There was silence as most of the guys fidgeted, looked at the floor, did anything but make eye contact. Finally, Lars spoke up. “No, has to be you. No one else. Ben would want this.”
“Ben’s gone,” I said softly. “And as much as I miss him, we’re still here so this has to be about what we want. All of us.”
“You.” Nash stood up. “Absolutely you.”
“We don’t have to decide about a captain tonight,” Coach said quietly. “But something has to give.”
“All in for Wes.” Drew stood up next. “We need a captain and he’s it.”
One at a time, every guy on the team stood up and essentially pledged their allegiance to me. Had I been anywhere else, I might have given in to the scratchy feeling behind my eyes, but since I couldn’t, I merely nodded.
“So as a team, we’ve decided to name Weston Kirby our new captain. I’ll let PR know.” Grizzly started to walk out with the other coaches but I called to him.
“Hang on, Coach.” I took a breath. “I accept the vote of confidence and will take on the role in every way that matters, but I’d like to wait until next season to wear the C officially. I’d rather we finished the season with Ben still our honorary captain, and perhaps vote in another alternate. That way, we’re covered behind the scenes but we continue to honor him publicly for the rest of this season.”
Everyone seemed to nod in agreement.
“Tonight, we play for Ben. For real. We take no prisoners; we take no shit. Get out there and play the game we were playing before the night of January fourteenth.”
We filed onto the ice and when the game started, it was like someone had flipped a switch. Nash was all over the place, passing and shooting, making opportunities to score happen. Lars was a fucking bulldog, not just defending Drew, but every one of us, every time he was on the ice. By the end of the first period, we were up 3–0 and it felt like the magic was back—the same shit we’d lost when we’d lost Ben. But a three-goal lead was the most dangerous lead in hockey, so we couldn’t let up.
I skated out to the face-off circle to start the second period and Washington’s enforcer, Denby Harrowman, gave me a smirk.
“Ready to go down, Kirby?”
I smirked right back. “Give it your best shot.”
“Seems to me you can’t shoot for shit without your buddy Whitmer.”
My grip on my stick tightened as I gave him a look. “Watch your mouth.”
“What are you gonna do? Without Whitmer, I bet you can’t even suck your own dick. Too bad he didn’t die at the beginning of the sea—”
The next few minutes happened in slow motion, as if I were someone else, looking in from the outside. I didn’t remember dropping my gloves or throwing the first punch, but there was a reason Harrowman was an enforcer and he came right back at me. I was fueled by grief and rage, though, so every time my fist connected with his jaw, his head snapped back. Hard. He got in a few good shots to my eye, but I finally got him down on the ice, my knee in his chest as I punched his face repeatedly. It took both Lars and Nash to pull me off of him and all I saw was red as the ref pointed to the tunnel, indicating a game misconduct and who knew what the fuck else.
I sat in the locker room breathing hard, blood dripping down my face, completely oblivious to our team trainer, who had to stitch me up. I didn’t remember what I said to Coach when he asked me what the fuck had happened, but whatever I’d said seemed to appease him, because he grunted under his breath, patted me on the shoulder, and moved on. I was probably going to be forced to have a meeting with the player safety department, but I didn’t give a fuck. No one talked about Ben that way. And sure as fuck not this soon after his death.
We won. Despite a five-minute penalty, we killed it off and went on to score two more goals, even without me. The mood in the locker room was the best it had been. I snuck out once again, but at least I’d lit a fire under their asses. Now I just had to calm down, because even after beating the living shit out of Harrowman and getting it out of my system, I was still on a tear. I wanted to rage, to yell and scream and drink and hit things. Harrowman’s comment—even though I knew it was nothing but trash talk to throw me off my game—cut deep, an indication of just how much Ben’s death had affected me.
Part of the problem was that I hadn’t really grieved. With two kids at home and a busy hockey schedule, there was no time to breathe, much less give in to grief. The team offered counseling, but I had to be realistic, and the reality was that I didn’t feel comfortable talking to a stranger about what Ben had meant to me and how much losing him changed my life. The one person I could talk to, and would have talked to if she wasn’t such a bitch, was Hadley. I tried so hard to be nice to her, to show her we could work together to raise these kids, but she shut me down time and time again. Our relationship was as exhausting as Benny and Annalise were.
I let myself into the house quietly, hoping she and the kids were asleep, but she was in the kitchen when I came in. She turned around right away, a look I couldn’t quite decipher on her face.
“Hey.” I stopped to grab a bottle of water out of the refrigerator.
“What were you thinking?” she demanded, hands on her hips.
I turned in confusion. “What?”
“You know how much Annalise likes to watch her uncles play hockey. You know she watches as many games as she can stay up for! How do you think she reacted to seeing you fighting like that?”
Crap. I’d never given a second thought to Annalise watching the fight.
“It couldn’t be helped,” I said quietly. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow and explain that it’s part of the game.”
“It’s violent and disgusting!” she hissed. “What you did to that poor guy…I can’t believe you think you’re fit to be a parent to anyone’s kids, much less these ones!”
I whirled on her, fists clenched at my sides. “You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know the first goddamn thing about hockey, or me for that matter, so why don’t you keep your opinions to yourself for once?”
“I will not. This is the kind of behavior that makes it spectacularly clear that you’re not fit to be their guardian.” She folded her arms across her chest, tapping her foot as if she were winning some sort of argument.
I advanced on her a bit more aggressively than I should have, but I was still hopping mad, fueled on adrenaline and pain. She took a step back but I kept going, until she was up against the wall.
“Let me explain something to you,” I growled under my breath, looking down into startled yellow-green eyes. “Fighting has a long history in hockey. It’s tradition. It’s part of the sport. It serves a purpose. Usually to let the other team know they can’t get away with something they were trying to get away with. Can you understand that?”
She swallowed, her jaw tightening in annoyance. “I understand all that,” she ground out. “But what you did tonight was different. It was violent. You were an animal. You—”
“I beat the shit out of the guy who said it was too bad Ben hadn’t died earlier in the season.” I glared down at her, my heart racing a mile a minute.