Normal, happy, and optimistic.
Nick loves me.
He does.
He’s just not ready for the words yet.
So long as he keeps showing me, everything’s going to be fine.
Forty-Six
Nick
I walk into Mink Arena Thursday night with my phone pressed to my ear. “You’re coming?” I say for the fifteenth time.
I thought playing New York was tough. I thought the Badgers were tough.
But we’re up against the Indies tonight, and those fuckers have only lost three games all season.
They’re the team we have to fucking own if we have any shot at making it through the playoffs to the championship again this year.
“I promise,” Kami says, and my lungs once again even out.
Since she took me back, I’ve been on fire. Haven’t let anyone score more than two goals on me in a single game, and that only happened once. Lavoie was right.
Having my personal life squared away makes me play a hell of a lot better.
And it’s Kami.
She says she’ll be here, she’ll be here. “Good,” I say, “because I know how much you love watching my sexy body in all those pads.”
Her laughter eases more tension. “You are such a goober. Go get ready to kick some Indies ass. I’ll wait for you after the game, okay?”
“Deal.”
The dressing room is tense.
Yeah, it’s a regular season game, but it’s the regular season game. Our test to see if we have what it takes to be champions again.
There aren’t any pranks tonight. No friendly insults flying around the halls. Just focused concentration.
Lavoie redoes his skates three times, like his routine’s off. I shaved right before getting in my Jeep to come to the arena. Sokolov and Jaeger’s Pokémon card trade is silent, and they’re both scowling. Even Frey, who’s always smiling, is grim.
Zeus is pacing.
Only Ares is his normal zen self.
“Joey’s coming,” Zeus says to his twin. “I tell you that?”
Ares nods and continues methodically wrapping his ankles.
“She wasn’t going to,” Zeus adds. “But…”
He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t have to.
We all play better when our loved ones are cheering us on.
Even Jaeger, when his parents came in. Frey, too, on the rare occasion his father and the queen make a trip over, and he’s never off his game, even when we’re on the road halfway across the country from Gracie and the baby.
Ares finishes his ankles. Once a trainer checks them, he circles the room.
He’s the calming presence we all need. Big, quiet, broadcasting this is what we train for, fuckers to all of us without saying a word. A bunch of us weren’t sure what management was thinking when they gave up two guys to Chicago for just Ares in return before last season started, but I get it now.
He’s steady. He’s dedicated. And he’s the heart and soul we needed to win the Cup last year.
“You got this, Murphy,” he tells me.
“Damn fucking right.”
Fuck, I hope he’s right. We have the Berger twins, but Indianapolis has the Kingsley twins. Johnson, their goaltender, is a fucking beast. And Cranford, their enforcer, knocked Jaeger out cold to earn himself a month-long suspension after the first playoff game last season.
He’s barely back.
This will be ugly.
I check my phone just before we have to put them away. No messages from Kami, so I send her a selfie of me making duck lips. This is my “I’m going to kick ass for you tonight” face.
I picture her cracking up when she sees it—I love that she doesn’t take my ego seriously—and then I get in my zone.
It’s hockey time.
Still, when I reach the ice under the roar of the crowd with the spotlights flashing and the announcer crooning to psych Indianapolis out, I immediately look for Kami. She should be next to the penalty box tonight, second row because none of the resellers had first row tickets for this game left by the time I had the genius idea to buy her all the tickets.
But where Kami and some of her friends should be, all I see are four empty seats.
Sweat dribbles down between my shoulder blades.
I’ll be there, she said.
Probably stuck in traffic.
The game tonight’s a sell-out, because it’s Indianapolis, and everyone in the entire state wants to heckle Cranford for that sucker punch to Jaeger last year.
“Watch Jaeger’s back,” I tell Zeus when he circles the net. “Fuck, watch all their backs.”
He gives me a two-fingered salute. “Three steps ahead of you, Murphy. You just stop those pucks.”
I glance at Kami’s empty seats again. Come on, come on, come on…
But she doesn’t show up in the first period.
The Indies are up one-nothing, because they’re all fucking beasts tonight.
We get back on the ice to start the second period, and Kami’s seats are still empty. She hasn’t read my text from before the game. I double-checked, and yeah, those are the seats I bought her. Still, I scan the crowd, wondering if she traded up somehow.
