Page 80 of Him
I give him the finger, then grab two more bags. We push our carts side by side and wander over to the checkout counter, where we get in line behind an elderly couple with a shopping cart full of cereal boxes. Just cereal boxes and nothing else.
“So my concerns are valid,” I prompt as we wait our turn.
He nods. “Goalies have it tough. I can’t deny that.”
“But?”
“But this is your one chance.” His voice softens. “If you don’t take it, you could regret it for the rest of your life. Look, if I was in your shoes, I might be questioning my decision too, but—”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’d report in a heartbeat, even if it meant spending years waiting for your shot.”
“True dat.” He rests his forearms on the cart. “But that’s because I love the game. Even if I get to play only five minutes in a whole season, it’s worth it to me. Hockey is everything to me.”
But is it everything to me?
I’m even more troubled as I think of all the hard work that goes into a professional hockey career. The constant training, the rigid diet, the grueling schedule. I love hockey, I really do, but I’m not sure I love it as much as Wes loves it. And if I compare the level of satisfaction I get from stopping a goal to the pride I feel teaching someone like Mark Killfeather to become a better goalie, a better man… I honestly don’t know which one means more to me.
“I just think you need to give it a shot,” Wes says, jolting me from my thoughts. “At least go to training camp, Canning. What if you’re there and suddenly they’re like, ‘We’re giving you the starting job, kid.’”
Right, and then I’ll fly to work on a Pegasus, befriend a genie, and get paid in leprechaun gold.
Wes notices my expression and sighs. “It could happen,” he insists.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say noncommittally.
The old couple pushes their cereal cart away, and Wes and I step forward, charging the ice to Elites’ account. Five minutes later, we’re loading the bags into Wes’s trunk.
I’m no closer to reaching any sort of conclusions about my predicament, and Wes seems to sense that. He nods at the gas station fifty yards from the supermarket. “Let’s grab some slushies,” he suggests.
“The ice’ll melt if we leave it in the trunk for too long,” I point out.
He rolls his eyes. “It’ll take us all of five minutes. Besides, science has proven that slushies are conducive to the making of important life decisions.”
“Dude, you really need to quit quoting ‘science’ all the time.”
Laughing, we lock the car and make the short trek to the gas station, where Wes grabs two empty cups and nudges me toward the slushie station. He fills his cup with the cherry flavor and then waits. But I haven’t had a slushie in a long time, and I can’t decide. So I put some of each flavor in my cup.
At the counter, the middle-aged clerk chuckles at the sight of my rainbow concoction. “I did that once,” he remarks. “Felt sick for days afterward. You’ve been warned, son.”
Wes snickers. “My buddy likes a little bit of everything.”
I give him the side-eye for that awful joke. We pay for our drinks and leave the store, but we’ve barely taken two steps when Wes slaps his forehead. “We forgot the straws. Wait here. I’ll grab ’em.”
As he ducks back inside, I linger near the door, admiring the sleek, silver Mercedes S-class that pulls up to one of the pumps. A gray-haired man gets out of the Merc and smooths the front of his silky tie. Shit, the guy’s rocking a suit that probably costs more than my parents make in a year.
His gaze flicks in my direction. “Are you the attendant?” he barks out.
I shake my head. “It’s self-serve,” I call back.
“Of course it is.” His tone is condescending as fuck, and there’s a sneer on his face as he twists off the cap of his gas tank.
Frowning, I turn away from Snobby McSnobbers just as Wes pops out the door. He hands me a straw, his forehead wrinkling when he notices my expression. Clearly he thinks my frown is a result of my Detroit dilemma, because he lets out a quiet sigh.
“You’ll figure it out, babe,” he says softly. “You’ve still got time.”
Then he leans into me, gripping my shoulders with one arm. He brushes a reassuring kiss over my cheek, and my entire body tenses, because Snobby McSnobbers chooses that exact moment to glance our way.
The look on the man’s face cuts through me like a blade.
