16. Sabrina

Chapter 16

Sabrina

The buzzer sounding the end of that game may as well have been singing angels. I was so relieved, I almost collapsed right there on the ice.

Finally. It was over. In overtime, too—Anastasia scored with twelve seconds left on the clock, earning us an OT win and saving us from going to a shootout. I was good at shootouts, and they were kind of fun, but I wasn't in the right headspace for it tonight.

Not after that stunt my dad had pulled.

I didn't know what message he was trying to send, or if it was just his way of thumbing his nose at me and my sport, but I'd spent the entire game trying not to let it get under my skin. To some extent, it had, but at least I'd managed to play as if it hadn't. If Dad had been watching—to see his trolling take effect, not to see his daughter playing hockey—then I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of hurting my performance.

So I'd played my heart out. Two goals. Two assists. I'd drawn the penalty that had given us the power play that led to our game-tying goal in the final minute of the third period. For a few panicked minutes, I'd been afraid we'd take the L in overtime, but a highlight-reel steal by Anastasia followed by a dagger of a goal had ended the game in our favor.

I'd given my father nothing to criticize. Of course, he'd find something. That turnover in the second period that led to a scoring chance. Losing an edge at just the right time to allow an odd-man rush. The fact that I was suited up for a women's hockey game in the first place.

But everybody made mistakes every single game. Even the most legendary players lost edges and turned over pucks and did just bone-headed stupid shit sometimes. It was part of hockey. I'd played a solid, respectable game. He'd have to work at it to find a reason to shit on me tonight.

And he wasn't going to keep me in suspense about it, either—I'd finished getting dressed and was heading into the lounge to eat when his ringtone chirped in my pocket.

"For fuck's sake," I muttered, and I stayed out in the hall for some relative privacy while I answered. "Hi, Dad."

"Hey, kiddo. You home?"

"Still at the arena. The game just ended."

" Oh, that's right," he said, letting the sarcasm drip. "You had a game tonight, didn't you?"

"Mmhmm. I did."

There was silence on the line for a solid thirty seconds. It was a type of staring contest I was used to with him. There was an elephant in the room, and we were each waiting for the other to break eye contact and look at it.

I was way too irritated tonight—and too stubborn in general—to let him win this one.

Eventually, he spoke, his tone light and casual but with a taunting edge: "You know, ticket sales for girls' hockey must be through the roof if almost an entire section was available."

I rolled my eyes, grateful he couldn't see me. "Lower bowl tickets are expensive. Sometimes people can't—"

"Sure they are."

I pinched the bridge of my nose, fighting back the temptation to push out an exhausted sigh. If I had to guess, Dad had bought all those tickets back when they'd first gone on sale. Back when enormous swathes of the arena were available. He was probably gleeful as all hell that the night I ignored his call was just before this game. Was that why he'd been calling so much lately? Because he knew I'd eventually ignore him and he'd be able to throw that in my face?

"He is such a goddamned child sometimes," I remembered my mom telling her sister one night when she didn't think any of us kids could hear her. "How does a grown man think this is the right way to act?"

I'd never forgotten my aunt's caustic retort of, "Do you honestly think Doran counts as a grown man?"

There'd been a time when Mom would chastise her sister for making fun of Dad or his perpetual immaturity, but that night, she'd just laughed, shaken her head, and taken a big gulp of wine.

In the present, Dad gave a quiet chuckle. "Well, you did tell me that the ticket sellers don't care who's buying the tickets or filling the seats."

I gritted my teeth. For fuck's sake. That was an angle I hadn't considered. "So you bought a whole section and left it empty—why? Just to prove a point? What point?"

"You wanted me to support you," he said in that patronizing way that drove me up a wall. "So I bought tickets to your game. A lot of them."

"But you left all the seats empty."

"I'm in Buffalo, Sabrina."

I pinched the bridge of my nose and fought to keep my frustration out of my voice. He was baiting me. Trying to set me off and make me emotional, because then he could tell me how I needed to be rational and logical rather than being led around by my emotions. It was how he'd manipulated my mother, too—whenever she'd approach him with something that bothered her or that they disagreed on, he'd push her until she got angry. He'd keep pushing until she finally lashed out like any human would sooner or later, and then he'd lecture her about how she needed to calm down and be logical.

I wasn't falling for it. My ex-husband had done the exact same thing, and I'd learned with him that my best weapon against this kind of bullshit was to keep my cool until he either lost his own or lost interest.

Or, if I was in the mood to provoke him and let him get "emotional," change the subject and let him know how utterly unimportant his opinion was.

