Save of the Game (25 page)

He also bit the back of Ethan’s neck when he came—hard enough that when Ethan rubbed his fingers against the skin there, he could feel the indentations of Riley’s teeth.

Later they watched
Orange is the New Black
. They might be two guys in love, but no way were they missing out on a show about hot bisexual girls in prison, even if there was an awful lot of talking. Ethan said, “I want to stay together. Obviously. But I don’t want you to buy a house for us if I can’t be there. And I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I hate that, but… that’s how it goes. And I know I need to stop smoking.”

Riley nodded. “Okay. Then we’ll wait to see about signing a lease until you know what’s up with your contract. But I’ll tell my sister about the house. She’s getting tired of living in the Ponte Vedre Inn anyway.”

“But I like using their pool and charging all our drinks and snacks to her room,” Ethan said. He leaned up impulsively and kissed Riley on the mouth. “I’m getting over you having so much money when it comes to how easily I can get a Jameson’s on the rocks and some chicken nachos while lying on the beach.”

“I’m glad I can provide you the life you deserve,” Riley said dryly, and Ethan snorted and elbowed him in the stomach.

As it turned out, Madison was thrilled to buy Zoe and Ryan’s little house. So Ethan could go on worrying about his contract in silence and pretend that wasn’t what he was doing.

“You could always call your agent,” Riley told him one night, during one of their Syfy monster-movie marathons.

Ethan was trying to work out if fighting a mega shark with a giant mechanical shark was awesome or stupid. “I could. But I don’t have one.”

“Oh.” Riley thought about that. “Do you need one? I like mine.”

“Probably not,” Ethan joked and changed the subject. “Piloting a mecha-shark, that looks like fun. I’d make a good mechanical robotic shark captain. Don’t you think?” There was water in Jacksonville. Maybe he could do that instead of play hockey. You could smoke cigarettes in a submarine. Right?

A few weeks later, Ethan got a message to come to the arena and meet with the coach. The second he heard it, Ethan knew something was wrong. You met with the GM to sign your contracts, unless you were a last-minute addition to the team or something. You didn’t get called to see the coach unless it was a trade.

Riley calmed him down as best he could by pinning him to the floor and fucking him hard—harder than he ever had—and giving Ethan rug burn on his knees and his elbows. He liked it, and it quieted him down so much that he didn’t talk for almost an hour. That was almost an eternity in Ethan-time, but it didn’t make him any less nervous about the meeting.

Riley insisted on driving him, which was probably for the best. In the arena parking lot, Riley kissed him and said, “We’ll be fine. Okay? No matter what it is.”

“Love you,” Ethan muttered. Then he followed up with “I want a blow job when I get home.” Just because it sounded like a good thing to say. Not as sappy. And he did really like blow jobs.

Coach Spencer ushered him into the office and had him close the door, which was definitely not a good sign.

“Look, Kennedy. I know how twitchy you are, so I won’t make this too long. Here’s the thing. I know you wanted to come back and play here next year. I like you, and you’re a good guy to have around. A loudmouth. But that’s okay.” Coach smiled at him. “And that was the best timed goddamn goal in history. So don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”

Ethan didn’t smile back. “Thanks.”

Coach Spencer sighed. “The team’s not re-signing you, Kennedy. At least not right now.”

Even though Ethan had known it deep down, it still stung to hear it out loud. “Not right now? What’s that mean?”

“Exactly what it says. Not right now. I can’t give you a contract this early, and I know that fucks up your plans. Here’s what I
can
do, though. I can put in a word for you with some coaches I know on a few teams that could use a good teammate and a great enforcer. Or, if you really want to play here, I can give you a tryout in the fall. But, Kennedy, you’ll have to commit to a strict training regimen, you’ll have to stop that goddamn smoking, and you’ll have to be serious about wanting to play hockey. And even if you do, there’s no guarantee we’ll have a spot for you. And if you wait that long, you might find yourself without a team to play for at all.”

Coach Spencer suddenly lost all his bluster. “I want you to listen to me, Ethan, before you decide to take me up on either of those options. I want you to take some time and think about your future in this league. I want you to really think about what it will mean for you to go join a team that’s interested in your fighting more than your playing. I want you to think about ten years from now. If you’ll still be such a smiley bastard who wants to go visit old people and kids all the time.”

