First Chapter: Bombshells
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September
ANTON
It’s a Wednesday afternoon during the preseason, and I should really be in the locker room. But I’m standing in an office in the Bruisers’ headquarters, waiting to find out if I still have a NHL career.
Practice starts in thirty minutes. If they wanted me down there, I’d already know, wouldn’t I?
My hands are clammy and my heart rate is erratic. So this is what it feels like when fate brings the hammer down. If only I could go back in time and make better choices. I wouldn’t be standing here sweating.
Couldn’t they just fire me already? I’m dying here.
Prayer probably won’t work, even if this is one of those moments when I’m tempted to bargain with God. What would I even say?
Dear Lord—I’m sorry for all the cockiness I displayed last year. You know my stats were great during my rookie season. But then I kinda self-destructed.
I’m sorry I didn’t leave the bar earlier all those times when I should have. I’m sorry about missing the team jet that time in Arizona when I had no business being so hungover in the middle of a road trip.
On the matter of a certain compromising photo, I think we can both agree that the incident with those women was not really my fault. But I do apologize for putting myself in that situation and allowing for that tacky result.
But I am most sorry for the worst sin of all—squandering all those opportunities. You gave me a shot at greatness. But I started my second season on the struggle bus. And after that disastrous game against Chicago, you (in your infinite wisdom) sent me down to purgatory—aka the minor league team in Hartford. I had to watch on TV while the Bruisers went to the playoffs.
This summer I repented. I ran seven miles every day, even on the ones when New York City was as humid and gross as a used practice jersey.
I didn’t skip a workout in the gym, either. In the evenings, I’ve drunk only a single light beer. Did you ever hear the joke about how light beer is just like sex in the bottom of a canoe? Because it’s fucking close to water.
Oh hell! I can’t even pray like a grownup. I just told a dirty joke to God.
Just then, the door swings open, and my heart plummets as Hugh Major walks into the small room, chest out. He’s followed by Eric, my father’s cousin, who is also my agent.
And Eric looks grim.
Oh shit. This is really happening.
Up until this very moment—when I saw that look on Eric’s face—I still held out some hope that, after my strong showing at training camp, they’d give me one more chance.
Fuck my life. I deserve this. But it’s still going to bite the big one.
“Well, son,” Hugh says as Eric shuts the door. “You sure had some trouble last season.”
“I know, sir,” I say evenly, because a man doesn’t cower from his fate. “My production was not up to my own standards.”
“Nor mine,” he agrees, even as a cold drop of sweat makes its way down my back. “You’re capable of so much more.”
“And I’m going to prove it, even if I have to do that in Hartford.”
“Huh.” He frowns at me. “How about you do it downstairs on the practice rink instead? We’re going to roster you. But you’d better give us something to show for it.”
“Yessir,” I say, my ears ringing with confusion. Did I just hear that right? I’m staying?
I glance at Eric’s stern glower for clarification. Why does he look so dark when…
His lip twitches. Then it twitches again.
That Bastard! He knew how this was going to go. He was just fucking with me.
“Keep your head down, kid. You know you’ve got to,” says Hugh.
“I can,” I insist, dragging my gaze back to his. “I got this.”
“Then get down there and show us all.” He gives me a nod and—done with me now—lets himself out of the room to deal with someone else’s drama.
I don’t breathe until he’s gone. I’m drenched in cold sweat. And Eric, that fucker, is chuckling silently. “You jackass!” I hiss. “I about sharted myself just from the look on your ugly face when you walked in here.’’
“I know,” he says with a snort. “It was priceless. And no less than you deserve. Honestly, Hugh should have yelled a little more and thrown some furniture around. Maybe that would put you into the headspace you need this season. “
“But I am in the right headspace,” I insist. “I’ve been there since I got sent down to Hartford in March. Now I’m fitter than I’ve ever been. Even since high school, when I was in lust with a distance runner.”
Eric shakes his head as he opens the door to shoo me into the hallway. “Let me guess—you ran half-marathons every day just to get into her spandex?”
“Yes.”
