.
Which further meant we were officially the lowest-ranked team in our conference.
“Fuckin’ A,” I muttered, standing. While the other guys shuffled in toward the tunnel, Kolak and I moved to the ice, there to bring our boys back in. It was something the two of us started three weeks back after a really fucking good game, and even though we found ourselves doing it after one lost game after another, you didn’t mess with tradition.
“Maybe if we stopped doing this, we’d start winning,” Kolak threw over his shoulder, a smirk on his mug but a pissy gleam in his eyes.
“You wanna piss off the hockey Gods more than they already are?”