Lowering my hand, I said, "Well, it was good talking to you, Dad. But I've got media availability, and they're bringing in some of the kids who were sitting in your section. So I need to let you go."

"The kids? What?"

"Oh, you didn't know?" I couldn't keep the smile out of my voice. "The arena staff moved a bunch of kids down from the charity suites. Since no one had taken your seats by the second intermission, they decided it was a shame to just leave them empty." As much as I wanted to listen to him lose his mind over it, which he inevitably would, I also wanted to make sure he knew who was calling the shots. "Anyway. I have media availability. I have to run. Talk to you later."

"I… You're…" he stammered. Then he sighed, the defeat more delicious than it should've been. "All right. Love you, kiddo."

Sure you do.

"Love you too, Dad."

I ended the call and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. I'd had my media availability right after the game ended, so I didn't actually need to go anywhere. I just wanted to be off the phone.

Mission accomplished. I'd won—I'd turned his bullshit back on him, and I'd ended the conversation on my terms.

But I couldn't say I felt any better.

The one upshot to Dad's constant trolling and messing with my head was that I was so used to it, I could shake it off pretty quickly. Sure, I was pissed off in the moment, and I'd gone to bed in a foul mood that night, but by the next morning, my attention had shifted to more important things. Things like coffee. Packing for the next away game. Getting to the rink for practice.

Yeah, on some level, I was still vaguely irritated when I thought about his stunt with section 114, but I was more annoyed with that old, persistent low grade throb in my hip and with some jackass on the freeway who wouldn't let me change lanes.

By the time I was on the ice for practice, my hip was starting to loosen up and the rude guy on the freeway was a distant memory. The stands here in the rink were crowded for a weekday—no conspicuous void sticking out like a middle finger—and I tossed pucks to a couple of smiling little kids before shifting my attention to practice.

After that, it was the usual routine—showers, media availability, food. We were in Seattle for the next game, so we boarded the bus instead of driving home, and by about 3:00, we were in the air. Between the long flight, the bus ride to the hotel, and the time it took to settle in, it was almost 8:00 local time— so 11:00 Pittsburgh time—before I came down from my room to join my teammates in the bar. Everyone had eaten on the plane, and we were tired and jetlagged, but there were always a few people who came down for a nightcap.

I wasn't usually one of them, hence the surprised, "Oh, hey, Mac!" from Sims as I joined them in the bar.

"Hey." I smiled. "Room for one more?"

"Of course!" Our teammates shuffled around a bit, and I sat down at the table.

No one drank heavily—that was for after a game, not the night before one—but I got a glass of wine and some of my other teammates had beers or cocktails. Most of the conversation was about Pittsburgh. We were all fairly new to the city, aside from Val, who'd grown up here, and Nora, who'd played for RMU in college.

We all compared notes on places to eat and neighborhoods we were thinking of buying or renting houses. All of us who'd spent part of our careers in Canada—growing up there or playing in major juniors, plus a few who'd been on WHPL teams up there—agreed that we had zero complaints about Pittsburgh in the winter. That, of course, got us going down the familiar track of comparing winters in various cities we'd played in; since most of us had played in Canada or the coldest U.S. states, we all had strong opinions about this time of year.

Sims was from Vancouver, which didn't exactly have the monstrous winters that were pretty notorious throughout the rest of Canada, but like me, she'd spent her major juniors seasons in Calgary. "Those winters can go straight to hell."

I nodded. "I loved it there, don't get me wrong, but two winters in Calgary was more than enough."

"Ugh, same." Nora, who'd also been in major juniors with us, bumped fists with me over the table. "The city is amazing, but the winter?" She tsked and shook her head. "That is just… barbaric."

Laws made a "world's smallest violin" gesture. "Come talk to me when you spend four winters in Winnipeg ."

That had everyone shaking our heads and murmuring, "Nope. No. No, thanks." I'd played there plenty of times in my career, often in the dead of winter, and that kind of cold was no joke.

The conversation continued like that, and after a while, a few people started to peel away. They'd say their goodnights and pay their tabs, and the small crowd around our table thinned.

Which was how I wound up sitting across from Lila.

She glanced at our other remaining teammates, who were currently discussing their kids, and then faced me and lowered her voice. "I meant to ask—how are you doing after last night?"

After last night? What was—

Oh. Right.

That .

I picked up my glass—just water now—and took a sip. "I'm good, honestly."

Her brow pinched. "Did your dad say anything to you?"

Rolling my eyes, I nodded. "Yeah. He called after the game, but…" I waved a hand. "To tell you the truth, I'm so used to his bullshit, I was pretty much over it by this morning."

"Yeah?"