“Did it work?” he asks as we head for the stairs leading down to the historic lobby of the renovated warehouse where the Brooklyn Bruisers make their home.
“Oh, sure,” I recall. “Totally worth it. She was skinny, but man did she have stamina.” But I’m getting off topic. “This time I ran for me, though. Nobody will be able to outskate me. I’m fit and ready. They won’t be sorry they took this chance.”
Eric stops in the middle of the grand lobby, beneath the video screen showing highlights from last season. “That’s the problem. It’s your third season. They shouldn’t have to feel like they’re taking a chance. You’re not a rookie anymore.”
Well, ouch. “Yeah, no kidding. But things are already different.” I swipe open the door that leads to the practice facility.
“Tell me how,” he says as we enter the tunnel.
“I already told you my new rules.”
“Say it again,” he says. “Loudly. So the gods of hockey can hear you.”
Man, I love Eric, but I hate being treated like a kid brother. There’s no getting around it, though. He was this team’s first Bayer. It’s not his fault that he had to retire at the top of his game, after too many knee surgeries.
They picked me up that same season, so my nickname became Baby Bayer, and I can’t seem to shake it. I don’t enjoy the constant reminder that I was the second-choice Bayer.
Then again, my behavior last season helped the name stick.
This year will be different, though, because of these rules I made for myself. “No boozing,” I grumble. “No whoring.” Eric smirks. “And no scandals.”
“Good,” he says. “It’s a start. Although rules are what you make of them. And none of those three things is the real problem. It’s focus, Anton. And we both know it.”
“Yeah.” He’s right. But so am I, because the rules are meant to give some structure to my life. They’ll make me into a different man. A better man.
A man who can focus.
At the bottom of the tunnel, I swipe myself into the last secure door at the edge of the training complex. “I gotta suit up now.”
“Good thing,” he says cheerfully. “Have a great practice.”
“I will.” Seriously. I’ll never take this for granted again. Every time my ID card lets me through this door, I’ll say another hallelujah. “You’re still a shit cousin for making me sweat it, by the way.”
“Maybe.” He walks away laughing.
* * *
In the dressing room, I head for my locker. It’s right where it used to be, between Drake and Campeau. I’m so ready to buckle down and skate. And I won’t stop until we win the cup in June.
“You’re late, Baby Bayer!” O’Doul calls. “Change, already.”
“Sorry,” I say, preferring not to explain where I’ve been. “Let’s do this, boys!” I slap Drake on the back. “Who’s ready to skate until we puke?”
“You talk a good game,” my friend replies, pulling up his socks. “But I bet you’re really just planning the first big prank of the season.”
“Nah,” I say, tossing my T-shirt into my gym bag. “I’ve retired the whoopie cushion and the rubber chicken.” This will be the year that the hockey blogs know me for my stats, not my reputation as a party boy.
It’s time to settle down. Hell—it’s past time. “Where’s my jersey?” I ask, glancing around the room. It’s not at my station. And I feel an honest-to-God shiver, like the hockey gods are reminding me one more time that nobody owes me a seat in this room.
“Oh, uh,” Drake says, frowning. “Jimbo only made it half way around before something came up.” He points at a rolling laundry cart in the center of the room. “I found mine in there.”
“Thanks, dude.” I slap my upper body pads on and then cross to the cart. Sure enough, there’s my practice jersey right on top. BAYER it reads, number 70. “One better than 69,” I used to tell the ladies in the bars after games.
I reach for the jersey. But just as my fingers close around the fabric, a hand comes shooting up from beneath the other laundry in the cart and grabs me by the wrist.
I shriek like a teenage girl at a Taylor Swift concert.
The room erupts with howls of laughter.
“MOTHERFUCKER!” I yell as Castro stands up in the cart, shedding a pile of jerseys. Then I clutch my chest, where my heart is beating wildly. “You will PAY, asshole!”
He doubles over laughing. “Anyone get it on video?”
“Oh ya,” says the rookie Wilson in his big Wisconsin accent. He’s clutching his phone and laughing. “That’ll be a classic. You jumped a yard, Baby Bayer. Shoulda gone out for basketball.”
