Epic (Him Book 3), Page 3

  “Look,” I chirp before Gerlach can answer. “Nothing makes me happier than kicking the hubby’s ass. We used to have one-on-one competitions when we were kids and I won my fair share of them. I know how to stop the asshole.”

  There are some nervous chuckles in the room.

  “Leave the man alone,” Gerlach grunts. “Put the puck into the net tonight, Sokolav, and then it won’t matter who’s in the net.”

  And then? That fucker does.

  He scores back-to-back goals during the second period, tying the game. From the bench, I don’t miss the tight set of Wes’s jaw as he flops onto the bench after his shift. He’s pissed. He doesn’t like losing. But Toronto turns it around at the end of the second, taking the lead again courtesy of a bullet from Blake Riley.

  The buzzer sounds and once again I leave the ice with “my” team, unable to signal to a solitary Toronto player. I do shout out, “Yo, Wesley!” at my husband’s retreating back, which gets me a deep scowl from Sokolav. Besides, my yell is drowned out by the thousands of other yells reverberating through the arena. I guess my short stint as a professional hockey player isn’t destined to be witnessed, but the story’ll be just as good when I tell it to Wes and the guys after the game.

  The third period kicks off. Pitti once again is under attack, and once again holding his own against Toronto’s powerful offense.

  At least until the dive. It’s not as beautiful and fluid as the dive he took in the first period. This time it’s clunky and all wrong, and two Toronto forwards accidentally collide with him when he’s down. There’s a scuffle, and Pitti is blocked from my view. Whistles blow. The refs skate over to the net.

  Relief washes over me when Pitti is helped up. He’s okay. He made the save and took a couple of hits, but—

  He’s not okay, I realize.

  He’s cradling his stick arm, holding it tight to his chest. One of the refs is urgently speaking to him, and Pitti begins shaking his head. His padded shoulders droop slightly as he begins to skate away from the net.

  On the bench, all eyes turn to me.

  5

  Wes

  Injuries suck. They really, really suck.

  With that said, we’re already beating San Jose by one, and now we’re about to play the last fourteen minutes facing their third-string goalie? We’ll be up by a dozen goals by the time this game ends.

  I feel for Tim Pitti, I really do. He’s clearly in pain as he heads for the tunnel toward the locker room. I wasn’t on the ice for that play, but Blake said he heard a bone snap. The mere thought makes me shiver.

  Injuries come with the gig, though. And while I sympathize with Pitti, I’m not complaining about this latest development.

  “Who’s the back-up’s back-up?” Lemming asks blankly.

  “No clue,” Eriksson answers.

  “It’s that dude,” Blake supplies, his gloved hand jerking toward the home team’s bench.

  I snort. “No shit, Sherlock. But what’s his name? Have we faced him before?”

  Our gazes are all glued to the San Jose player skating toward the net. His mask isn’t on but his back is to us so we can’t see his face. And his jersey doesn’t have a name, just the number 33. At the net, he slaps his gloves on, then turns slightly, flashing a profile.

  “Kinda looks like J-Bomb,” Blake remarks.

  “That kinda is J-Bomb,” I growl, shooting to my feet. Well, my skates.

  What the hell is happening? Why is Jamie wearing a San Jose uniform and manning their net?

  I’m two seconds from vaulting over the wall when I get a sharp reprimand from Coach. Also, the PA system chooses that moment to announce that a one mister Jamie Canning is now the goaltender for San Jose.

  Amazed laughter spills out of my mouth. He’s on the emergency goalie list, I suddenly remember. He’s filling in for an injured Pitti.

  “He’s giggling like a madman,” Blake tells our teammates. “Wesley’s lost it.”

  “Do you blame him?” Eriksson starts laughing too. “Canning’s in net? Shit, this is epic.”

  “Epic,” Blake echoes.

  And then there’s no more time for discussion, because a new faceoff begins and suddenly I’m watching my own teammates play against my own husband.

  So. Fucking. Trippy.

  It doesn’t take long for the memories to flood my brain. Jamie’s skill with the glove. His lightning-fast reflexes. The concentration, and the sheer calm—that’s what always used to impress me about him when we faced off in college. He never, ever lost his cool. Nothing fazed him when he was tending that net.

