Page 71 of Goal Line
“What are you, eighteen?” Colt says and huffs out a laugh. “You’re a damned adult; you don’t need your parents’ permission to get marriedorstart a family.”
I think about the way Colt’s whole family came down from Canada for one of the games early in the playoffs. I’m not sure what his family situation is, but Drew had said it was a big fucking deal that they were all there. Some sort of bad blood between him and his brother that they were finally smoothing over, or something.
“True. But our families are best friends, so that’s aconsideration, too. We didn’t want to do anything that was going to cause a rift.”
“Well, I think it’s great that you finally owned up to your feelings since they were so obvious to everyone else,” Zach says.
“You’ve never even met her or seen us together,” I say, caught off guard.
“Yeah, but just the way you talked about her...We all knew.”
Colt nods in agreement. “I’m never going to hear the fucking end of this from Jules.”
“Why’s that?” I ask before I squirt my face with more water.
“Because when we were all at the Neon Cactus, she and Audrey were convinced you two were together. And even when you guys said you were just friends, they concocted this whole story in their heads about how you were in love and secretly dating.”
“Guess they’re more observant than you,” I say, feeling a tad guilty because they were only half right. I’m very much in love with my wife, but it’s not mutual. She might like the orgasms I give her, but that doesn’t mean it makes the relationship real.
“You done with your water break yet?” Coach Knight calls out from the other side of the rink, where he’s standing with a clipboard, having just finished going over some things with Lennington, the goalie for Minnesota, and Kotzu, the goalie for Dallas.
“We’re just congratulating Hartmann, because apparently he’s going to be a dad,” Colt calls out, his deep voice filling the nearly empty rink.
“Asshole,” I mutter under my breath to Colt before I turn toward my goalie coach, who’s skating across the ice.
“Does Wilcott know you not only married his daughter, but you knocked her up too?”
“Keeping it classy, Knight,” Colt grumbles, and I couldn’t agree more with his assessment. Sometimes Coach Knight lacks tact. Not that I need him to blow smoke up my ass, but it’d be nice if he wasn’t so hostile half the time.
“Hey, he’s my boss too, and I just want to know if he’s about to fire one of my goalies.”
“Wilcott doesn’t make staffing decisions.” AJ’s cool tone carries down to us. Our heads all snap up to see her descending the stairs toward the bench. She’s wearing trousers and a sleeveless sweater, and the clicking of her heels punctuates each step.
She’s what my mom would call “old money,” but Alessandra Jones has fought her way to the highest echelons of professional hockey with her brains and determination,notwith anyone’s help. And the world is finally taking notice.
Evan clears his throat. “Of course.”
“And you’d do well not to make suggestions that players should be afraid of being traded, when you aren’t even in the know about all the details of their lives.” AJ continues.
The hiss of laughter that escapes Colt’s mouth is too low for AJ to hear from six steps above us, but I don’t miss it. We both like Evan just fine, but he’s got a bit of a chip on his shoulder. I would, too, if my professional hockey career ended the way his did.
It’s not like AJ to put someone in their place publicly like this, so either she’s really intent on standing up for me, or there’ssomething else going on here that I don’t know about. I wonder again how she figured out we were in LA and sent Morgan to help us with our story, but I don’t have the nerve to ask her.
“I was just giving him shit, AJ,” Evan says, looking up at her with a lazy smile.
“Well, don’t. Your job is to make him better, not to break him down. That’s not what we do here.”
It’s Evan’s second year in Boston, so it’s not like he doesn’t know the culture of the club, which makes me extra curious about the dynamics at play here. It makes me want to ask Tucker what the fuck is going on, because he’d be more likely to tell me than my dad would.
Dad would say something like, “Leave that up to AJ, Son.” But Tucker is just enough of a gossip that he wantsyouto knowheknows the real story. He’d probably tell me as long as I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone else.
Except, the last time I saw my brother, he’d just stood by while Dad told AJ that my Game 7 loss was exactly why he hadn’t wanted me on the team in the first place. Maybethat’sthe story I should be asking him about.
Zach steps out on the ice and nods his chin toward the net, and I follow him over there while AJ and Evan continue talking. Zach’s voice is quiet, like usual, when he says, “I have to go out of town tomorrow. Ashleigh’s uncle is moving and needs our help with some things.”
His girlfriend, Ashleigh, is from Seattle, where he met her before a game this past December. Luckily, she was moving to Boston to start grad school in January, and they’ve been inseparable since. “In Seattle?”
“Yeah. We’ll just be gone for a few days. But my weeklyappointment with Chloe is while we’ll be flying, so I’m canceling it. Which means she has an open slot tomorrow.”
