Page 4 of Blindsided

CHAPTER 2

EASTON

“Coming!” I yelled despite the person on the other end of the phone not being able to hear me. “I’m coming, Jesus. Hold your fuckin’ horses, Brax!” I swiped up without looking at the caller ID and put the phone to my ear. Brax had been blowing up my phone since the Grizzlies got kicked out of the finals and he’d been able to put more than a passing thought to his dads’ upcoming marriage.

“I swear, B, you’re not going to fuck it up. They are just excited to be getting married. Chill the fuck out.”

The deep chuckle in my ear definitely hadn’t come from Brax. “You’re right about all of that.”

Who the….

I pulled the phone away from my head to glower at the screen, but then my eyes popped wide in shock. It wasn’t Brax, but it was a Cernak. Tom Cernak never called me. “Mr. Cernak! Is everything okay?” Fuck, I hoped Brax was okay. Why else would Tom be calling me?

“Everything’s fine. Brax is fine—though apparently more anxious than I thought—and Leo is just fine as well. I’m going to have to call my son when we’re done chatting and tell him to, as you put it, chill the fuck out.”

I chuckled at Tom’s statement, mostly because I could see him doing just that. Tom was a good man. I had always liked him, his soon-to-be-husband, Leo, and of course I liked their son, Brax, who had been my best friend since he was traded to Boston five years prior.

“Okay…” Now I was curious. If nothing was wrong, why would Tom be calling me in the middle of the afternoon?

“I have a question for you. Are you able to talk for a few minutes?”

The way he spoke, I knew he was about to blindside me with something I least expected and I took a seat on my bed before answering. “Yeah, I’ve got time. What’s up?”

Papers shuffled in the background, and then Tom cleared his throat. “There’s no easy way to ask this, so I’m just going to come out with it. Have you ever thought about retiring from playing?”

The question was so out of left field that I found myself laughing. “Mr. C, I’m going to be thirty at the end of next season. Of course I’ve thought about retiring! The human body isn’t cut out for this shit year after year. I’ve taken too many hits to be a lifer.”

It didn’t help that I was a free agent either. Columbus was interested in re-signing me, but after the brutal season I’d just come off of, I was privately admitting that it wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t re-sign me. I was still in PT for the shoulder injury I’d sustained in September and had continued to play through for the rest of the season. At some point, I’d be going in for surgery. I was just hoping to push it off for a few years. The exact date would probably be decided by the next few serious hits I took on it.

The hum in my ear was that of understanding and the pregnant pause that followed had me curious about what he was going to say next. I’d just about cracked and asked him to spit it out when he finally spoke. “What if I told you I had a business proposition for you?”

I took the phone from my ear and stared at it like it was possessed. “Business proposition?” I asked when it was back to my ear.

“Mm-hmm. I’m wondering what it would take to get you to become my assistant coach?”

The phone slipped from my hand and I bumbled and fumbled it until it hit the coffee table. “Fuck. Dammit. Shitballs. Fucking—” I grabbed the phone and looked at the screen to see it was still connected. Instead of putting it back to my ear, I set it down and pressed the speakerphone icon, then rested my elbows on my knees while waiting for Tom to stop laughing.

“You know April Fools’ was last month, right?” I asked when he’d pulled himself together.

“Be nice to Easton. I like him!” Leo’s voice in the background made me smile. I’d only known the two men as a couple madly in love. One day I hoped to find a man who would make me that happy. “Sorry, Easton. Tom is behaving like a child.”

“You were kidding. Right?” The only reason I was even questioning if he was joking was because Brax had let it slip earlier in the day that Tom had been contacted by a new AHL team in Nashville to be their first-ever head coach. The Parliament had been years in the making but had only recently secured the remaining funds and ownership needed to actually become an AHL team. The Parliament was going to become the Nashville Grizzlies affiliate team while sharing the Grizzlies ice. The move would finally give the Minnesota AHL team to the Minnesota NHL team, a far more logical pairing than the one they’d had with Nashville for the past decade.

But that meant I wasn’t completely certain Tom was joking.

To my surprise, the humor had left Tom’s voice when he responded. “Completely serious, Easton. I want you to be my assistant coach.”

I was thankful I hadn’t picked the phone back up because I would have assuredly dropped it then. “You’re serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

Running my hands through my red hair, I struggled to get my thoughts in order. When my phone had rung, I’d expected it to be the younger Cernak worrying about officiating his dads’ wedding, I’d never expected it to be his dad asking me to retire my game day uniform for a suit and tie behind the bench. It was a lot to process.

I finally blew out a long breath. “Let’s say I choose this instead of signing with the Blizzard. What hoops am I going to have to jump through to actually be chosen as the assistant coach?”

Tom chuckled dryly. “Zero. I told the owner that I wanted full discretion on the assistant coach.”

“Who else is on your list?”

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