“Assholes,” I grumble, lifting the damn jersey over my head. “You all think you’re so funny.” The whole room is still laughing, even Ivo, the Finnish kid who barely understands anything we say.
I stomp back to my gear and put on my hockey shorts.
“Oh, man,” Drake says, wiping his eyes. “What a way to start the season. How you gonna pay Castro back?”
As soon as I hear the question, my subconscious is making plans. I could steal that lucky peanut-butter sandwich he eats before every game. He might open it up and find a damp sponge in there instead. Or—since we live in the same building and share a laundry room—I could put a new purple T-shirt in his whites laundry and turn all his underwear lavender.
But wait. No.
Slowly I turn to Drake. “I’m not.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to get him back. I’m done with jokes and pranks,” I tell him. Even if revenge does sound nice, because my heart rate is still elevated from Castro’s jump scare, my focus needs to be elsewhere.
“Sure you’re done.” Drake rolls his eyes. “You can tell me all about it tonight when we go out.”
“Where?”
“Some warehouse party in Long Island City. Doors open at midnight but the real fun doesn’t start until one, prolly.”
But I’m here to skate. I didn’t bust my ass all summer to get drunk at a warehouse party. “Maybe next time,” I tell Drake. And then I pat him on the shoulder and grab my skates.
* * *
The first thing I see when I walk out to the main practice rink is a whole lot of journalists and photographers. They’re here to preview the new team roster and check out the new, expanded practice facility.
“Bayer! Over here!” a photographer calls. I give him a wave and a smile. I’m so juiced for the new season and a new chance to prove myself. The circus-like atmosphere only feeds me.
The second thing I see is our head coach.
“Anton!” Coach Worthington lands his piercing gaze on me. “Good showing yesterday at the track. I had no idea you could sprint like that.”
My chest practically expands from this compliment. “Thank you, sir. I worked hard this summer.”
“It shows. I was impressed. This is the year you settle down and put up the stats you’re capable of.”
“Yes, sir. That’s going to happen.”
“I have some ideas.” There’s a glint in the older man’s eyes. “We’re going to practice a couple different defensive pairings this year. You’ll skate with O’Doul in some preseason games and Tankiewicz in others. Gotta keep ’em guessing. We have so much strength on the blue line. Let’s make it all count.”
“Yes, Coach. I can’t wait.” His optimism is contagious. Everyone is buzzing about how this will be a big season for us. It was only a few years ago when the Bruisers were moved to the city and rebranded as a Brooklyn team. The GM got fired, and then the coach, too.
Everybody said Nate Kattenberger was a fool, that an internet billionaire couldn’t make a world-class hockey team out of his pricey investment.
They were wrong.
Nate is only part of our story now. Now there’s Rebecca Rowley Kattenberger—his wife—who owns the team. We’ve got a terrific GM, a great staff, and twenty-three players who are determined to get back to the finals this season.
Thank you, Jesus, for making me one of them. And I’m sorry about that dirty joke earlier.
I know I’m lucky to be standing here in this state-of-the-art practice rink in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It’s a bit of a zoo today because the team is holding an open practice. There are little kids in the stands wearing purple Bruisers jerseys. And photographers angling their giant cameras toward the ice.
Practice hasn’t started, and most of the guys aren’t out here yet. But out of the corner of my eye, I see an unfamiliar skater in full goalie padding. My attention is snagged by the fluid, strong strides of his skating. Goalies have to be phenomenal skaters, but there’s something really stylish about this one. I wonder who he is. Some college kid getting a tryout? A draft pick I haven’t seen before?
“We’re going to run a lot of back-checking drills,” Coach says. “Our whole season could hinge on how many fractional seconds it takes us to recover a lost puck.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” I agree.
The goalie has reached my end of the rink now, where there is a little girl smiling and waving at him. He comes to a fluid stop in front of the plexi. He scoops a puck up off the ice and then shows it to the little girl, sending her into paroxysms of joy. He tosses it over, and the little girl lets out a whoop and leaps for it.
I smile as a reflex, because I was once that kid, desperate for a moment’s contact with one of my idols at the rink.
