Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) (2 page)

“What is it you say to her?” Hunter asked quietly from the hallway beside Harper’s nursery.

I hadn’t heard him come up. I must have been too busy focusing on his little girl. I glanced over to see him leaning against the doorframe and watching us—me in the rocker, Harper with her grip on me, even with her head sagging into my chest.

“Nothing interesting,” I said in English. I hated how stupid I sounded when I spoke English. Even after almost a decade playing hockey in North America, I sounded like I’d just gotten off the boat. “Tell her about skating on lake in Siberia. Wearing lots of socks. She wants me to talk.” I glanced down to be sure the new voice hadn’t disturbed her.

Her eyes were starting to close. That was a good sign.

“Looks like she’s finally out. We could try putting her back in her crib. See if she’ll stay asleep.”

“Not yet.” I wasn’t ready to move her…to lose the comfort of her grip on me.

She’d barely closed her eyes, so she was still in the very early stages of sleep when she would wake easily. And besides, I didn’t want to stop talking to her yet. It was nice to be able to talk to someone, to tell her anything, and know that she wouldn’t hold what I said against me. I never felt that way in the real world. But here, I could bare my soul to this baby, and she still loved me anyway.

She might not love me, but at least she didn’t hate me. I didn’t scare her. She didn’t think I was the monster I knew myself to be. For some reason, this tiny creature felt safe enough in my arms to fall asleep in them. It seemed an awful lot like love.

It was the most unfamiliar sensation, almost unrecognizable but thoroughly addictive. A gift I would never deserve.

I couldn’t get enough.

“You’re sure?” Hunter asked. He sounded both grateful and uncertain. The guy might as well be dead on his feet. He and Tallie had both been up a lot in the last few weeks due to Harper’s colic. He needed sleep. And since he was the Thunderbirds’ starting goaltender, I needed him to be well rested. We sucked enough without our best player falling asleep on the job.

“Go to bed. I’ll stay until she’s sound asleep.”

“But your sledge game is tomorrow.”

I’d been planning a charity game to raise money for disabled athletes who played hockey on sleds instead of skates—here, in the U.S., they called it sled hockey, but the rest of the world called it sledge hockey. The plan was for some of my teammates and other big names I could convince to help out to get on those same sleds. Then everyone would be mixed up with the local team of sledge hockey players, and we’d all put on an exhibition to raise money for the sledge team. Those players would kick my ass whether I’d had rest or not.

I gave him a nod. “I’m fine. The game will be fine. You need sleep. You play like shit this week.”

He hesitated, dragging a hand through his hair and looking down the hall toward his bedroom. Then he faced me again. “Wake me when you’re ready to leave so I can lock up behind you.”

“Leave keys on counter,” I said. “I’ll lock the door when I go.”

He suppressed a laugh, but he walked away and his keys clanged against the kitchen counter. “’Night, Dima,” he said quietly on his way down the hall.

“Your papa is a stubborn man,” I said to Harper, once again speaking in Russian. I felt a grin coming on. “It’s not bad to be stubborn. You should try to be exactly like him. Stubborn. Determined. Get what you want.”

In her sleep, she fisted her hand in my beard and pulled, letting out a contented sigh. This little one already knew a lot about being stubborn, and it was helping her get her way. That was why I was here now, and why I spent more nights here than at my own house lately. She refused to sleep unless I was here, doing exactly as she demanded with her tiny hands and enormous voice.

“Smart baby,” I said. “You find ways to get what you want. You keep doing that. Don’t ever stop. Because I can’t have what I want. Sergei can’t have what he wants, and it’s all my fault. But you? You can have the world.”

She squirmed closer to me, and I tugged the blanket higher so it would keep her warm.

I stayed for another hour or more, long past the point when she was out cold. I told her about skating on the lake in the snow. I told her about playing hockey with my best friend, Sergei, after my papa died. I told her about winning the Stanley Cup in LA with Sergei at my side. I told her about the night I ended Sergei’s career and nearly ended both our lives. I told her how sorry I was, because she would listen to my apologies even though he wouldn’t. He’d heard more than enough of that, he’d told me dozens of times over the years. These days, if I tried to apologize again, he would walk away.

When my throat was scratchy from talking so long, I carefully moved her to the crib and tucked her blankets all around her. “Sleep well,
kukolka
,” I said, kissing her on the top of the head. “Don’t worry about me.”

I locked the door and went back to my house to spend the rest of the night alone with my demons.

I’D
SHARED THE
ice with some of the best hockey players in the world over the years—men and other women like me, both of the stand-up variety
and
those who played on sleds—but it was obvious that a number of my Prattville Para-Pythons teammates were star-struck. All it took was a quick glance around the ice to make it clear.

I was having none of it.

“Just because Ray Chambers can handle the puck when he’s upright, that doesn’t mean he knows a stinking thing about playing on a sled,” I said to Evan Foster, the sixteen-year-old phenom who’d just joined our ranks this season. The kid had a good chance of making the U.S. national sled hockey team in another year or two if he kept developing the way he had been lately, but at present, he was going gaga over a couple of the NHL players who’d deigned to strap in and play with us. “You’re going to skate circles around him today, and don’t think I’m exaggerating.”