"Mmhmm." Not entirely true, but my anger had cooled to a simmer of annoyance, so… close enough.

"Wow." She absently swirled what remained of her cocktail. "You're tougher than me. I'd be a mess if my dad pulled something like that."

I half-shrugged. "I think I'm just used to it."

Lila wrinkled her nose. "That's a shitty thing to have to get used to."

"So are old injuries, but…"

That made her laugh softly. "Isn't that the truth?"

"Right? But I mean, I think years of putting up with his bullshit has—okay, it hasn't quite given me the ability to let things roll off like water on a duck's back. It's more like…" I thought about it. "I guess it's more like when a dog wallows in the mud, but then the mud dries and falls off, and before you know it, you forget he was ever in the mud at all." I paused, then laughed. "Okay, that's probably not the best analogy."

"Well, given what your dad does, I'd have said it's more like a dog rolling in shit, but…"

I snorted. "I was trying to be polite."

"Why?" She gestured at herself. "I'm not."

I just laughed, and the little grin told me that was the desired effect. It also scrambled my brain just like always. God, I was such a wreck over her.

It didn't help that she looked smoking hot tonight. She was dressed casually since we weren't subject to the League's dress code right now, and the blue tank top she was wearing screwed with my concentration. It showed off her ink and her toned arms, not to mention the slightest peek at her cleavage.

And I was staring.

Shit!

I went for my drink again, and after I'd swallowed it, I cleared my throat. Time to change the subject.

"So." I folded my arms on the edge of the table and met her gaze. "How did you get into hockey in the first place?"

Lila played with the straw in her cocktail. "All the kids in my neighborhood played street hockey. I used to watch them when I was really little, and when I was like five, I finally convinced them to let me play."

"Aww, so does that mean there's pictures somewhere of tiny Lila playing street hockey?"

Her shy laugh and that blush were mesmerizing. "My parents have videos, too. Tons of them."

"Okay, that all sounds super adorable."

She rolled her eyes, blushing even brighter. "There's actually one my parents tried to send to one of those funny home video TV shows. One of the older boys kept getting pissy that the other kids would let me play, and he was ranting about it while my dad was trying to get a video of us playing. He was all about how I was too small and weak to even move the ball, never mind get it into the goal, and I could barely skate, and…" She rolled her hand. "Just bullshit, you know?"

I nodded. "One at every rink, isn't there?"

"God, right?" She huffed. "Anyway, so right when Mom was about to tell the kid to go home," Lila went on, "I hit the ball toward the net, but missed and hit him right in the butt." She laughed quietly. "And like, he's on roller blades, ranting and raving, and suddenly something clocks him from behind."

"Oh my God!" I giggled. "So, windmill followed by a faceplant?"

"Mmhmm. It was hilarious. I've seen that video at least ten thousand times, and it still cracks me up."

"It sounds funny as hell! Was he mad?"

"Oh, yeah. He grabbed his stick and left. He still played with us after that, but he stopped being such an ass to me."

"Good." I gestured with my drink. "Valuable life lesson for him."

"Exactly! And actually, a few months after that, he stopped coming around. I thought he was mad about me playing, but then I found out it was because he had joined an ice hockey team. Which was how I learned ice hockey was a thing. So I talked my parents into getting me lessons, and here I am."

"Wow. Does that kid know you're at this level now?"

She laughed. "Well, considering he's married to my sister now, he can't really avoid it."

I let out a laugh of disbelief. "Oh, yeah? What does he think?"

"He's super supportive, just like the rest of my family. As I was getting older and he realized I was getting serious about hockey, he started helping me. Like we'd do little drills and scrimmages on the street, and if we were at the rink at the same time, he'd give me pointers."

"Oh. Damn. So he really turned it around."

"Maturity." She shrugged. "It's a beautiful thing."

"There is that. Does he still play?"

Lila nodded. "Not pro or anything. He's in a beer league, and he still plays in the street with my nieces and nephews and some of the neighbor kids. I sometimes join him, too. But he kind of saw how much hockey had to take over someone's life if they wanted to pursue it as a career." Her expression turned a little sad. "I knew I wanted to go to the Olympics the first year I saw women's hockey at the Games, so I was on a serious trajectory from the time I was like eleven. I think Ian saw how much I had to pour myself into the sport, how expensive it was for my parents—all of that. And he just decided that wasn't for him."

I studied her, wondering how far to pursue this. I was curious about her history, but especially with as much as she'd resented the version of me she'd thought was real, it might've been a minefield of sorts. Treading carefully, I asked, "It was tough coming up, then? Playing hockey as a kid?"

She stared at the table, her expression distant. "It was hard. Like… really hard."

