Harrisburg Railers Box Set 2 Read online

  “How are you?” I asked, the familiar vowels and syllables of Swedish relaxing me. I needed that after spending the first part of the session waiting for Charlie to ask me about that summer and to have to field questions like, “Didn’t you and Stan get super close?”

  “Doing good.” Arvy switched so he was skating backward, shadowing me, feinting left then right, turning back, icing to a stop and then skating at speed away from me. This was his role—defending, following their forwards whatever they did. I gave nothing away, but tried a few moves and managed to shake him off once. By the time we were finished, we were laughing, leaning on the wood, shooting the breeze about home and family and people we knew.

  Of course he would know about Freja, and the fact that we’d married, and that we’d had a baby. The Swedish skaters had a network of gossip, and I knew it must have come up.

  “Sorry to hear about you and Freja,” he said, lifting his water bottle and squirting a healthy mouthful. “Must be hard.”

  “It’s okay,” I reassured him, “it was a mutual thing.”

  Arvy nodded. “And you have a baby, I heard? A little one.”

  “Noah. He’s nearly nine months now. He’s living with me.” I gave him the look I gave everyone, daring him to ask why he wasn’t with his mom. Arvy didn’t even go there; clearly my expression of warning was enough.

  Noah and I were fine on our own, happier than if I’d stayed with Freja just because it was expected. We had our nanny, Amy, and the three of us rattling around in my empty apartment were exactly right and as it should be.

  “I can’t believe you’re a dad,” Arvy said with a grin. “Changing diapers, burping the little one, getting up in the night…”

  “This is why I have a nanny.”

  I let him think I did nothing, but in all honesty, sitting up with Noah in the early hours of the morning, holding him, finding my Zen space with him curled on my chest, was my idea of heaven. He had the same curls as me—Freja called it his curse, but she was always looking for things that made Noah more mine and less hers, so I ignored what she said. Noah also had my green eyes, although his had tiny amber flecks. I had photos on my phone, but I wasn’t ready to let anyone in to see those yet.

  Not even a man I’d known back home.

  We parted with smiles and a promise to get together soon, and that was it—my morning there was done.

  Most players take naps in the afternoon. I took a nap if Noah let me, which today he did. Curled up next to me, his arms flung out, he slept the sleep of the innocent. Getting to sleep myself was a slow process, so I honestly had no idea if the nap had done any good at all. Still, when I woke I felt ready to get back to the rink.

  After I’d laid on the sofa and cuddled Noah a bit longer while Amy went shopping.

  “So I met Stan again,” I began to explain to Noah, who blew tiny bubbles from his mouth as he drank his milk. I’d talked about Stan before to Noah—how we’d met, how I’d fallen so hard, but how I’d made a decision that was best for all of us. “He’s so big, and if he was holding you…”

  A sudden image of Stan holding Noah struck me front and center. Stan was a gentle giant when he wasn’t either icily in control or angry in goal, and Noah would look up at him and smile and…

  I had to stop that.

  “So anyway, the game Daddy plays, hockey, he plays it too.”

  I rocked Noah to sleep after playing with him a little; he was beginning to cruise the furniture in a stumbling fashion, and it fascinated me. Everything about Noah fascinated me, from the golden curls on his head to his big green eyes, and the way he seemed to smile with his entire body. I picked up my cell and took a few selfie kind of shots of Noah and emailed them to myself. One day I needed to actually print some of these photos and put them up on the wall. Not the walls of this place, but my real place when I finally moved to it.

  I regretted not taking the Railers up on the offer of a temporary place, but they talked as if it was this rookie bachelor hub, and hell, I had a baby, and a nanny.

  In those moments when I was really honest with myself, though, I knew it was my stubborn need to prove I could do this baby-daddy thing on my own that meant I was now in this old building that smelled faintly of cat pee and boiled cabbage.

  Never let it be said that I have any sense at all.

  “I’m going to send a picture to your momma,” I whispered to a sleeping Noah, and opened an app, adding the photo and sending it to her. I didn’t expect a reply; I never did. But I knew she was overseas; one thing she did do was share her calendar with me in case of emergency.

