In the Zone (Portland Storm 5) (40 page)

Val took a step toward me, a cocky smile pasted on his face. “Right. You too fat to be my baby. I need a sexy girl on my arm. You stay with him,” he added with a sneer in Keith’s direction. “He’s ugly, like you.”

Keith tried to push me to the side. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he wanted to bash my former partner’s face in. I couldn’t let him do that, however much I might like to see it. I elbowed Keith in the ribs, probably harder than was necessary, but I wasn’t finished there. I closed the distance between myself and Val, pulled back my arm, and punched him square in the nose hard enough that I drew blood.

Val pulled both hands up to cover his face. “You bitch!”

“Yeah.” I grinned. “I’m a very lucky bitch to be rid of you.” With that, I took Keith’s hand and led him out to the parking lot, and I put everything to do with Val behind me.

W
ITH THE SHOW
in the past, I was able to get back to life as usual—or at least my new version of life as usual.

Devin and I started working on choreography for The End of All Things almost immediately. Both of us had busy schedules, so we ended up working together at some crazy times, but we managed it. We were due to film it at the end of January, so there wasn’t any time to waste.

Devin’s show had been a resounding success, with people talking about it throughout the dance community. He decided to make it an annual event—and a charity event, to boot. After getting to know a few of the Storm’s players through me and Keith, he’d thought it would be great to donate the money raised to the Light the Lamp Foundation. That meant he and Liam Kallen were going to partner together in the venture in future years, maybe making it into a week of performances and drawing more people to it through the hockey community.

Classes started back up at Rose City now that the holidays had passed us by, and so much of my time was spent teaching various ballroom dances to my students. Cole kept coming when he could—I had to bump him up to the next level of classes, though, because he was learning too fast—and every now and then Keith came, as well. Shane probably would have, but he had to go back home to his life in Nova Scotia.

I went to Keith’s games whenever they were in town and I wasn’t scheduled to teach classes. I was pretty sure that Tanya was going behind my back and arranging my schedule so that I’d have most of those nights off, but I wasn’t going to complain about that sort of interference. Actually, I really appreciated it. I would never ask for that sort of preferential treatment, but I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The more time I spent at his games, the better I was starting to understand hockey. That wasn’t saying a whole lot, still, but it gradually made more sense. I was at one of those games in mid-January, against the Columbus Blue Jackets, sitting in the owner’s box with Dana and some of the other players’ wives and girlfriends, when my heart pretty much stopped beating. One of the Blue Jackets had hit Vladimir Berezin hard from behind.

“Blatant boarding,” Dana muttered to me. Then, before I knew what was happening, Keith had tossed his stick and gloves in the air and was pummeling the guy like his life depended on it.

I’d seen a few fights in the games I’d come to but never one as intense as this. The Columbus player was bigger than Keith and he clearly knew what he was doing when it came to fighting; he gave back as good as he got. By the time the linesmen broke them apart, both their jerseys were peppered with blood, and it was still trickling down from a cut over Keith’s eye. They escorted him off the ice and down the tunnel, with all of his teammates banging their sticks over the boards in support. Babs slapped Keith’s butt as he passed by and one of the coaches did the same to Keith’s shoulder.

“He’ll be all right,” Dana reassured me. “They’ll take him back, and Doc will stitch him up, and he’ll probably be back in the game in the third period.”

“Trust me,” Rachel added. “Brenden gets hurt all the time. He’s a skating disaster out there, but he’s always all right in the end. It probably hurts us to see it more than it hurts them.”

They were right, it seemed. He came back out in the third, acting as though nothing was wrong, even though I could see a long line of stitches and the ugly bruising over his eye whenever the Jumbotron gave us a close-up of his face. I cringed every time I saw it, not because of his appearance, but because of the pain I knew had to be associated with it. Almost subconsciously, I clenched my right hand into a fist and released it, remembering the pain I’d had for a couple of days after punching Val in the nose.

The fight seemed to have sparked the Storm’s bench, though. They turned up their attack, really pushing the pace for the rest of the game. In the end, they beat the Blue Jackets by a score of five to two.

The moment that Keith stepped into the owner’s box a little while later, I was on my feet to see the damage firsthand. I reached up to gingerly touch the red, swollen flesh.

“Not a big deal,” Keith said, a grin turning up the corners of his mouth. “I’ve had worse.”

“But not while I was around to see it.”

“No, not while you were around. I’ll still be fine, though.”

I nodded, trying to convince myself that he was telling me the truth over this. He hadn’t flinched when I’d touched him. That was a good sign, at least. “Why did you do it?” I asked.

“Because no one messes with my teammates and gets away with it. Any of the guys would have done it, but I was closest. We take care of our own around here.” He took my hand to lead me out of the arena, and I waved good-bye to the other women. “I’d do the same for you, too, you know. Well, if you’d let me. No one messes with my girl.”

I laughed at that. Keith and I’d had a long argument over the fact that I’d prevented him from beating Val to a bloody pulp, choosing to do it myself. “You’d better not start a fight with anyone over me,” I said.

“Like you’d let me.” He let out a long, beleaguered sigh. “They’d better not give me a reason to.”

“You’d do it for Shane, too, wouldn’t you?”