But she’s not in the first three rows. I don’t know which box is her parents’, and even if I did, I don’t know that I could spot her clearly this far away.
Lavoie catches me looking. “Head in the game, Murphy,” he says. “She’s here.”
She’s not fucking here.
Raw instinct and years of practice take over the minute the horn sounds to start the second period. By the time the horn buzzes again, we’re tied two-two.
In the dressing room between periods, I text Felicity.
She doesn’t answer, and I realize she’s working. Ratings go up every time she and Thrusty help call the game. “Felicity in the announcer’s booth?” I ask Ares.
“Game Center,” he answers.
Fuck, she’s on network tv tonight.
I text my mom instead, and of course, Kami’s not with her. Before I remember I have Maren and Alina’s numbers, intermission’s over, and we’re heading back onto the ice.
“Murphy?” Coach says, giving me a worried once-over.
“I’m good.”
I’m not fucking good.
Kami’s not here. Her car could’ve broken down. Maybe she was rear-ended.
Or mugged.
Or kidnapped.
Or she went to the bank and she’s being held hostage.
Indianapolis scores on me, and Coach yanks me.
I’m dripping sweat, but it’s not the usual game sweat. It’s a cold, terrified, something’s wrong with Kami sweat.
I never told her I loved her. I never asked her to marry me. I never confessed how fucking disappointed I was, how I felt it all the way to the pit of my nut sack, how incompetent and impotent and utterly worthless I felt when she told me she wasn’t pregnant.
How much I’d wished she was.
The bench erupts around me, and I realize Cranford’s going at it with Ares.
And the score’s tied.
The refs break it up, but not before Cranford’s nose is crooked and Ares’s lip’s bleeding. Takes a lot to lure Ares into a fight. Fucker must’ve asked for it.
They’re both sent to the sin bin.
And Kami’s four empty seats glare at me from right beside where Ares is sitting.
She’s not coming.
She’s not coming, and I don’t know where she is.
The last four minutes of the game take a fucking eternity. We barely scrape out a win at the last minute, with Ares, Frey, and Lavoie pulling off a full-on charge through the Indies’ defensive line.
It’s ugly.
It’s a win.
And I don’t fucking care.
I grab my phone as soon as we’re back in the locker room.
Still nothing from Kami.
I’m out of my pads and skates and pulling on my shoes in under a minute. Coach doesn’t blink when I tell him I have a family emergency and tear out of the locker room, past the reporters shouting questions, and down the stairs to the parking garage.
Kami’s missing.
She’s fucking missing.
And if I don’t find her, safe, healthy, and all in one piece, I’m not going to give a shit about anything.
Least of all hockey.
Forty-Seven
Nick
She’s not at home.
Her car’s not at home, and when I use the key she gave me to let myself in, her dogs go fucking nuts. “Whoa, hey, it’s okay,” I lie to them.
I let them out the back, and all three of them race so fast to do their business that my heart goes into a speedskate that’s not going to slow down anytime soon.
She hasn’t been home to let them out.
She’s always home to let her dogs out. She leaves work, she comes home and lets them out, eats dinner, then takes them for a walk.
Always.
It’s what she does. Even on weekday game nights.
I’m not often here, but she talks about her routine without even realizing she’s doing it.
“Where’s your mama?” I ask Tiger.
She makes that weird balloon howl and dances on my feet like I’m supposed to tell her.
Pancake and Dixie trot back in, both of them giving me terrified puppy dog eyes.
Or maybe I’m giving them terrified puppy dog eyes.
Or maybe I fucking stink like ass and I’m polluting their home.
“You know where your mama is?” I ask the other two dogs.
No answer.
Dixie skitters to the dog bowl and flops on her belly.
I don’t know how much food to give them, so I fill all the bowls. “I’ll be back,” I tell them. “I’ll bring her back.”
I race back to my Jeep and grab my phone.
Alina hasn’t answered. She’s probably off traveling for a concert again.
Maren’s out of town too and doesn’t know where she is, but asks if I’ve checked the clinic.
I’m soaking my leather seats with fear-sweat the entire ten-minute drive to Kami’s family clinic.
If she was stuck at the clinic, she would’ve texted me. She would’ve called. She would’ve—oh, fuck.