Across the Line (In The Zone) (20 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

In the lakeside cottage, Becca couldn’t contain her excitement during the game. She’d started out sitting, but the tension became too much and she had to stand and pace and shout at the TV. Whenever there was a break in the action, she whipped her phone out and texted Calder, even though she knew he wouldn’t see any of her messages until after the game, most likely.

She actually resented that she was watching the game by herself. She wanted to go to a sports bar, make them turn on the game and then announce to everyone that the man on the television screen, kicking ass and taking names, was all hers.

It occurred to her that if she moved to San Diego, she could attend the home games and watch him play live.

That truly tempted her.

Sure, she’d watched at The Rink that time with Oliver and the other college guys, but that would be nothing like seeing him in the Mesa Arena, playing against a top-notch team with thousands of fans cheering.

She turned her attention back to the television. They were facing off.

“
And Locke wins the face-off
,
but Riggs and Calder Griffin have dropped the gloves.
”

Becca had no idea what they were fighting about, but Calder looked furious.

“Take him down!” she yelled.

A vicious thrill shot through her as she watched them dance around, throwing punches, their fists tangled in each other’s jerseys. When the officials broke it up after Calder got bloodied, she yelled a protest.

“Oh my God. Give him a chance to get back at him!”

Of course, they did no such thing. Penalties were assigned and the game continued. Eventually, some other Barracuda got a solid retaliatory hit on Riggs, but that was all. It didn’t matter in the long run, because San Diego stomped on the Cascade, five to zip.

“You are
shut out
, motherfuckers!”

She danced around for a good five minutes, laughing and smiling and talking to the announcers, shutting up when Calder was interviewed and texting him in all caps when they broke for commercial.

SO PROUD OF YOU!
YOU WERE AWESOME!

It took her a while to come down from the excitement of watching him win. She made some tea and watched the postgame analysis. They had only good things to say about Calder and she puffed up with pride at how well he’d played.

Her phone rang as she was getting ready for bed. It was Calder.

“I can’t talk long. I’m on the bike and I still need to shower, but I wanted to touch base.” She pictured him pedaling a stationary bike, his hair dripping, a towel around his neck. This postgame toxin-flushing workout was one of the many reasons she was glad she wasn’t a professional athlete. After all that exercise on the ice, they had to exercise some more.

“How’s your face? I might have to break up with you if you’re disfigured, you know.”

“Very funny. I got a couple of stitches. So you watched? Did you see?”

“You played the absolute best I’ve ever seen you play. You were on fire.”

He chuckled. “You’ve only watched me play two games.” But she could hear the pride in his voice.

“Three, if you count the one with Oliver.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay, but the difference between the first game and this one was like night and day. What happened?”

“I don’t know. I think maybe it was because Coach started me tonight. He’s never done that before. In fact, I haven’t played on the first line since high school. It’s...it’s different there. The expectations of everyone—the trainers and coaches, your fellow teammates, the crowd, the press, it puts you in a different mental place. Even though they were all watching me before, suddenly they were
really
watching.”

She remembered giving a speech in her high school oral communications class where the audience was made up of thirty kids and a teacher. She’d hated that class passionately. She’d hated having all that attention focused on her.

The Mesa Arena, she’d found out on the internet, held eighteen thousand people. Eighteen. Thousand.

“I can’t even imagine how stressful that must be.”

“It was stressful, but it’s good stress. It pumps you up.”

“And the fight? What was that about?”

He didn’t answer right away. “He was mouthing off.”

“I didn’t see you and Hart arguing like last time. Did he stop yelling at you, like he was supposed to?” Calder had told her about the reaming the coach had given them both after the first game.

“A little, but not completely. He was still issuing directives, but it didn’t bother me this time.”

“Do you think maybe it was because this time he wasn’t above you? I mean, if you were both on the first line, you were equals.”

“Fuck,” he whispered after a moment. “Do you think it could be that simple?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Sometimes all it takes is a small paradigm shift.”

“Well, if that’s true, I’m stuck in a catch-22. To keep performing like I did tonight, I just have to stay in the first line, and to stay in the first line, I have to keep performing.”