“In a heartbeat. He’s my brother.”

And I thought that maybe now, Keith realized that was mutual. It was a two-way street. He knew that Shane loved him, that he didn’t hold anything from the past against him.

We didn’t talk much the rest of the way down to the parking garage. A few fans stopped us in the concourse and begged Keith for autographs, congratulating him on the fight. When we got in his car and he started the engine, Keith turned to me.

“Your place or mine, tonight?”

“How about your place…every night?”

He’d been trying to convince me to move in with him ever since Shane had gone home, but I’d been resisting. For some crazy reason, I was still trying to take things slowly with him. There wasn’t much point to that anymore, though. Nothing about our relationship had ever been slow or normal. I didn’t know why I was trying to make it that way now.

“Yeah?” A slow smile crept over his lips, and he took my hand after he’d put the car into gear. “You mean it?”

“As long as we can make sure Richie is comfortable.” I wasn’t really worried about Richie, though. We’d already had a trial run at Christmas, and he’d come out of it just fine.

“I’ve got a few ideas on that,” Keith said, launching into his plans of converting a few of the rooms downstairs into a cat sanctuary, complete with multiple hidey-holes and paths up high that the cats could use to travel from room to room. He talked for several minutes, outlining detail after detail, and it seemed as though he was going to keep going until we got to his house.

“Keith,” I finally interrupted, laughing again.

“Yeah?” His voice almost squeaked, as though he was nervous about what I was going to say.

“You’re unreal, you know that?”

He grinned. “Does that mean you’re moving in?”

“Hmm, I don’t know...” I teased. “That whole cat-pathway thing seems like you’re trying too hard.”

“Oh, really?” He exited the highway and turned at the light. “I thought it sounded like fun. And a great way to torment Pepper, since she wouldn’t be able to reach the cats if they were up there. Maybe I’ll just have to build it anyway and adopt a cat or two of my own.”

“I suppose Richie and BC could give it a test run, if you’re dead set on it.”

“I am.”

“All right.” I let out a dramatic sigh. “Good thing I love you, since you’re so inclined to destroy your house for a cat run.”

“I’d do just about anything if it meant getting you to come live with me.”

I kissed Keith’s cheek. “A hidey-hole or two would be more than enough, you know.”

“I know.” He threaded our fingers together. “But I love you, too, and I want you and your cats to feel like it’s
our
home, not just
my
home.”

“I’ll feel at home as long as I’m with you.”

“Good.” He made a turn, bringing us closer to the house. “Otherwise I was going to have to handcuff Allison to the bed and force her to stay, and that seemed slightly illegal or something.”

“Or something,” I agreed, laughing. “You don’t need to handcuff me to get me to stay.” I waited a beat, for emphasis. “But you can for fun.”

I
’D NEVER SEEN
a pregnant woman who looked closer to popping in my life.

Dana had both hands on the small of her back, pacing back and forth in the owner’s box, while the rest of the players’ wives and girlfriends and I looked on. It was the first intermission in a game against the Edmonton Oilers in late February, and the score was tied at one. None of us were overly focused on the game, though. We kept turning our attention to Dana.

“You think it’s going to happen tonight?” Rachel quietly asked Laura.

Laura nodded, her eyes never leaving Dana. “She was due almost a week ago. It has to happen soon.”

“What are we going to do if her water breaks in the middle of the game?” Sara Thomas asked.

“Jim knows that could happen,” Rachel said calmly. “I’ll let him know as soon as it does, he’ll send us down to the ambulance that’s on site, and he’ll get Zee out of the game and in the ambulance with her.”

“He’d leave the game?” I asked, somewhat surprised. I hadn’t been around hockey players very long, but in what little I’d seen, they got some pretty gruesome injuries and then went right back out on the ice for their next shift. I thought back to the night that Keith had fought the Columbus player, and I couldn’t imagine that any of them would leave willingly. They’d have to be pried off, kicking and screaming.

“There are eighty-two hockey games in a season, and Zee will probably play for close to two decades,” Laura said matter-of-factly. “His first child is only born once. He’ll leave the game.”

Dana looked a little unsteady on her feet, and Noelle Payne, Kally’s girlfriend, suddenly jumped up from her seat and crossed over to Dana, putting one arm around her back. I hadn’t spent a ton of time around these women yet, but Noelle always seemed to be in tune with people. She seemed to instinctively know who needed comforting, and she was the first to go to them every time.

“There’s no point in worrying,” Laura said. “Women have babies all the time. If it happens, it happens.”

“Right,” Sara said. “No worrying. I’ll be damned if I know how to make it stop, though.”

My cell phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my pocket. It was a text message from Devin.

It’s done. Our video goes live to the world tomorrow. Kellan sent me the link and said I could send it to you. TOP SECRET.

A link was pasted below his message.

Sara was leaning over my shoulder. “That’s
the
video? Top secret means you have to share with us, chickee.”

I took a look around, making sure none of the others were close enough to see or hear. Then I nodded. “All right. Come closer.”

Once Sara, Laura, Dana, Rachel, and Noelle had all gathered around me, I clicked on the link. The video opened up on my screen and the music started to play. And there we were, Devin and I, floating in and out of images of The End of All Things playing the song.