  Although what that meant, I didn’t know. I guessed if Noah needed a blood transfusion or bone marrow, because hell, that was the only way his mom would go anywhere near him. Flicking through Google hits on her name, I found a disturbing trend of her putting herself in more danger with each assignment. Afghanistan was the latest hit—three months, front line, right in the camera, ducking explosions, and looking gorgeous at the same time.

  The woman I’d slept with, twice, before I met Stan, was stunning. Long blonde hair, blue eyes, and a beautiful smile that her son had inherited. We’d met at a local hero’s awards show, both giving away prizes to young adults who had faced danger and won. She didn’t look quite so picture perfect in the latest photo, hair scraped back under a helmet, her fatigues blending in with the pile of stones behind her, but she looked alive and vital. She loved being a journalist, wanted nothing more than to stand at the very front of what was terrifying or dangerous, and make the world sit up and take notice.

  I’d been drawn to that danger, fucking her in the bathroom at the awards, then again against a wall in her room.

  Twice, and on one of those two times Noah had been conceived.

  But Noah and me? We didn’t have Freja anymore. No one had her; she belonged to a different world than us.

  “She’ll always love you,” I half-lied. I actually wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about Noah, only that I’d paid her to let me have him, something he would never know about.

  Call it stupidity, call it the result of having shitty parents, call it my own stubborn nature, but we’d created life, and that was important to me.

  A small part of me actually blamed Stan. I slept with Freja before that fateful summer camp. I didn’t know Freja was pregnant until after that time with Stan.

  Stan had shown me how easy it was to love someone, how a connection could be made, and suddenly my somewhat shallow life had begun to mean more. So when Freja contacted me and explained what had happened, that was when I’d made the decision.

  Have the baby, please.

  She’d already been twelve weeks, hadn’t even realized, had thought it was stomach flu, or something she’d picked up in her time in Honduras.

  She’d told me didn’t want the baby, that she was addicted to being scared, that she needed the passion of journalism, or crossing time zones and explaining disaster and pain for public consumption.

  Who was I to argue? I wanted…needed hockey. It was my life.

  Or it had been my life.

  What she didn’t realize was that the deep-seated fears and the overwhelming love that you have for a child are enough adrenaline to get any parent through the day.

  My cell vibrated, and it was her.

  He looks well. How are you?

  I thought carefully about my reply. Her question wasn’t about how Noah was, but to me there was no longer just-Erik, we were now Erik/Noah, and so my reply was a little broader.

  We’re doing fine. Saw you’d been in A.

  A break, and I imagined her in a tent in the middle of nowhere, which was where she spent most of her life.

  A was bad. Home in New Year.

  I only had one thing to say that. No, scratch that, two.

  Stay safe. Come visit if you like.

  And clearly, she had two things to say to me.

  Staying safe. I don’t think I will visit.

  I didn’t hate her for i
t. I wondered if one day Noah would. If I had to make a choice between Noah and hockey, between Noah and the icy dreams of winning a championship, I would choose Noah every time.

  Every. Single. Time.

  When it came time for me to leave, Amy took him from me, wished me luck at the game, and mentioned that furniture would be good. She said that every day. I should just give her my credit card, but to be honest, until money funneled to me from the Railers, I was seriously fucked. I mumbled something in return—a vague grunt that could be taken to mean anything—and she shook her head and went into the kitchen.

  She was used to me now.

  Every penny I had, bar some that I’d kept back to live on, had gone. I had a six hundred-thousand-dollar contract and nothing to show for it apart from a rented roof over my head, enough money to pay for Amy, and my shitty car. At least I had Noah with me; that was what mattered.

  The rest of my money? Well, let’s say it had taken that much to get lawyers to draw up papers, to divorce Freja and invest money in her career. I’d had paperwork signed and notarized, she’d waived her rights, Noah was mine, and in less than three months we would have a final divorce. Money consumed my thoughts, though and I wondered if I should approach management for some kind of loan.

