3. Theo

Theo

This season

"Come on, come on!"I shouted at the TV. "Shoot the puck!"

"What are you waiting for?" Cams flailed his arms beside me. "Dude, shoot!"

There were six of us crowded around the TV in Ricky's condo, all of us pleading with our teammate two thousand miles away to just shoot. The fucking. Puck.

Seattle was playing in Buffalo tonight, and halfway through the second period, they'd gone 0-for-4 on power plays. They were drawing penalties like crazy, but could they get the puck into the net? No, they could not.

Right now, the second power play unit was on the ice. Three of the guys on that unit were teammates of ours here in Everett who'd been called up, and they were just passing, passing, passing while the seconds ticked by. It was one of the NAPH players, Rusanov, who finally broke the cycle. He passed the puck to Wilcox, who fired a beautiful one-timer from the blue line. The puck flew through a dense screen of players and slammed right…

…into the goalie's glove.

We all sat back with groans of frustration.

It was a good thing Seattle's penalty kill was holding its own, because the power play was a disaster. Though in their defense, the team was down quite a few key players, including three from the top power play unit and two from the second. Why? Because the injury fairy had visited Seattle early this year, putting four players on LTIR before the end of November. Three more were week-to-week and I'd lost track of who was day-to-day.

With Rainiers dropping like flies, guys from my team had been going up and down, up and down, filling in whenever they were needed until someone else got hurt. Right now, the bottom defensive pair and the third and fourth offensive lines were almost entirely my teammates from the Everett Orcas. In turn, our roster had gotten seriously thin, so we'd had to pull up half a dozen players from our HLWNA team, the Bellingham Steelheads. If the flu hit the Rainiers or Orcas, we might have to start grabbing up youth players or some shit.

On the screen, the guy in the penalty box sprang free, and he immediately stole the puck from an unsuspecting defenseman. Then he broke away, sprinting for our goal with no one in front of him and our D-pair scrambling to catch up.

Everyone in the room with me was chanting "Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!" while the Buffalo crowd cheered, and we collectively winced as the player snapped the puck on goal with his wicked backhand.

And then we were the ones cheering because Jan Stetina had defied the laws of physics and made a miraculous toe save. Three replays later, we still couldn't figure out how he'd managed to snap his skate into the path of the puck.

As the players onscreen set up for a faceoff in our defensive zone, Cams muttered, "Now watch—Seattle's going to get a penalty for nothing."

The response from all of us was a mutter of cynical agreement. Seattle had had five power plays (not that they'd been able to convert any of them), and it wasn't even midway through the second period. They were absolutely due a soft penalty, since the refs always seemed to pull that bullshit just to "even things up."

Sure enough, after the officials completely ignored an obvious case of holding and some blatant slashing, they tossed Condit into the box for tripping.

The call was garbage. Even the commentators agreed, since the replay clearly showed the "tripped" player blowing a tire on his own while Condit and his stick were well out of his way.

The camera shifted to the bench, focusing on Coach Baldwin as he shouted something at the refs. Something that involved the words "fucking" and "bullshit" if my lipreading skills were accurate.

But before I could try to make out what else he was saying, movement at the edge of the frame pulled my focus. I shifted my gaze, and my heart jumped into my throat.

Unaware of the camera on him, Christian propped someone's helmet on his knee and worked at the screws on one side of the visor. All around me, my teammates argued over whether or not the penalty was trash, if the refs were being bribed or if they were just incompetent. I was distantly aware of the conversation, but even after the camera had cut away from the bench, the image of Christian stayed on my mind like a spot after I'd stared into a stadium light.

Christian. Holy fuck.

Didn't matter that it had been almost a year—every damn time I saw him, whether it was in the background of an interview or during a game, my whole body reacted. One look at him, and I went right back to the day his dad canceled Pride Night. To the look on Christian's face when I'd asked for the rainbow tape. To that moment long after the game was over and Jack had finished ripping into all of us, when Christian had locked eyes with me in the bar, and I'd seen my own hungry rebelliousness in that grin.

Neither of us had actually come out and asked, but what better way to spite his dad and my GM than to hook up with each other? After all, Jack didn't like gay players on his team, he didn't like his son being gay, and he'd made it crystal clear to his son that if he wanted to stay employed, he'd better not fuck any gay players.

The ten and a half months since that night had been the longest dry spell of my life. Not because I'd ever had any trouble finding hookups—there were, after all, some perks to being a pro hockey player, even at the minor league level. I'd just struggled to find anyone who piqued my interest after Christian. Those who did get my attention lost it as soon as we started making out.

No one kissed like Christian Hayes. No one.

I squirmed on the couch, hoping my teammates took it as me getting comfortable and not masking a shiver. As the game continued and Seattle went on the penalty kill, my mind stayed back in my brief stint with the Rainiers. Some days, I regretted what I'd done that night—the tape thing, not Christian—because I knew damn well it meant I was never getting called up to Seattle again. I wasn't playing at the NAPH level again until I was traded or otherwise landed in another club, and Jack Hayes was exactly the kind of GM who'd keep me here until the end of my contract just for spite.

At the same time, maybe it was a good thing I was unofficially barred from the Seattle Rainiers locker room. As much as I ached to play in the majors again, as desperate as I was for another chance to prove I was worthy of a spot on a roster while I was still in my prime, I wasn't so sure I could play hockey in the same building as Christian.