But then? The goalie unclips his helmet and hauls it over his head, revealing a head of long, thick hair. Hold the phone—this goalie is a girl. No—a woman. With rich brown hair and lush olive skin. She shakes out her hair, which seems to be in the process of escaping whatever braid or ponytail that had confined it. Then she smiles, giving the little girl a wave.
And I can’t fucking breathe. Her smile lights up her eyes, which are a warm brown. She is like the living, breathing picture of female perfection.
In a goalie’s pads. Fuck me.
“Anton Bayer,” Coach snaps. “We were having a conversation. And now you’re staring at a girl.”
Dazed, I look back in his direction. “Sorry, sir. I just didn’t realize…” The sentence has no rational conclusion. I just didn’t realize that a ten-second look at a woman from ten yards away was enough to make me feel so much. Curiosity. Intrigue. Hunger, even. Who knew I had a thing for goalies?
“Yeah, the Bombshells’ season is starting up at the same time as yours,” Coach says. “It’s going to be an adjustment sharing this facility.”
“Exactly,” I agree, as if I’d been thinking the same thing. And in truth, I had forgotten all about Rebecca’s investment in women’s hockey. “The, uh, new renovation looks great, though.”
Coach grunts his agreement. Over the summer, they’d done a lot of work on the practice facility. The full-sized practice rink—where I’m currently making an ass of myself in front of Coach—got five hundred additional seats and a new, high-tech roof. There’s a new stadium-worthy scoreboard hanging from the ceiling.
And—this is the wildest thing—an entire new story was constructed on top of our state-of-the-art locker room facility. So our dressing rooms are still there, but there’s a new suite for the women’s team above us.
I’d known all that. It’s just that it hadn’t really sunk in that there’d be actual women here in the building with us. And I really hadn’t anticipated that my brain could be stolen by the goalie on day one.
Lordy, I’m going to have to watch myself. Coach was absolutely right when he said this is my year to settle down and contribute. It isn’t just my sprints that I’ve been training. It’s my mind. I need to be tougher than I’ve been.
Focus, man. Come on.
Coach checks his expensive watch. “Let’s do this, Bayer. We’re starting. Get out there.”
I vault over the wall to get in a couple of warmup laps as my teammates troop down the chute to join me. I lean into my glide, lengthening my stride and stretching my legs. But as I round the ice, something silver glints at me from the surface. I stop, lean down, and remove my glove to pluck some kind of hairpin off the ice. It must have escaped when the world’s most sensuous goalie shook out her hair.
So much for avoiding her. I straighten up and skate hastily toward the end of the rink where I’d seen her disappear. And there she is, helmet under her arm, watching my teammates warm up. She’s wearing a frown now, which puts a crease in her forehead. I have the urge to smooth it out with my fingers.
But that would be creepy and weird, so I speak to her instead. “Excuse me, miss? I think you might have dropped this when you were giving that little girl the puck. Nice move, by the way. You made her whole year.”
The beauty turns, and her eyes widen slightly. “Sorry. Are you speaking to me?”
“Yeah. I don’t know your name. But I found this on the ice.” I hold it out, and her eyes widen again.
“O-oh,” she stammers. “I didn’t…” She catches herself. “Never mind. thank you. I hope you didn’t trip on it.”
“Nah. No worries.”
She reaches out and takes the pin from me, brushing my palm with her fingertips. And just that small contact ripples through me like an electrical current. “Welcome to Brooklyn,” I hear myself say in a husky voice. “Was today your first practice?” That would explain the number of journalists.
“Yes,” she says with a quick smile that I feel right in the center of my chest. “Was it that obvious?”
“What? No.” I laugh. “I didn’t see any of it.”
Behind me, an assistant coach blows the whistle, calling for the first drills.
“But I’m about to have my own practice now,” I add.
“Well, good luck to you, then. I hope it goes better than mine.”
“Thank you.” Still, I linger a moment longer, staring into those soft brown eyes. “You have a nice day,” I say stupidly. Then I force myself to turn and skate away.
I didn’t even get her name.