“You should have retired already.” Sean pushed back, fighting to keep his eyes on the puck. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
In the second period, the Chinooks were up a point and the insults got more personal. “You know the difference between your girlfriend and a walrus?” a Red Wing chirped as he jostled for position in the face-off circle. “One has a mustache and stinks like fish, the other is a walrus.”
Sean laughed as he easily hooked the puck and sent it cross-ice to Chucky. Sean knew for a fact that Lexie didn’t have a mustache and smelled like peaches.
Over the next two games, Sean took a few more insults directed at Lexie. It was part of the game and didn’t bother him. The same could not be said for Ozzy Osbourne and “Crazy Train.” Each time the song pounded through the arena, it filled his head with the memory of Lexie’s big beautiful breasts.
On day seven, the team landed in St. Louis, winning by two points but losing Butch due to a high stick to the cup that doubled him over and dropped him to the ice. As he lay curled on the ice, whistles blew, gloves dropped, and players mixed it up in the corners, resulting in a combined fifteen penalty minutes and a four-on-three advantage. Sean took three shots on goal, each deflected by Rask.
He took his place in the face-off circle in the end zone and crouched with his stick across his knees, waiting for Paul to get situated inside the circle across from the Blues center.
Blues defender Marty Holt bumped Sean’s shoulder as he took the spot next to him. “I almost didn’t recognize your girlfriend with her back shaved.”
If Sean had been in a good mood, he would have laughed. Lexie had a beautifully smooth back. Too bad he was pissed off, frustrated, and feeling the pressure to get one in the net while they still had the advantage. “You’re a slow dusty fuck.” He put his blade on the ice and kept his eyes on the puck suspended in the referee’s hand mid-circle.
The puck dropped and Paul dug it out from the other man’s stick and fed it to Sean. He passed it behind him to Chucky just before Hutchison hit him hard, but if he thought he could knock Sean off his skates, he was doomed to disappointment. Sean pivoted free in time for Chucky to shoot it back. He cushioned the puck in the curve of his blade, faked a wrister, but pulled a backhander out of his bag of tricks, finessing the puck between the goalie’s pads. The red light flashed and the goal horn blew. Some of the pressure li
fted from Sean’s shoulders as he lifted his stick in the air. At once, his teammates surrounded him and slapped him on his back and shoulders with their big gloves. “How’d you like that one?” he called out to Hutchison as he skated to the bench, bumping gloves with the other Chinooks.
“Suck it, you overrated pigeon.”
Sean laughed and looked up at the scoreboard. They were up by one point. He’d feel a lot better if it was two. He sat between Paul and Jay Lindbloom, a rookie so fresh his game beard looked moth-eaten.
“That was a beauty, boys,” John said from behind him.
Sean squirted water into his mouth and looked over his shoulder. The coach’s attention was fixed on the ice but a smile curved his lips. Sean swallowed and bumped knuckles with Chucky.
Being up by one wasn’t enough to satisfy the Chinooks’ bloodlust. The hits got harder, the verbal abuse more caustic.
“Good one, Lenny,” Stony called out, heckling the Blues winger when his pass bounced off his teammate’s left skate.
“Yeah, if you’re trying for the worst pass of the year,” Brody added.
With a minute left in the game, KO hit the Blues front-line forward, who had the misfortune of falling on his ass in front of the Chinooks bench.
Paul hit his stick on the board as the whistle blew. “Are you going to sit there and cry, little girl?”
Sean leaned forward and looked down at the guy, who’d raised himself to one knee. Before playing for the Chinooks, Sean had been on the receiving end of a KO hit and knew what it was like to have the enforcer knock the breath right out of his lungs. That didn’t keep him from saying, “Show some class. Get up, you fucking sissy.”
“Yeah. Show some class, you donkey baby.”
Sean looked across his shoulder at Jay. “‘Donkey baby?’”
The rookie shrugged his shoulders inside his big pads.
Sean and Paul laughed as they stood and scissored their legs over the board, onto the ice. Thirty seconds later, the horn blew and Sean was more than happy to put the game behind him. In the locker room, he took a hot shower, warming his muscles and soothing the hard hits to his body. The team’s assistant coach informed everyone that Butch was on the injured list and was expected to stay there for at least two more weeks.
Sean lagged behind and had the Chinooks massage therapist work out the kinks in his lower back and rub out the pain in his shoulder from the hit Hutchison had put on him. By the time he got dressed in his tie and blazer and grabbed his coat, most of the boys had left the Scottrade Center. The sun had set over the Gateway Arch lit up in blue, and the temperature rolling off the Mississippi had dropped to forty-five degrees as he walked the two blocks to the hotel alone. The team wasn’t flying to Boston until the next morning, and Sean looked forward to room service and a good eight hours of sleep. As he entered the Hyatt, his phone vibrated with a text message from Lexie, letting him know that she’d sent him an updated memo and he should check his e-mail and get back to her “ASAP.” His back felt better and his shoulder wasn’t as sore, and the last thing he was going to do was read her damn memo and give himself brain damage. He hadn’t been able to get through the others she’d sent, and he’d rather stab himself in the head than read any more of her sections, subsections, and bullet points.
“Knox.”
Sean looked up at Lexie’s father standing by the bank of elevators. He returned his cell phone to his blazer pocket. “Hey, Coach.”
“What’s put that pained look on your face?” John asked as if he already knew the answer to his question.
“Your daughter and her memos.” The doors slid open and the two waited for a mother and three children to exit before they stepped inside.
“She gets that from her mother’s side. What floor?”