“That doesn’t sound like a catch-22. A catch-22 is when you’re doomed because of the endless circle. In your scenario, it’s a win-win. Look, you said yourself you’re in the best shape of your life. This is the year you’re going to show them all. If you and Hart tap on all that brotherly mojo you’ve been storing up all these years, you will blow everyone out of the water. You guys could be like the Sedin twins, a mini team within the team. I know you could. All you have to do is be open to the possibility. Think of yourself as a first-line guy. Because you are.”

“I wish you were here,” he said.

“Let’s not go there tonight.”

“Oh, I’m not only going there, I
live
there. You could have been sitting behind the bench and seen the whole thing. We could be going out to celebrate. I’d love to take you to Moe’s with the guys. Moe’s is this bar we hang out at sometimes after the games. Then we could have had wild, screaming monkey sex back at
our
place which is the best way, in case you didn’t know, to burn off excess energy.”

“Calder, I need to sleep on it.”

“You did sleep on it. Last night.”

“I need more than one night’s sleep.” Especially since she really didn’t get much sleep.

She’d lain awake, her brain churning with residual feelings from the fire and the idea of relocating across the country to, not only start over with her business, but advance their relationship to the next level. God, just the thought of starting over anywhere made her want to give up and just get a job as a line cook somewhere. In reality, that was probably what she’d have to do in the meantime to make ends meet.

And moving in with Calder? That was even scarier. He said he loved her. Wonderful. That made her giddy, but terrified. She knew almost nothing about his dating history. He’d mentioned that gold-digger woman but other than that... Did he love them and leave them? For all she knew, he’d get tired of her after a couple of months and then she’d be stuck in San Diego, a town she barely knew, with no friends and a restaurant to open all alone. Bottom line, it was a doubly huge decision that deserved a decent amount of thinking time.

“Okay, Becks. I’ll hang up so you can sleep on it some more. Get yourself some hot milk or a shot of whiskey or whatever, and I’m sure that when you wake up tomorrow, you’ll realize that there’s no place you’d rather live than with me in sunny San Diego. I mean, just think about it. No freezing winters. During the winter here, there’s no snow.”

“But there’s no white Christmas either. No beautiful autumn leaves.”

“No de-icing your windshield. No dents on the hood of your car from hail. And you can wear flip-flops ninety percent of the time.”

She laughed. “You’re the one who likes to wear flip-flops all the time.”

“That’s because I live in San Diego. Flip-flops are almost a uniform here.”

She laughed some more. “Okay, enough. I’m done. I need more time. Go celebrate with the guys. Tell everyone I said congratulations.”

“Will do.”

* * *

Calder hung up the phone and wiped the sweat off his face with the towel. Ever since he’d realized they could actually live in the same city, his frustration over the distance had quadrupled.

He scowled.

“Great game, Griff.”

He looked up to see a couple of the arena maintenance guys walking through the training room.

“Hey, thanks.”

“You a top line motherfucker now? You looked good out there with your brother.”

Calder gave him a nod.

“You guys play together as kids?”

“Yeah. Constantly. We would have lived at the rink, if we could have.”

“Was it like tonight? I mean, you guys were like mind reading each other.”

Calder laughed, remembering the crazy half-dance, half-handshake celebration he and Hart used to do as kids when one of them scored and the other one assisted. Funny, he’d forgotten all about that. He chuckled thinking about Hart’s reaction if he’d done it tonight in front of the big crowd.

“It’s more of a thing where we know each other so well, we know where the other one’s going to be, where he’s headed, what he has planned, and all we have to do is set it up. Maybe it is like mind reading.”

His mood lifted, Calder took a shower and went to put on his street clothes. A cheer rose up. Guys slapped him on the shoulders, head and ass as he walked to his stall. Hart announced he was buying dinner for the whole team and Calder could pick the place. The cheering got louder.

“Then we’re going to T-Bone, gentlemen,” Calder said. “Best steaks in the city. Someone call and warn them so they don’t close up on us. Fischer, you do it.” Rookies came in handy for shit like that.

“Sure thing, Griff.”