  “Change it up,” Coach barks, and my line hops off the bench and takes the ice. I’m skating center, with Blake at my left and O’Connor to my right. Our D-men are Laurier and Matin. Our five best players, all zeroing in on Jamie Canning.

  But he can handle it. He stops Blake’s wrist shot, makes a save on the rebound, and then flicks the puck to a San Jose forward, who flies away with it. Now we’re on defense. We spend the rest of our shift trying to stop San Jose from scoring on us. I’m out of breath by the time Coach calls for another line change. I heave myself over the wall as sweat drips down my face.

  “Look at J-Bomb go!” Blake crows.

  Like I can look at anything else. He’s fucking incredible. He makes three more saves on this next shift, and then, to our dismay, one of the San Jose D-men capitalizes on an errant rebound and gets a lucky wrister past our goalie.

  The game is tied. The hometown crowd is screaming, encouraging their guys. The few Toronto fans in the stands shout their own encouragement. Their energy fuels me as I take the ice again. Five minutes left—that’s plenty of time.

  I win the faceoff and dump the puck. Blake gives chase and gets his stick on it, snapping the puck back to me. But it’s stolen by a D-man and San Jose is on the attack again. This time our goalie holds them off, and when the puck lands on my stick, I suddenly find myself on a breakaway.

  Adrenaline sizzles through me as I charge the opposing net, where Canning stands guard.

  This feels familiar. So fucking familiar. And I swear he sticks his tongue out at me when he denies me the goal. His glove closes around it, and frustration follows me all the way back to the bench.

  It feels familiar because it is familiar. The one-on-one shootouts we had when we were kids are branded in my memory. Particularly because the last one led to my mouth on Jamie’s dick. Our summers at hockey camp in Lake Placid were the best of my life. It’s where I fell in love with Jamie. It’s where we reconnected, and where he fell in love with me.

  Jesus, how far we’ve come. Childhood friends, to lovers, to husband and husband.

  Life is a beautiful thing.

  When I play hockey, I’m always riding a high, but tonight it’s two highs. It’s adrenaline and excitement, and pure fucking love as I watch Jamie make four more saves over the next few minutes. When there are two minutes left, Eriksson takes a stupid penalty and San Jose gets themselves a juicy power play. I’m on the ice for the penalty kill, but the sharks are hungry, and thirty seconds in, they score.

  The home crowd goes wild.

  Toronto isn’t able to tie it up. We lose to the home team, and while I’m disappointed, I also can’t deny that I’m secretly happy for Jamie. His teammates swarm the ice and I lose sight of him in the massive show of celebration, but I know he must be over the fucking moon. And I’m glad for him. He deserves every bit of praise that’s going to be poured on him tonight.

  He deserves the world.

  6

  Wes

  “Where. The fuck. Are we?” Blake asks, his eyes roaming the sleek, achingly hip room. “Silicon Valley does weird things to its bars.”

  He’s not wrong. I’m holding a twenty-two-dollar cocktail, while blue light and techno music washes over us. “This is how I’d picture a bar on the Starship Enterprise.”

  “Nah,” my teammate Will O’Connor says. “Where are the alien women with three tits?”

&nb
sp; Forget the alien women. Where is Jamie? I take a sip of my over-priced cocktail and scan the room again. I’m aching to see his blond head pop out of the crowd. But no. It’s just us.

  After their win, San Jose sent a messenger to our locker room to tell us to meet ’em here. You can have your goalie back after we buy him a drink, the note said.

  So I guess Jamie made some new friends tonight. He must be out of his mind right now. Honestly, my head is sort of blowing up with ideas about what might happen next. Was that Ottawa scout in the stands tonight when Jamie became San Jose’s hero? I bet he was.

  My man’s whole life is about to change. And I feel all the things. Excitement. Astonishment. Disbelief. Worry. And—fine—a twinge of fear. He won’t have as much time for me now. I don’t need to be the center of attention. But I like being the center of his attention.