  I was so lost in thoughts of balancing check books and wondering where was the best place to get furniture that I didn’t see him.

  Or feel him in that crazy sixth-sense way I’d had in Helsinki.

  Not until I crashed straight into the one man I didn’t want to talk to, or see again.

  Stan caught me, and I stumbled before he hauled me close to keep me upright.

  “Stupid,” Stan said, making it sound less a word and more a curse. Then he pushed me away, not roughly, but definitely firmly.

  Then we stood face to face, or at least my eyeline to his chin, and we didn’t move.

  “I have so much I want to say,” I began. Why was I doing this? He wasn’t interested in what I wanted to say. Not about the regrets, or the fact that I never should have left.

  The last thing we’d said, or rather that I’d said for us both, was that the summer was done and our lives would move on.

  “Not listen, stupid,” Stan said, and crossed his arms over his wide chest. He stared down at me with an unforgiving frown and tension radiating from every pore of him. The way he spoke, the stilted cute words, was enough to have me thinking back to that summer, in one rush of heat and sex and need.

  “I want to say something. Anything. Sorry, maybe?”

  He looked at me suspiciously. “Sorry?” he asked after a small pause.

  “For making decisions for both of us, for the summer, for everything.”

  “Hmmm,” he said, then uncrossed his arms. I saw he had a tattoo—something yellow, but I couldn’t make it out. He’d never had a tattoo before, and I knew, because I’d kissed, licked, and bitten my way over every inch of him.

  “Hmmm?” I prompted, because he seemed to be formulating a response somewhere along the line. Probably he had the words in Russian, and was now parsing them into coherent English.

  “One day to meet wife and baby,” he said. Then he subsided, like that simple sentence had stolen all his energy. Jeez, it had been easier when he’d used television commercials to form his sentences.

  Wait? My wife? My baby? Is he talking about Noah? He knows about Noah? Of course he does; anyone with an Instagram account knows about my marriage.

  How must it have looked? The photos out there of me marrying a pregnant Freja must have had him thinking only one thing, that I’d cheated on her with him, when that wasn’t true. So maybe that was what I needed to explain, about how she’d been a one night-stand, and that we’d conceived Noah, and that to a man like me marriage had been the only option.

  I blinked. I know I did. I know I was looking at him, and my mouth was probably open. Was he saying now that he wanted to meet Noah? Or that he didn’t? How did I explain that I didn’t have a wife anymore, that she’d left me just as I’d left him? How did I explain that she was a wife in name only, that she was Noah’s mom but nothing more?

  “Baby and wife,” he repeated.

  “For you?” I asked, really confused.

  “Team.” He waved a hand. “Bring here baby, for luck.”

  Oh. He meant the team. Not him. Not Stan.

  I guessed that was what I should have expected. Sadness curled inside me, and I knew I should explain, say something. Anything.

  “I want to tell you the truth—”

  “Nyet. Ya vse znayu. Know it.”

  “But you can’t know, I’m nearly divorced and—”

  “Nyet.”

  “When I was with you, it was only you. I promise that, Stan.”

  He stared at me, then he reached for my head and carded one hand through my hair, tugging gently as his fingers caught in the curls.

  “Like gold,” he murmured, and I swayed toward him, half erect at the sound of the deep, rumbling voice. Then he yanked his hand free, cursed loudly, and stalked past me in the corridor.

  The sadness and disquiet settled in for the evening, even right up to the coach’s speech at the beginning of the game.

  “Ten, keep your eye on your brother, I want to know if you see anything, okay?”

  I knew Ten’s brother was the captain of the Boston team. It always helped to have some insider knowledge, but equally they would be saying the same for Ten, keeping an eye on our star player.

  “On it, Coach,” Ten agreed, and fist-bumped Arvy.

  Stan sat very quiet in his corner, and I recollected that he’d done that in Helsinki. He would often sit quietly, eyes closed, humming softly. The memories flooded me again, and there was that familiar sadness laced with regret.

