Page 6 of The Head Game

Nico had cancelled his annual trip to the Netherlands to visit family and spin in his off-season DJ gig at a club in Amsterdam.

He could tell himself all he wanted that he’d stayed in Toronto to help Sky with the pregnancy and scope out his captain’s new husband but it wasn’t quite true.

By the time both of those bombs had dropped he’d already been feeling like shit.

At first, Nico had chalked it up to still being worn out from the previous season’s playoff run. But as the summer stretched on and he’d rested and resumed easy training, he was still exhausted.

It became harder to blame it on normal post-season hockey fatigue.

Motion in Nico’s peripheral vision made him look up to see Matty dancing to the beat of the music playing, shaking his butt in Nico’s face like he did before every game.

Nico automatically reached out to smack it, more of a reflex than anything at this point.

But it reminded him he needed to get his own rituals going, so he fired off a reply to Sky, then stuffed his phone in his messy bag.

They were barely into the season and the duffel was already cluttered with a couple rolls of tape, scissors, some tubes of lip balm and all of the other crap that accumulated in there.

Nico unzipped the side pocket and pulled out his wallet and keychain. He flipped open the wallet and tapped the photos in there. The one of him and his dad and his stepmom, Noor, and one of him and his mom and Anika, his other stepmom, following the Fisher Cats Cup win two seasons ago.

Still smiling at the memory, Nico reached for the charm he’d carried on a keychain since he was a kid.

He rubbed his thumb across the tiny nautical lantern, smoothing over the shiny brass and green globe.

Nico was Dutch by birth but he held both Canadian and Dutch passports.

Both his biological parents were Dutch, though Nico had been born in Canada because his dad had been playing in the NHL at the time.

An injury had ended Pieter Arents’ career shortly after and Nico had spent most of the first six years of his life in the Netherlands.

But his parents had divorced when he was small and at the age of six, he’d moved back to Canada to live with his dad and new stepmom, Noor.

There had been plenty of screaming fights between his parents about where he’d live, but his mom’s career had been in Amsterdam and his father had wanted to handle his hockey training in person.

Ultimately, his father won.

Nico had been sad of course, but he’d spent happy summers with his mom and Anika in the Netherlands and he’d adored his dad’s new wife, Noor. She’d treated him like her own and he’d never had any shortage of love.

His biological parents had given him the charm before he went off to a Canadian hockey academy in Ontario. It had been a prep school designed for potential NHL players and he’d only been fourteen when he went to live at the boarding school.

During the golden age of sailing, no one had rivaled the Dutch and the little lantern was a reminder of his homeland, of his roots.

Nico remembered his mom cupping his cheek and saying the lantern would always show him the way home.

His parents had been … well, they were a mess and a half when it came to loving each other but they’d been good to him. They still were.

Nico pressed a kiss to the lantern, then carefully tucked the charm back into his bag.

He looked around the room, smiling at the noisy, chaotic energy of it all as guys began to file out into the hallway before they went down the tunnel.

It was game time.

* * *

Augustus Manning took a deep breath. Then another.

No crying in the locker room, he reminded himself.

His eyes burned as he stared at his phone.

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