More than once, I'd thought about going to a Rainiers game. After all, Everett was only forty-five minutes out of Seattle. It wasn't like I was in a different time zone. So why not grab a ticket and go to a game? See if I could catch Christian's eye? See if he was down for a rematch?

But I was a coward. And anyway, if he was interested in more, he'd have given me his number or asked for mine. He hadn't, so we—

"Oh fuck!" Cams was suddenly bolt upright beside me.

I shook myself and focused on the screen, and my teammates were mumbling, "Oh, that's not good" as the camera panned across the ice.

As soon as the camera stopped, my heart fell into my feet.

Someone was down. I couldn't see who, but he was down, crumpled by the boards and moving in that tight, uncomfortable way that said he was in a ton of pain. Conscious and able to move his extremities, so that was good, but he wasn't getting up.

One of the trainers crouched beside him, blocking our view of his face and his number.

"Shit," someone whispered. "That looks bad."

I wanted to ask what happened, but I didn't want my teammates to know I'd been zoning out. Plus, I knew the replay would fill us in.

As predicted, the screen shifted to a slowed-down clip of two players going after the puck. Our guy—Hamilton, I realized—lost an edge just as he entered the trapezoid, and as he was going down, he slammed into the boards.

I cringed, absently rubbing my shoulder. Best case, he'd be able to skate it off after a minute or so. Worst case could be an injury to the head, neck, shoulder, collarbone, back—that was a terrible angle to hit, especially at speed.

Eventually, and with a lot of help, Hamilton was able to get to his feet. The pain on his face made my stomach lurch. No blood that I could see, but whatever injury he had, he was in a world of hurt. He had his left arm tucked protectively against his side. Very, very slowly, with a teammate on his right and the trainer helping to cradle that left arm, Hamilton made his way off the ice.

Shortly after that, the game resumed, but everyone in this living room was quiet. I was pretty sure we were all thinking the same thing, but it was Cams who finally said it out loud.

"Looks like someone else is getting called up." He sat back beside me and exhaled. "Because I doubt Hamilton's gonna be playing for a while."

We all nodded solemnly, and my teammates surreptitiously glanced at their phones. There was a quiet hum of excitement in the room that I understood fully. An injury like Hamilton's, that was a tough thing to react to. No one ever wanted to see another player hurt. Not even a rival. Some bruises or a bloody nose, fine, but no one wished actual injuries on anyone.

Still, when you were playing at the level we were, a NAPH player going down meant one of us was going up. It felt opportunistic and gross to be hopeful about getting the call, but that was the world we lived in. If NAPH players didn't get hurt or weren't seriously underperforming, then we didn't get called up, and if we didn't get called up, we were staying down in the PHL, at least until next season's training camp.

The team had traveled with an extra PHL player in case something like this happened, so whoever got called up would probably take his place as backup. Not playing, just ready in case someone else went down. Which, given the way the season had been going, wasn't out of the question.

That did mean practicing with the Rainiers, though, and sometimes that was enough to catch the coach's eye and have him rotate a player in for a game or two. That was how Foster had earned himself a permanent spot three seasons ago—he'd come up from Everett as a backup, shined in practice, and wound up on the fourth line. Now he was a regular fixture on the third line. Well, when he wasn't out with a concussion, anyway.

Someone was about to get that chance. Someone's phone would be ringing tonight. Someone would be making a beeline for the airport to jump on a charter and meet the Rainiers in whatever city they were playing next.

All I knew was that someone wouldn't be me. Jack Hayes wasn't about to trade or release me because then I could sign someplace else, but he'd also made it clear I wasn't coming back to Seattle. Not after "that stunt with the stick tape."

So here I'd stay, continuing to play on the first offensive line while I watched teammate after teammate after teammate get called up to Seattle.

Maybe I should request a trade. Get my agent to really work at Jack to let me leave this club. I needed to go somewhere I had an actual fighting chance of seeing NAPH ice, and being blacklisted to the PHL by my own GM wasn't going to help me—

My phone went off.

Everyone in the room jumped, especially me. And all heads snapped toward me.

I peered at the screen. My agent's name had my pulse buzzing in my ears.

Holy shit…

Swallowing hard, I accepted the call. "Hey, what's—"

"Pack a bag," she ordered. "A car is on its way. Your flight leaves in two hours."

"Two hours—I'm in Everett!"

"And you're flying out of Paine Field. You gotta go!"

I was already up off the couch. "All right. I'm on my way." Heart pounding, I shoved my phone in my pocket. I was stunned, sure on some level that I'd just hallucinated that call, but if it had been real, then I only had two hours to get my ass and some luggage to the airport here in Everett. I could decide if it was really happening later. Be shocked and disbelieving later. Right now… "Gotta go, guys."

My teammates didn't even question me. They all knew how this worked, and they just slapped me on the back and shoulder and told me to go, go, go.

Didn't have to tell me twice.

This was the second chance I'd firmly believed I'd never had. The one Jack Hayes had explicitly told me had gone up in smoke the second I'd asked for that roll of rainbow stick tape.

With a huge chunk of his team out and a dwindling roster of PHL players to choose from, he was apparently desperate now. Desperate times called for desperate measures, so he was calling me up.

And I was not blowing it this time.