18. Sebastian

Chapter 18

Sebastian

I knew better than to hedge my mood on something so trivial, but I couldn’t pretend that it didn’t gnaw at me at least a little when Nelly and Matty weren’t anywhere to be seen when we opened up the ice. It was something Coach insisted on the closer we got to playoffs — he said it lifted morale. We’d let the family, friends, and kids of both our team and the opposing’s onto the ice for fifteen minutes before smoothing over with the two Zambonis, and then we’d go right back into warm-up before the match began.

But as I leaned back on the boards with my mouthguard in my hand, my gaze split between the building crowd and the little ones zooming about chaotically on the ice, I didn’t spot them anywhere. It was one of Matty’s favorite traditions, and he’d been looking forward to showing off a little with his new skates.

It was fine. It needed to be fine because I couldn’t play a solid game if it wasn’t.

A hand clamped down on the top of my shoulder pad, squeezing the foam down to the plastic base. For a split, faltering second, my mind wanted to believe it was Nelly showing up to tell me she was sorry for being late and that they’d hit traffic. But as quickly as that hope built up, it depleted as I glanced at the worn, older skin and thick musculature of the hand and forearm in my field of vision. Coach.

“Change of plans.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. “That’s never good,” I huffed, turning my head in his direction but keeping my eyes locked on the main doors.

“Bryan’s starting center tonight,” Coach said, each word calculated, precise, cold . “I’ll sub you in later.”

Every part of me, from my toes to my fucking ears, coiled with thick, undulating tension.

What?

The doors opened on the other side of the arena. A huffing, out-of-breath familiar face came through with Matty on her back, his little bladed feet dangling beside her hips, but the kids were exiting the ice, and the pre-game skate was over — and for once, in all of this, I just wanted to go home.

I never wanted to go home from a game. Never.

I knew better than to question Coach on his decision. No amount of questioning would yield me a better answer than, “You were off your game this morning.” And no amount of complaining would make a difference to the outcome.

“Fine,” I spat. But don’t come crying to me when he fails to make a crucial pass during the first period , I thought, the words practically on the tip of my tongue — but I was exactly who he would come crying to. That was my role today, apparently. Sub. “I’ll make sure to bring Matty to you in the family room when he starts asking why his dad wasn’t on the ice when he was meant to be. ”

The large hand peeled from my shoulder, and he grumbled words I couldn’t make out over the noise of the crowd fell on deaf ears. I wasn’t sure if he’d left or just taken a step back, but I was focused wholly on Nelly and Matty, on Nelly’s regretful expression and Matty’s pout, on the way my son squeezed his arms around her neck just a little more.

She clocked me, her eyes widening just a hair, and just as her mouth started to form around the mouthed words, I turned and headed for the exit in the boards to my right.

If I was going to be benched, I might as well start now.

————

The sound of the whistle over and over again had forced my nails so deep into my palms I was worried I was drawing blood. I watched as Bryan fumbled his way across the blue line, the puck bouncing off his stick and veering just enough to wreck the play before it had even had a chance to begin.

I spent almost the entire game stuck on that goddamn bench, forced to sit and watch and stomach Bryan handing our rivals one opportunity after another, and yet, Coach sent him out time and time again, his eyes barely registering my presence.

But after another ruined pass, another shot thrown down the goddamn gutter, I nearly stood up on my own. Coach was already looking at me, already locked in before I had the chance to scream at him. “Seb, you’re up.”

I grabbed my stick without a word and shoved off the bench, brushing past a heaving Bryan as I stepped past the boards and hit the ice. I could feel his glare on my back, could feel the irritation rippling off of him, but I wasn’t going to waste the minutes we had left thinking about him or the idiotic decisions that had been made that evening. I’d clean up the mess he’d left and let my kid watch me save our asses.

The second we were back in play, everything narrowed to the steady glide of my skates on the ice and the beats of the game.

Once, twice, three times, I tracked the puck and cut through open space until it was just me, our winger Luke, and a single defender in our way. We’d run this in practice time and time again, perfecting it even with my sloppy crossovers, and as the clock ticked down to seconds and we had the puck in my possession again, we dashed into it one last time, but modified to gain the surprise advantage.

A hard pivot. A single, whipped flash of a shot at another winger, and I sent the puck clean sailing across the ice, straight into Luke’s control on the opposite side in a fake-out. Luke drove it home, sliding the puck past their goalie in the smoothest, fastest motion possible.

The buzzer sounded, and just as I looked up at the scoreboard, we tipped over into the win.

The crowd erupted around us, but as if my head was surrounded by wet cotton, everything felt far away. I barely felt the excitement. My teammates surged around us, clapping me and Luke on the back, shouting their celebrations louder than the crowd, but the bitterness of it stung .

Yes. This was a win. But it didn’t feel like my win, not when Coach had spent three-quarters of the game ignoring me just to keep Bryan on the ice, nearly costing us that win. Not when I’d been told I’d be on the ice tonight and allowed, for the second time, Matty to come on a school night. Not when I just wanted to go home .

I shoved my way to the boards and stepped off the ice, barely remembering to throw my blade covers on and spit out my mouthguard before Bryan was in my space again.

“Nice shot,” he bit out, his jaw jutting toward me as his arms crossed, ballooning out his shoulder pads. “Shame it took you… What was it, four tries?”

Words flew before I had time to put a filter on them. “Are you seriously going to spit that shit at me when you failed to run a single?—”

“You fucking that nanny of yours?”

Bryan, always, constantly, had a way of digging straight in unprompted and unexpectedly, and this was no different. It took me far too long to fully register what he had said, what he had asked , and the relevance of it made so little sense that I almost had to ask him to repeat himself.

But I was sure I’d heard him correctly. Positive.