"Yeah?"

Without looking up, she nodded. "My parents were amazing about supporting me, but hockey is stupid expensive. Especially when a kid grows out of their gear faster than they can wear it out."

"I remember," I said quietly. "After the divorce, my mom had a hard time paying for a lot of it."

"My parents did too. I wore a lot of very, very used gear."

I gave a cautious laugh. "Hey, some of that stuff wasn't bad, though. It was already broken in."

"I know, right?" She laughed too, and with some actual feeling. "The first time I got a new chest protector, I was like, what's up with this bullshit?"

"Seriously. It was skates for me."

"You didn't use new skates?"

"Not until I was almost sixteen. My brother always gave me his old skates, so they were totally broken in."

Lila groaned, absently stabbing at one of the remaining ice cubes in her glass. "Ugh, I wish I could go back and tell younger me to appreciate the used skates. Breaking in a new pair is just…" She made a hilariously disgusted face.

"Right?" I chuckled. "I'd wear my skates until they fell apart if the equipment managers would let me."

"No kidding." She stabbed at the ice cube again, then nudged the drink aside. She picked up her phone, but instead of looking at the screen, she just turned the device over and over with her long fingers as if she needed something to keep her hands occupied. "Anyway, so yeah, the equipment was expensive, plus all the fees and travel. That was tough on my parents, but they did the best they could."

"That's great," I said. "That you had their support."

"It is. And the other tough thing was… I'm a girl. When I was playing in U8 and U10, nobody really cared that I was a girl playing alongside the boys. Some of the boys could be a little weird, but… I mean, they were eight-year-old boys." She shrugged. "We were all weird at that age."

I laughed softly. "No kidding. Throw a bunch of eight-year-olds on skates and into the rink, and things are bound to get weird."

"Right?" Her eyes flicked up to meet mine for a second, the faintest smile curling her lips. Then she dropped her gaze again, and the smile went with it. "Anyway, as I was getting old enough for the AA league, most of the boys were fine with it. They knew I could hold my own, and they just cared about winning, you know?" Sighing, she sat back. "The parents, though…"

I grimaced. "Yeah, I remember those days."

"You do?"

"Are you kidding?" I stabbed at some ice cubes with my straw. "I think it's a rite of passage for girls who play hockey if they don't live in a place with a AA all-girls team."

"Yeah, you're probably right." Lila shook her head. "It's so stupid. And they tried to make it sound like they were just worried I'd get beat up or something. They even tried to campaign for me to be a forward instead of playing defense because it would be"—she made air quotes—" safer. "

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, that's bullshit."

"Seriously. But my coaches called them out. I didn't make the connection until they said something, but they pointed out that the only reason the parents wanted me to play offense was because they knew I'd be cut."

"Because you had the chops to play defense," I said, "so they wanted you in a position where you were weaker so you playing on the team would be a moot point."

Lila's chuckle was low and caustic. "Sounds like you've seen that movie."

"Mmhmm." I huffed sharply. "When I was U16, someone tried to make a case for making me play goalie."

"Goalie?" Lila barked a laugh. "You? I mean, no offense, but…"

"None taken. The thing is, I was one of the tallest on the team at that point. The skaters' parents all said it gave me an unfair advantage, and they should use my height in the net." I tsked. "Everyone knew I'd be cut the second I tried to play goalie."

Lila studied me, then slowly exhaled. "I wonder how often that kind of thing happened to other girls."

"I'm sure there were leagues where it didn't," I said. "But I swear every girl I played with in major juniors had some story about butthurt parents of boys. If it wasn't the parents of their own teammates, it was opposing players."

She groaned. "Oh, God, they were the worst ." She picked up her drink. "You know one of them actually got caught telling her son to try to take me out of the game?"

My jaw went slack. "No shit? You mean she wasn't even smart enough to say it in the car or something where no one would hear?"

"Apparently not." She paused, lips quirked. "Honestly, looking back, her son might've ratted her out. I never heard the full story, but I played against him a few times and with him for one season, and he was a good kid. So it wouldn't surprise me if he told the refs or his coach."

"Well, good on him."

"No kidding." Lila smirked. "Though after that, every time he checked me, he'd just shrug and say his mom told him to."

A laugh burst out of me. "What a little shit!"

"I know, right?" The smirk turned to a cocky grin that had no business being that sexy. "He blocked one of my shots one time. Caught right in the inner thigh."

I grimaced and rubbed a spot on my own inner thigh where a blocked shot had left a nasty bruise a few years ago.