“Tell ’em we’re bringing twenty-three hungry hockey players and to keep those grills hot.”

It wasn’t long before Calder was knotting his tie. Already dressed, Hart came over, looking like he was going to a photo shoot and not a steakhouse—hair perfect, clothes immaculately pressed.

That asshole Riggs popped into Calder’s head and he found himself questioning his brother’s sexual orientation again, which pissed him off.

It had disturbed him when Becca said Hart was gay, but Riggs... Even though the guy was an ignorant, homophobic dickwad who had more brawn than sense, for some reason his taunting had twisted Calder’s guts in a knot. Hell, he
still
felt a residual rage churning in his belly, and Riggs was long gone with the rest of Hart’s old team on a bus headed for Anaheim.

“I got the two pucks you scored with,” Hart said, bringing Calder back to the moment. “Since I assisted you, I thought we’d sign one of them and give it to Mom and Dad.”

“Good idea. Dad’ll love that. I want to give the other one to Becca.”

After scrawling the date, his signature and jersey number on the pucks, Calder slipped one in his jacket pocket and gave the second back to Hart.

“Okay,” Hart said. “See you at the restaurant. T-Bone, right? I’ll GPS it.”

Calder stood up. “Hey, how about I just go with you? You can bring me back here for my car after. It’s only a couple miles away.”

“Okay.”

Hart drove a current-model Mercedes sedan. The exterior had not a nick or scratch on it. As expected, the interior was immaculate. It was surprisingly spacious inside. Both of them had plenty of head and leg room.

As they pulled out of the Mesa Arena and out into traffic, Calder said, “So, did you hear what Riggs said to me?”

“Right before the fight? No. Did he say something about Mom? He’s such a dick.”

“Actually, he said something about you.” Calder watched his brother, but saw no outward twitch or tension. “He accused you of being gay. Make a right at the next light.”

Changing lanes, Hart laughed. “That’s original.”

Calder said nothing and continued to stare at him.

Hart did a double take. “You didn’t take him seriously, did you? Holy shit, CS. The guy was rattling your cage. That’s what he does. He’s the Alex Sullivan of the Cascade.” He braked as they approached the intersection, then made the turn. “He once told Teemu Selänne his wife needed a bikini wax. This other time he made fun of some guy’s daughter. I don’t remember the guy, but Riggs said the girl was so ugly he’d have to pay guys to fuck her.”

Calder winced. He had heard some nasty shit, but Riggs seemed to be in a class all his own.

“Riggs doesn’t talk much pregame, and I think it’s because he’s sitting there thinking of shit to say to the opposing players. And the gay thing? He’s always accusing at least one person of being a fag. Or someone’s dad, brother—like me—or son. I think I even heard him accuse someone’s one-year-old of being gay.”

“He sounds a little fixated on the gay thing,” Calder said.

Hart nodded. “My point exactly.”

“Yeah.” Calder tugged on his seat belt strap. “Because I didn’t believe him. I mean, shit. The whole idea is ridiculous.”

Hart laughed. “Forget about him. He’s a dick. He’s a dick and you’re First Star of the Game. What the fuck! You played the shit out of it tonight.”

Calder couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. “I’ve never scored four points in one game. I was thinking maybe it was my cone of silence during the second intermission. I didn’t talk to anybody. I just stayed in my head.”

Hart scoffed. “That wasn’t it.”

“Then what was it?”

“It was because you were playing with me.”

For a split second, Calder thought Hart was serious and the lid on the box labeled Brotherly Resentment almost blew off, but then, luckily, he saw the humor on Hart’s face.

“Very funny.”

“So you
do
have a sense of humor.”

“Fuck you.” But Calder laughed.

“Okay, seriously? It felt like the old days out there, like when we were kids.”

“It did, didn’t it?”

In more ways than one, Calder thought. They not only played like they shared a brain tonight, they were laughing and joking here in the car, and it felt damn good. He didn’t think it was going to last—the urge to butt heads was too ingrained by now to disappear in the space of a few hours—but he decided that this was a step in the right direction. Maybe playing for the same team as his brother wasn’t going to be torture after all.