“What the fuck does that have to do with this?”

It was the worst possible answer I could have given, and I cursed myself for not thinking for even a second about it. It wasn’t a yes but it absolutely wasn’t a no, and a wicked grin spread across his lips, the crowd chanting Atlanta Fire! fading so far into the background I was worried I’d gone deaf.

But he spoke again and I heard him clear as day.

“That’s your problem, Blue,” he laughed. “Your brain’s too preoccupied with her cunt to focus on practice. You’re fucking over the team because you’re lost in daydream after daydream about getting your dick soaked by some half-decent flame desperate enough to watch your kid just to sleep with you.”

I took a step forward, driving him back just a few inches toward the bench. I could feel eyes on me, could barely hear the sound of a whistle, but I didn’t care. I wanted this team to work together, yes, but I wanted his fucking head impaled on my skate more. “What’s your excuse, then? As far as I can see, I saved our asses from your sorry plays.”

His jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth, his crossed arms nearly close enough to touch my chest pads.

“There’s a reason Coach pulled you out and subbed me?—”

“And there’s even more of a reason you were benched to begin with,” he spat. His half-dry, sandy brown hair clung to his forehead, cracking and loosening each time his brows moved. “You act like you’re this savior when you don’t even have to be here. We’re playing our hardest to keep a spot on this team and get paid for doing what we love. And you …”

He pulled off his helmet in frustration, dropping it onto the bench beneath him in a clattering heap.

“ You are fucking made of money. You do this for fun .”

That was certainly not at all where I had thought his anger was coming from. It took me by surprise, enough to shut me up for a moment, enough to make me think back over every aggressive move by him — he’s upset because I have money? That can’t be right.

“Bryan,” Coach snapped, but neither of us cared enough to listen to it.

“I play because I love the game and I love this team,” I clarified. I unstrapped my helmet, peeling it from my dripping hair in one quick motion.

“And the rest of us play because we fucking have to.” Spittle flew, seeping out from between his teeth with each word. “So, the next time you can’t manage to do something as simple as a goddamn cross-over, just keep in mind that if any of the rest of us were struggling with the same thing, we’d be sick to our fucking stomachs with fear about being removed from the team and sent back to the AHL with no way to make up for lost income, you sack of fucking useless?—”

“ Enough ,” Coach said, but this time there was something else in his words, a hint of venom that I didn’t often hear, even when he was furious at me for messing up time and time again. He appeared almost out of thin air, as if he hadn’t been standing near my narrowing tunnel vision that had focused entirely on Bryan, and put an arm between our bodies. “Separate before I make you both do fucking laps in front of the crowd.”

“We both know Blue needs that more than me,” Bryan scoffed, his eyes rolling. He grabbed for his helmet roughly, scraping it across the cold metal bench. “Why don’t you go practice your cross-overs?”

“Addaway,” Coach growled.

Bryan held up both hands, his helmet clutched in one, in mock defeat as he took a step around Coach toward the exit for the locker rooms. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, his tongue hooking on his canine as he watched me with his mouth open, his feet walking backward. “I shouldn’t say that in front of your plaything.”

What?

I spun on a dime, my tunnel vision narrowing on Nelly’s small form as she stood off to the side of Coach, her hazel eyes wide and her hair up, a jersey I was positive was mine hanging loosely around her body. But Matty wasn’t with her.

Coach grumbled something too quiet to be heard over the noise of the crowd and stepped away. The adrenaline pumping through me from the win of the game hadn’t stopped, and coupled with the anger and irritation from Bryan in all his forms and the fact that I’d spent over half the game on the bench, it only grew, only reached new heights that I hadn’t felt in months, years maybe — and an all-encompassing frustration that I didn’t know how to deal with became overpowering.

Why the hell had any of that happened? Why, when I’d worked so goddamn hard to be here, did it matter that I came from money and could afford to live without this? Why was I being punished consistently for Bryan’s awful behavior, and why, why was I the one who had to clean up that mess at the end of the game?

Nelly took a single step toward me, her eyes flicking between mine and the direction of the locker rooms, and I didn’t take the time I should have to process anything. I didn’t take the time I should have to parse over the words that came out of my mouth before I said them.

“Where the fuck is Matty?”

I didn’t even control my tone. They came out angry, bitter, vile , as if I didn’t trust her to watch my kid, as if I had zero faith in her whatsoever. I could hear it in myself, and with too much going on, I couldn’t control it.

Her brows shot up as her mouth opened, her eyelids blinking too quickly, her head shaking just slightly from the surprise. “He’s with Luke?—”

“With Luke ?”

Forcing myself to take in the larger view behind her, I looked over the top of her head, spotting Luke on the ice speaking to a player from the opposing team. Below him, Matty skated circles around his legs, his legs a little wobbly from the stiffness of the new boots.

“For fucks sake, Nelly, he’s going to get run over,” I snapped. I shoved my stick up against the board with enough force to make them both shake, abandoning it, and popped my blade covers off with one hand. “No one’s expecting a goddamn kid on the ice after a game. Are you insane? Just because you were fucking late and missed the free skate doesn’t mean he can just go on the ice whenever.”

The space between her brows scrunched as she reeled back in shock. “Well, that’s incredibly rude?—”

“Why are you even back here? You’re supposed to wait in the family room like everyone else. We went over this.” Scolding her felt like scolding Matty, but ten times worse and wrong . And from the look on her face, from the way she watched me almost in horror, it was plain enough to see that she wasn’t happy with me, either. Great. Another name on the list of people who are angry with me.

She opened her mouth to respond, but then it closed, and her head was shaking with a look I could only describe as disappointment flickering across it. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, her voice barely loud enough for me to hear it. “Get him off the ice, and I’ll take him home, Sebastian.”