"He went down," Lila went on, "because, I mean, that shit hurts, right? So as he's getting helped back to the bench, I skated by and said, ‘tell your mom that one was from me.'"

"Oh my God! And you didn't get an unsportsmanlike for that?"

"Nah." She shook her head. "Even he thought it was funny. The ref tried to give me a dirty look over it, but he couldn't help laughing."

"Everybody knew about the incident with his mom, didn't they?"

"Yep. And I don't think anybody ever let him forget it." She tapped her thumb on the edge of her phone case. "So most people were good, you know? And especially after they saw me play, they usually didn't bitch about me being on teams. It was really just a struggle to pay for it all, you know? Like I said, my parents got me as much equipment as they could, but hockey gear isn't cheap." She laughed softly. "From the time I was about twelve or thirteen, I worked a lot of hours at the rink's concession stand just so I could keep my skates sharp and replace broken sticks."

"They let you do that? The rinks, I mean?"

"Oh, yeah." She shrugged. "They were hard up for staff, and my parents didn't object, so they let me work and paid me under the table. I doubt they could get away with it now, but I'm glad they did then."

"No kidding." I paused. "I'm glad you had that support. Especially from your family."

"Me too. I went through some periods where I wanted to give it up, and they kept me going."

The pang of envy over that support was almost physically painful. "You wanted to quit?"

She shrugged. "Not seriously. But you know how it is—when you're a teenager and everything is a bigger crisis than it actually is, so an embarrassingly bad game just feels like the end of the world."

"Oh, man. Yeah. I know exactly what you mean."

She raised her eyebrows. "Did you ever have those moments?"

"Absolutely. I don't think I ever wanted to quit hockey, but there were days when I wondered if I was cut out for it. Like after a really bad loss, or if I'd taken some awful penalty that had cost us the game. That stuff is tough to shake off now. Back then?" I whistled, shaking my head.

"Ugh, no kidding. I think also I saw how much my family was struggling so hard to make it work for me, and I'd just… I'd feel like I was letting them down. One season, my U16 team came in dead last in our division, and I thought, what the hell am I doing? My parents are killing themselves to make this happen for me, and my team just went 12-26-12."

I winced. "Ouch."

"It was bad." Lila shuddered. "I do not miss that season. So I was all ready to give it up and be done with it, but my parents sat me down and said I wasn't a failure. The whole team had been a mess, and there were already rumors that the entire coaching staff was getting replaced—which they were. They reminded me that they knew I had talent, and that I'd worked so hard to get where I was. I shouldn't give it up because of bad season. Then Dad told me about Cleveland in the men's league, and how they had these two godawful seasons during their rebuild. Then five years later, they won the Cup. So… I shouldn't let a funk drive me away from the sport I love, you know?"

The story, especially that last part, had a lump rising in my throat. My mom had been that supportive. My brother and sister, too. But had my dad ever sat me down and reminded me that even teams at his level could have catastrophically terrible seasons followed by glory years? No. Not once.

I'd have worked every shift available at my childhood practice rink's concession stand in exchange for just one pep talk like that from my father.

I swallowed the last of my drink, and as I pushed the glass away, I said, "I'm really glad you had that kind of support."

"Me too." She smiled. "I wouldn't be here without it."

"I don't know." I returned the smile. "Somehow I think you're exactly the kind of tenacious and stubborn player who'd have clawed her way to this level no matter what."

She laughed, making the bar a few degrees warmer. "Well, I'm just glad I didn't have to do that. Not without help, anyway."

"Yeah. Me too."

We exchanged smiles.

Then Lila looked around, and her spine slowly straightened. "Are we… Are we the only ones left?"

"Are we?" I glanced at the other side of our table, which was empty. When I scanned the room, sure enough, there wasn't a single familiar face in sight. A handful of people were still here, but no one from the Bearcats. Which meant… I grabbed my phone, then laughed when I saw the screen. "Oh crap! It's almost 1:00!"

"It is?" Lila flipped her phone over so she could see the screen, and the way she laughed did things to my heart that I was too tired to think too much about. "Oh shit. We should get some sleep!"

"Yeah, we should." I pushed my chair back. "We're going to be dead on our skates tomorrow morning."

She groaned as she got up too. "Ugh. Can't we have maintenance days tomorrow?"

"I wish."

We paid our tabs, then headed for the elevator. On the way up to our floor, I stole a glance at her in the mirror, drinking in the sculpted, tattooed arms, and how that tank top sat just right. God, this woman was gorgeous.

And without all the animosity between us, I was lucky I could think around her. After tonight's conversation? Getting a more intimate look at her past—at her —than I'd ever had?

Jesus. I was never going to concentrate on the ice again.