Ethan tried to say something, but the coach shushed him with a raised hand. “Go look at Jared Shore—not Shore from last season, but the thirteen seasons he played before that one. And I hate to be a dick, Kennedy, but Shore was a much better technical player than you. Your attitude is the best thing about you as a player, and I mean that as a compliment. But I won’t lie to you and tell you that you’re Sidney Fucking Crosby on the ice, because you’re not.” Spence paused. “Which is good, because fuck Canada. Seriously.”

Ethan stared hard at the poster behind Coach Spencer’s desk. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say.”

“You’re not. You’re supposed to listen. You like playing hockey, and I know that. But where you give it your all, where you give your heart and soul? It’s not on the ice. It’s in the locker room. You love your team more than anything, and I don’t want you to find yourself sent away, year after year, from a team that feels like family, because that would kill you. It would take everything you love about this sport away from you, and I have too much respect for you to watch that happen. So I need you to put yourself first for once and think about what really makes you happy and why you want to play hockey. You’re always fighting everyone else’s battles, Ethan. This one’s all yours, and I need you to fight like you always do. You don’t give up, and that’s the thing I can’t stand to see you lose.”

Ethan pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, mortified at how that speech made him feel. No one,
no one
, had ever said anything like that to him in his whole life. It was the sort of tough-love thing a father might say to his son. Ethan had never had one of those, but he still knew it when he heard it. And he didn’t know what to say. If he tried to express his simple, profound gratitude at having someone care that much about what happened to him, he’d cry like a baby.

Coach Spencer was quiet and let Ethan take a few deep breaths and gather his composure.

“I know that wasn’t easy to hear, Ethan. It wasn’t easy to say either. Like I said, I like you. It’d be easy to keep you around. But that doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for you, because I don’t think it is. I think there’s something else out there that will give you back everything you put into it. I don’t think it’s playing hockey. But I will help you in any way I can, if you want to prove me wrong. People do like to do that on occasion.”

Ethan gave a soft laugh that sounded like a hiccup. “Thanks, Coach,” he said, and saying the word made that awful feeling rush up again. He knew he had to get the fuck out of Spence’s office before he lost it.

“Thank you, Ethan, for how hard you played for me this year. I don’t want you to leave here and think I wasn’t grateful or didn’t appreciate it, because I am and I did. This team couldn’t have won a championship without you, and I don’t just mean that because of that goddamn amazing goal you scored. I mean because of who you are as a person and a teammate. I hope you understand that all I want is for you to stay that way.”

“I understand, Coach. Thanks.” Ethan took one last deep breath and left the coach’s office, closed the door behind him, and ignored the hot sting of tears blurring his vision as he made his way to the parking lot and went to find Riley.

ETHAN WAS
still mulling over his coach’s words of advice when he and Riley went out to Cruisers. Riley was as helpful and as supportive as he could be, but Ethan knew that he had to make the decision himself.

“This is dumb,” Ethan groused, twirling a fry in some cheese sauce. “I want to play hockey. Don’t I? Why aren’t I already throwing away my smokes and going running with you at six in the morning?”

“Because you like smoking and you hate getting up early?”

Ethan glared at him without any real heat. “Right. So you’re saying I couldn’t give up smoking and start going running, even if I wanted to?”

“No,” Riley said very patiently. “I think you could do just about anything if you wanted it bad enough.”

“Really?” Ethan blinked in surprise, because he wasn’t so sure. Wouldn’t he be eating a grilled chicken sandwich like Riley instead of cheese fries and a burger? “That sounds more like you than me, honestly.”

“Maybe what you want isn’t playing hockey,” Riley said, stealing a fry. “You know no one’s going to be disappointed in you if you don’t. Right?”

Ethan looked down at his plate and hated that he could feel himself turning red. “Yeah.”

“Because no one will be.”

“I know.” Ethan looked up and smiled. “I’m a motherfucking champion.”

“Damn right,” Riley said, and stole another fry.

“What do you love about hockey?” Ethan asked, because he wasn’t sure he knew the answer. “What makes it worth eating steamed broccoli and settling for stealing a few of your boyfriend’s cheese fries, instead of ordering your own?”