  But I push that ugly emotion back into its cave. This is Jamie’s night and I can’t wait to watch what happens next.

  Some of my teammates hit the dance floor, burning off their post-game energy. Lemming corners a leggy woman at the bar and starts turning on the charm. But I only slurp my drink and watch the door.

  Just when I’m sure he’s been kidnapped by my opponents, that golden head bobs into view, surrounded by a bunch of guys in teal jackets. I feel a rush of relief that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. And then I’m on the move, crossing the space, plopping my empty glass down on the nearest surface and hug-tackling him like I’ve needed to do all night.

  “Hey!” he says with a laugh as I squeeze him. “Sorry about your scoreless period. Better luck next time.”

  The corners of his eyes crinkle with his smile, and everything is right in my world. “I’ll get you next time.” I take his handsome face in two hands and smack a kiss onto his cheek.

  When I step back, a whole bunch of hockey players are staring at me. Pitti—the goalie whose arm is now in a sling—looks particularly stunned. As if I’m the alien with three tits.

  They already know I’m that guy—the dude who’s married to a dude. But apparently they’ve never seen it up close.

  “So are we drinking or what?” Jamie says easily.

  “Yeah,” Nik Sokolav says, snapping out of it. “And Pitti is buying, because you saved his ass tonight.”

  “Aw, man,” Pitti says with a chuckle. “Fine. Cheap beer for all my friends.”

  “Cheap beer here is nine bucks,” someone points out. “Ouch.”

  “And don’t forget your thirsty opponents,” I put in. “We lent you Toronto’s best goalie coach. It’s time to pay up.”

  “We better get started, then.” Pitti slaps Jamie on the back with his good hand and leads him toward the bar.

  Several beers later I’m feeling high on life. Jamie is busy exchanging war stories with his new friends from California. But I’m making plans. It’s a four-and-a-half-hour drive between Toronto and Ottawa. But a little research on my phone shows me a couple of towns between Toronto and Ottawa. Like Belleville and Kingston. We could buy a small house on Lake Ontario, and rent Jamie a studio in Ottawa.

  On the nights when both teams are at home, we could make the two-hour drive and meet in the middle. It would be our getaway place. Also, if Jamie is in the minors for a while, his season would be shorter than mine by a couple of weeks.

  And we’d have our summers. Sure, they’re only six weeks long. But I fell in love with Jamie over a few summers that weren’t much longer than that, right? He’s made all the sacrifices so far. I’m willing to make some for him.

  When it’s finally time to leave, I’m just bursting with ideas. They come spilling out in the cab on our way back to the team hotel.

  “…And you’ll be an even more valuable coach with some pro experience,” I point out. “When you go back to coaching—and I know you’ll want to—you’ll have your pick of jobs.”

  Jamie listens patiently to all of this word vomit. It’s hard to stop me when I get on a roll. We’re all the way back to the hallway outside of our hotel room by the time I finally take a breath and unlock the door with my key card.

  He walks in ahead of me, tossing his wallet on the desk and dropping a shopping bag the San Jose players gave him on our way out. There’s a teal jersey in it that he wore tonight during his NHL debut.

  Wordless, Jamie strips off his jacket and then his shirt. Then he flops backward onto the bed and stares, motionless, at the ceiling.

  I might have blown his mind a little. I’ll give him a minute before I launch us into victory lap sex. “I’m just gonna brush my teeth.”

  “No.”

  “No?” I pause in the doorway of the bathroom. “But I ate some weird bar snacks. I think they were gluten-free pretzels.”

  “No, I mean…I don’t want to drive two hours every four days just to see your face.”

  “Oh.” I swallow. “Okay. There’s seventeen flights a day on Porter. That’s my other idea. It’s a one-hour flight time.”

  “Wes.” Jamie sits up suddenly. “I had a great time tonight. Except when I thought I was going to barf.”

  “Were you nervous?” I ask, trying to understand.

  “No! But I ate a lot of Mexican food. The first dive nearly broke me. But that’s not the point.” He shakes his gorgeous head. “I had a lot of fun, but it was just that. A wild night. And now I have more than five calls from that scout on my phone.”