  Maybe I should bring Noah in one day. Maybe if Stan saw us together, saw the unconditional love I was capable of giving… Then maybe Stan might like me again, and then I could explain how I’d packed to go back to him the night my life changed forever.

  That was all I wanted.

  The game was hard; you can’t go up against an elite team like Boston and not feel it in every aching muscle. We were only just beginning the third period, one goal down, and Ten skated as if he was on fire. He was everywhere and nowhere, and the Boston defense was losing sight of him more often than not. Eight shots on goal from him so far, and one of them had to go in. Surely.

  Stan was a wall for us. He’d only let in two goals, one of them questionable as to whether there had been goaltender interference. Arvy certainly let the Boston D know he was unhappy with a nice left hook. We killed that power play, but only because Stan stood on his damn head to block the puck.

  Five minutes left in the game, and one of the Boston Ds was given a penalty for hooking, abruptly we were on a power play. Somehow, in the blink of an eye, with magic that left the bench in silence, Ten was there, and this time the puck went right past their goalie and the score was tied.

  Everyone shouted for Ten, and when he skated past the bench, touching gloves, he wore a wide grin.

  But I wasn’t looking at Ten. I was looking way past him, at the way Stan leaned on his pipes, at the grin I could make out from here.

  I might have decided that things had ended, but clearly my brain hadn’t informed my libido, or more importantly, my heart.

  Four

  Stan

  “Ya lyublyu tebya.” Words of affection and adoration. I love you. And I did. And they loved me. Tonight, my pipes had been loving friends, catching three Boston shots. I rubbed the cold metal pipe with my catcher as the Railers fans chanted and stamped their feet. “Lyubite menya nemnogo dol’she,” I added, asking them to love me just a bit longer. I turned from my net and glanced at the clock. Only two minutes left. Something pulled at me, making me look at the Railers bench. At Erik.

  Anger bubbled up inside my chest. Pain, too. So much pain, fresh, as if he’d just walked out on me yesterday. The ache in my chest felt like bad heartburn, or when one has drun
k too much vodka and vomits it back up. That was what I felt looking at my ex-lover, that burning fire racing up my throat. Why had I been so stupid as to fall for him so quickly? Why did I give my heart so easily? Lust had driven me to lure him to my bed. And he had been eager to come. So eager. And so willing. He had held me as if he cared. Whispered tender things. My Swedish was bad, his Russian worse, but the emotions and feelings had spoken for us. But I’d thought he might stay with me, somehow, when camp ended. Although in all honesty it seemed stupid now to have had such romantic dreams. A gay Russian man did not flaunt his homosexuality by moving in with a pretty, blond Swedish man back home. It just wasn’t done, especially out in the country where I had been raised. Yes, there were young people in the cities who were accepting, but not enough. Not nearly enough… Deep down, I think, I knew this, but still I dreamed. Of him, of a life with him, children, love. Here in America this dream could be real. Men could marry here in this wonderful country. They could adopt children, even! Even now the fantasy wanted to settle on my shoulders, but I shook it off like an unwanted embrace. I hated him. Yes. And that was how it would remain. How it must remain if I were to keep my heart.

  I was so lost in the past drama that the shot from Brady Rowe hitting my shoulder startled me. I flopped my arm up and over my head, batting the puck away. Tennant’s brother was like a wolfhound on the scent of its prey. Big, fierce, and determined, the eldest Rowe slid into my crease, his stick working around my skates. That made me mad. Him being in my blue ice and my being angry with Erik left me feeling dumb and unprofessional.

  “Fuck off, stupid face!” I snarled at Brady, then shoved him. Hard. He went to his ass and I kicked the puck away from my net. Of course, the Railers who were on the ice skated into my net, as did the other Boston players. Pushing and shoving happened. Whistles blew. Players fell on top of Brady. The clock was stopped as men rolled around on the ice, trying to pull off sweaters and helmets while a TV timeout was called. I grabbed my water bottle and skated past the knot of players on the ice. Seeing Brady pinned by Adler Lockhart’s big body, I took my advantage and squirted him in the face with my drinking water.