Riley stole another one and tilted his head. “I like being noticed,” he said slowly and he looked a little embarrassed to admit it. “But I like that I can still hide too.”

That was so startlingly honest that Ethan almost got up and went around the table to hug Riley. Instead he defaulted to dude-bro behavior and said, “And you’re a control freak.”

“And that,” Riley said, grinning a little. “And you know. I like saving things.”

“Ugh,” Ethan said, but he couldn’t help smiling back. Goddamn. He had it so bad for Riley Hunter it wasn’t even funny.

“Mr. Kennedy?”

There was a woman standing next to their table. She looked vaguely familiar, though Ethan couldn’t quite place her. “It’s Ethan. No one ever calls me Mr. Kennedy unless I’m in trouble. What can I do for you?”

She smiled at him. “My name is Amanda Tillman. My daughter, Olivia? She went to your hockey camp.”

“Oh.” Ethan remembered her daughter immediately—a quiet little thing with dark brown hair and wide eyes who spent the first few sessions hiding on the floor behind the bench. She eventually broke out of her shell, and by the end of the camp, she was skating up and down the ice, giggling, and telling the other kids she wanted to fight them. But “only for honor,” which cracked Ethan up. “Livvy. Yeah. How’s she doing?”

“She’s doing well,” Amanda said. “Actually she’s doing great. Olivia is so shy. We were worried about her adjusting, since my partner and I just moved here. We adopted Olivia two years ago,” she explained. “It’s hard for her to trust people and let her guard down. You were so great with her. She talks about you all the time. She’s even made friends at school and she went to her first big-girl sleepover last weekend.” Amanda smiled. “She said you taught her about how it was important to stand up for yourself, but also to have friends. My partner and I decided we were signing her up for a beginner’s pee-wee hockey club, because we were just so thrilled at how much it helped her. Though, if you’re doing the camp again, we’re bringing her back. She might never forgive us if we didn’t,” she joked. “You’re her favorite player. We can barely get her to stop wearing your jersey.”

Ethan was sure his face had never been as red as it was right then, but he couldn’t help grinning. “Yeah? Well, I’m glad it helped,” he said sincerely. “Hockey was good for me, so it’s great to hear that it helps other kids too.”

And that’s when Ethan realized what he loved about hockey. Because as great as it felt to win a championship, nothing made him happier than hearing he’d helped someone by sharing the sport he loved. Especially a kid. Ethan knew how important it had been to him and how angry he might have become if he’d never found a healthy outlet for all his pent-up resentment and anger.

Amanda thanked him again and promised that she, Olivia, and her partner, Karen, would be hockey fans for life. Then she asked him to sign a coaster for Olivia. Ethan wrote
Hey, Livvy, keep up the good work. See you in the NHL! Ethan Kennedy #3
and tried not to look like he was dying of embarrassment at signing an autograph at Cruisers, of all places.

When they were alone, Ethan watched Riley polish off his cheese fries and said, “Riley? I think I know what I’m going to do.”

And then, mind made up, he ordered dessert.

“I AM
so glad you’re doing this,” Zoe said for the thousandth time. “I was seriously worried about what would happen if I left and no one wanted to take this over.” She handed Ethan a folder full of papers. “That’s basically the information you’ll need to get started. The program is grant funded for two years, and there’s enough in there for a stipend. But trust me, it ain’t much.”

Ethan looked through the papers, and his head immediately swam with the numbers and figures. He frowned as he came across a column called
fees
. “Hey, wait. I didn’t know it costs money to come to this camp. I thought you said it was grant funded?”

Zoe nodded. “Yeah. I mean, the grant pays for equipment rental, and the Storm let us use the ice, but we need to have it Zambonied—I still can’t believe that’s a verb. And then there’s promotions. That kind of thing.”

“It’s expensive, though,” Ethan said, chewing on his bottom lip. “I kind of wanted to get more kids involved. You know? And offer some free spots for families who can’t afford it.”

“I know, sugar, but it ain’t exactly a moneymaker,” Zoe drawled. “Look. I’m all for that. You know I am. And if you can find a way to grow the program, that’s great. I’m just showing you what the budget is like and what you’ve got to work with.”