  “He’d be crazy not to call you tonight,” I point out. “He’s probably peeing himself wondering if any other teams are after you.”

  Jamie makes an impatient noise. “Look, it is a fun story. My parents will be dining out on that for years. The sports blogs are going to eat it up. But I bet not one of them points out the unfair advantage I had tonight.”

  “What advantage?”

  “I know you guys so well. I watch every Toronto game. I personally know every player on every line. Sure—I went in cold. But Blake’s first wrister? It was like watching old video. I knew it was coming. That period was, like, optimized for my enjoyment. And it will never happen again.”

  “Well, sure, not exactly like that, but—”

  He holds up a hand to silence me. “Here’s the thing? I don’t want my whole life to turn on a cute story, or a sound bite. If Bill Braddock called me right now and offered me the promotion I was supposed to have, I’d take it in a hot second.”

  Oh.

  “I’m a good goalie, Wes. But I’m a great coach. I’m honestly kicking myself right now, because I should have pushed harder for that job. I should have made more noise. I blew it. That’s been hard to accept. But I won’t let a fun accident derail me from what I’m really supposed to be doing.”

  I sit down heavily on the bed beside him. I spent the evening galloping off in one direction, and it’s not easy to rearrange my thinking. Again. “So you don’t want to go to Ottawa at all?”

  Slowly he shakes his head. “We’d never see each other. If you were in prison I’d be allowed more conjugal visits than we’d get if I move to Ottawa.”

  I bark out a laugh. “Let’s not test that theory.”

  “Wes.” Jamie beckons to me. And when I lean in, he wraps his arms around me. “I love you so hard. But don’t plan this for me, okay? I know it’s hard for you to understand, because you love your job so much. But I love mine, too.”

  “I know,” I say quickly, wrapping my arms around his sturdy body. “I know you do. You were just so amazing tonight. I can’t even handle it. I’ve never had more fun. Ever.”

  “Is that right?” Jamie thrusts a knee between my two legs and grabs my ass suggestively. “We have all kinds of fun, though. Half the time you can’t even remember your own name afterwards.”

  “True.” His skin smells like locker room soap, and I want more. Burrowing closer, I kiss his neck. “Fine. I won’t try to plan your life. But does that mean I have to call off the goon squad I hired to teach Bill Braddock a lesson?”

  “Yeah.” He sighs. “Save the violence for the rink.
This is a problem I have to solve by myself.”

  “You know I’d do anything for you. Even drive to Bellewood to do you.”

  Jamie snorts. “Belleville.”

  “Yeah. There, too.”

  He laughs and then kisses me.

  7

  Jamie

  When I step out onto the ice on Saturday morning, my head is full of plans for the Niagara game. We’ve got an hour for morning skate, followed by another hour for watching film. Then I’ll have to let my guys take some time off for lunch, because the faceoff is at four.

  But just as I skate my first few strides forward, every kid on the team lets out a shout and then rushes me. Four seconds later I’m swarmed by a pack of rowdy, laughing sixteen to twenty-one year olds. They actually hoist me into the air, all talking at once.

  “Oh my God, that save on Wesley!”

  “Fucking awesome!”

  “Fire!”

  “We were dying.”

  “Just here to entertain you,” I chuckle, trying to get back onto my feet.

  “Are you going to go pro?” my goalie wants to know. “That scout from Ottawa wants you more than me.”

  This again? “I’m not going anywhere.” Not even to Barrie, apparently. It still stings that I didn’t get that job. And out of the corner of my eye I can see Bill Braddock watching me from the top of the stands, where he’s sitting with the assistant coach and a couple of other guys.

  The pressure is on, then. We have to win this one.

  I clap my hands together. “Okay, guys. Party’s over. We’re going to beat Niagara in a few hours, but only if we can shut down their offense. Let’s do some D-drills before we watch film. Taylor—set up the cones for an odd man rush.”

  “Okay, Coach.” He skates off.

  Part of my job is to know which guys I can always count on to set the tone. Taylor is always open for business. “Trapatski! Stop wagging your jaw and set up for the rush. Let’s move.”