Evan nodded, like he was taking in what I’d said and maybe even agreed with me. He kept blushing every time he looked at me, too. I hoped he’d get over that soon. Until he’d joined our team, he’d never had a female teammate. I kept waiting on him to realize I was just like the guys, other than the fact that I didn’t have a dick, but it hadn’t sunk in yet.

Usually, we played our games at the rink in Prattville, a suburb outside of Tulsa. Today, Dmitri Nazarenko, one of the Thunderbirds players, had organized a big charity event to raise money for our ice time, equipment, travel expenses, and all sorts of other things.

Unlike the NHL guys, sled hockey players had regular jobs to go to everyday, and sled hockey can be even more expensive than stand-up hockey. Not only that, but our games didn’t bring in enough money to cover all of the expenses. We usually did most of our big fundraisers for these things in the summer, but this wasn’t something we’d organized. It had to be on Nazarenko’s timeline. It was a nice gesture to help us afford to continue playing, but that didn’t mean I was going to fall down fawning over them.

Today’s game was being held at the BOK Center, which held a heck of a lot more fans than our dinky rink did. I doubted it would get very full, though—even with all the big names Nazarenko had managed to bring in. Fans wanted to see those guys playing stand-up hockey, not being strapped down in a bucket and unable to use their legs.

More people had already arrived than I’d expected to turn out. Maybe there would be a bigger crowd than I’d thought.

A few of Nazarenko’s teammates with the Thunderbirds were playing today, of course, but there were also several retired NHLers, and even the guy who’d lost a leg in a car accident right after winning the Stanley Cup several years back, Sergei Mironov. Sergei couldn’t play stand-up hockey anymore, but he’d been playing a lot of sled hockey like us. We’d played against him a few times before, not that Evan was with us then. That might explain his starry eyes now.

The plan for today was to split the Para-Pythons in half and add some of the celebrities to each team. In my opinion, those guys would only slow us down, but I supposed the big names were the reason people were willing to pay so much money for tickets. You needed your arms to skate on a sled, not your legs.

Sleds had bucket seats situated over a metal frame. The length of the frame varied depending on how long your legs were—if you even had legs. Amputees tended to have shorter sleds than the rest of us, which allowed them to make sharper, faster turns. A couple of skate blades were positioned beneath the frame to allow us to move. Once in place, we strapped in. Then you’d better watch out. We were just as fast as the stand-up hockey players.

We had two hockey sticks—shorter than the ones used in stand-up hockey—that had small spikes on the butt end that could dig into the ice for traction. To move, we flipped the sticks around and used the spikes to propel ourselves forward. This sport required a ton of upper body strength, especially in the shoulders, which meant my participation on a team full of men was irregular, to say the least.

Most of my usual teammates were already out on the ice warming up, along with a few of the intruders. When I glanced over to the doors again, Nazarenko himself was inching his sled out onto the ice to join us, and Evan’s jaw dropped.

He turned to me, wide-eyed. “Do you know who that is?” The kid looked like he was about to fall over in shock.

Sergei Mironov positioned his sled next to ours, and he winked at Evan. “That’s Dima. My best friend. He organized charity game.”

Evan’s face went bright pink. “Do you know who
you
are?”

Sergei and I both burst out laughing.

“I think he knows his own name, Evan.”

“Just hockey player,” Sergei said. “Just like you. We’re all the same.”

Despite myself, that was all it took to warm me up to Sergei.

At least
he
belonged in a sled out here, unlike his best buddy. Of course, I knew what had really happened in the accident that had taken Sergei’s leg. Everyone did, although kids like Evan might not have been old enough at the time to remember. It’d been all over the news for months.

About seven years ago, those two had won the Cup with LA. They’d gone to the bar with the rest of the team and gotten drunk. After the bars closed down, Sergei, Nazarenko, and a few of the others had gone back to someone’s house and continued the party until the wee hours of the morning.

Then Nazarenko had thought he was sober enough to drive home.

Needless to say, he hadn’t been. They were lucky no one had been killed, but both of them had come away with some serious injuries—particularly Sergei. His pro hockey career had ended that night.

“You’re still his best friend, huh?” I asked him while Evan continued to gawk at the NHL guys.

Sergei nodded. “Been friends too long to stop now. Grew up together in Russia, near Lake Baikal.”

Gradually, Evan crept closer to his idols, leaving me and Sergei alone.

I gave the big Russian man in front of me a long look. “You don’t ever—? No, never mind.” I shook my head, wishing I’d never started to ask the question.

“Blame Dima?” Sergei asked, raising a brow. “I was even more drunk. Neither of us should have gotten in car, but we did. Macho Russian idiots, both of us.” He grinned and winked. “Think we’re stronger than vodka. Vodka always wins. I don’t blame Dima. He blames himself enough for us both.”