In the thirty-two days left to me.
We had a team near here, the LA something or other, Thunder? Or Lightning? I looked them up, feeling remiss that I didn’t even know the name of the local hockey team. The first entry in the search showed LA Storm, so I was close. I knew it was something to do with the weather.
I clicked into an article—the LA Storm were one game away from doing something amazing in the Stanley Cup, which was the cup of all cups in hockey. I may not love hockey as much as my bloodline insisted I should, but even I recall riots in Vancouver after the local team there lost in a cup final. The LA Storm—and what a cool name that was—were fighting the Boston Rebels.
Okay, so I needed to find someone with the Storm team willing to sign an NDA and teach me. Any one of them would do, and I clicked on the fourth thing on the list: Hockey’s sexiest players.
Now this I could get into.
Number one was some pretty boy out in PA, all flicked hair and flirty eyes. Oh and married to a guy.
Gay.
How did he manage to be gay and play professional sports?
I crossed him off my mental list. That would be way too dangerous, because what if he was attracted to me, and me to him, and then we fucked, and he told my secret, and I lost all the parts, and maybe not even the team behind the Rapid franchise would want me.
No one wants a gay action hero. Right?
Second was some kid out of Florida, a rookie who looked as if he wasn’t old enough to shave.
Third was an actual LA Player. Interesting.
Cameron Chavkin, twenty-six, single, and whoa… he was all bad boy oozing with brooding sexiness.
“Jesus, look at that ass!” I said to no one. I clicked the link to a recommended video, one from a previous year’s run for the Stanley Cup, and fell down a rabbit hole of sexy, exciting men. LA had been knocked out in the second-round last year, and there was a video of the team reactions. I sought Cameron out.
There was one image of him staring up at the big scoreboard over the center of the ice and he was broken. I thought he seemed as if he was going to cry, but not in a weepy way, instead in a manly, stoic I’m-too-tough-to-cry-but-I’ll-let-my-eyes-water-up, kind of way.
His attention was fixed on a replay of a goal hitting the back of the net, in the background the other team was celebrating, and I took note of the narrowing of his gray eyes as this Cameron Chavkin emoted his pain and loss with resigned grief.
This was me.
Well, not me, but the character I was due to play in The Cup.
I wanted this Cameron guy to show me how to be like that, how to do that.
I channeled my best Liam Neeson monologue voice. “Cameron Chavkin, I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you’ll say. If you are looking for money, I can tell you I have a lot of money, and a very particular set of skills in persuasion. I will track you down. And I will hire you.”
I laughed at my own joke.
And in my empty ten-room house in the hills, with its three pools and the marble Italianate kitchen, no one laughed back.
I was all alone, and I needed to talk to someone who wasn’t my agent.
I considered calling my sister, but she was pregnant with a third nibling, and so over my regular freakouts over a lot of things… so that was a no.
Or Natalie? She was my beard, or I was hers. Either way, we did promo every so often to keep things settled.
But she was filming in Brazil and the last text exchange we had was all about her falling in love with a woman called Chloe, and I couldn’t rain on her loved-up parade with my misery.
Maybe I could call Luca Bennetto? He played my sidekick in the Rapid films, and he was also one of my few friends in Tinseltown—growing up on a soap set was hard on friendships but he’d followed more or less the same route, albeit ten years before me.
I liked Luca, and he liked me.
So, Luca it was.
I tried his cell, but it went to voicemail, and I didn’t have the heart to leave a message as convoluted as what I needed to explain.
So much for talking to anyone.
Suck it up, buttercup.
Chapter 2
Cameron
Not again.
Standing at center ice, my eyes on the scoreboard as they showed the game-winning goal for Boston, all my exhausted brain could keep playing on a loop was…
Not again. Our barn was quiet as a tomb save for the few Rebels fans who had made the trip from the east coast to the west. They were loud. They were happy. Our fans? Not so much. And rightfully so. We’d fucked up once more.
My sight flicked from the chaos on the screen over my head to the desolation on the ice. Off in one corner were the Boston Rebels, this year’s Cup champs, ebullient, some weeping with joy. And then there was the Storm.
Our goalie Phillipe was still splayed out in his crease, belly down, the grill of his mask resting on the ice, the very image of dejection. A stuffed storm cloud bounced over to me. There were several on the ice now, our fans’ way of telling us that we sucked. Which, yeah, we all kind of were feeling that vibe—thanks gang.
My teammates were stunned—shock and grief playing on their faces. Our captain, Charles Zhang, seemed to have shaken off the stupor of a last-minute loss, but we could see right through him.
“Next year, guys,” I could hear him saying as he skated to each man on the ice. He moved to Phillipe and got him up on his skates. The man was devastated. We’d all tried so hard for him, knowing his time in the crease was limited. He was thirty-eight now. And this might have been his last chance. Fuck. This sucked, and not in the good way. “Handshakes now.”
Fuck. Me. One of the toughest things to do was get in that line and congratulate the other team on achieving your goal. But that was what was expected. Hockey players were nothing if not humble good sports. Inside, we all felt like beating ourselves over our heads with our sticks, but on the outside, we were in a conga line of sorts, only there was no joyous dancing. At least on our side.
Credit to the Rebels, they were good sports. Their captain, Xander Holden, took an extra moment with each Storm player, patting them on the shoulder while telling them that they played one hell of a series.
I wasn’t so sure about that. His freaking team had taken us down in five games. This last one of the series had been tight, yes, but the previous losses were anything but. We’d won the first game here at home, lost the second in front of our fans, then flown to Boston where they trounced us, and now here losing again… it was just fucking shit on a shit stick at a shit barbecue.
“Hey, man. Congratulations,” I said to Austin Rowe, his sweaty face aglow with their well-deserved victory. His cousins—Jamie, Brady, and Tennant—must be super proud. My family would be waiting for me to get home, then the calls would start and every single one of them would be proud of me, but they’d also commiserate. “Great series. We’ll get you next year.”
And so it went, same sentiments, same words, until we were off the ice. The final kick in the gonads was that Boston was getting the Cup on our ice.
The Storm locker room was silent. Men sat on benches, most soaked in sweat, bruised, and injured. Our defensive line looked as if they’d been run through the grinder. Ollie, our most seasoned D-man, had played the last two games with a chipped ankle bone from blocking a shot from Marquis Miller. Jesus, that man had been a thorn in our fucking sides throughout the series. If he didn’t win the Conn Smythe, I’d eat my skate blade. Sans condiments. Guess being in love with a prince did things for your scoring. I’d never felt something that strong for any guy or girl, so all I had to bolster me was the love of my family. Which sometimes was more than enough and sometimes not nearly enough.