to change places with me? Wannabe NHL’ers, kids who were desperate to play? We were at least two stops back from the lights, and in a moment of love and peace and kindness, I lowered my window, and the kid staring out from his car caught the movement, then rubbernecked, and then shouted my name before he lowered his window.
“TATE!” he called, and I saw his mom look over her shoulder and then over at me. She appeared to have control over the back windows and it began to raise, as she mouthed sorry at me. I shook my head, made the universal sign for lowering the window and then reached into the back of my car where I knew for sure I had a stack of jerseys. I held one up, but the light changed and we all had to shuffle forward. I really hoped the kid who’d shouted my name stopped next to me again, and I was so damned pleased when he did. The mom shrugged in a what-can-you-do kind of manner and the kid lowered his window all the way. We were no more than six feet apart.
“Hi,” I called over. “What’s your name?”
“Lucas Bowyer, I play hockey for the mini-slide-Eagles.”
“What position?”
“Center, just like you.” He was so animated it was infectious. This was why I played, this childish excitement was still inside me every time I hit the ice.
“Would you like a jersey?” I called over.
“YES!” he shouted, and then with prompting from his mom he added a belated “Please.” I tossed him a jersey, then another where I’d scribbled my name next to my number, rooted around, found a couple of pucks, and then emptied a Raptors gym bag and tossed all of that to him as well.
“Do you come to the games?”
He wrinkled his nose at that. “Once,” he murmured.
I could fix that. Tickets weren’t cheap, even to see the Raptors, but I got freebies for every game. “Mrs. Bowyer?” I called. “Go to Will-Call and you tell them that Tate sent you, I’ll leave your son’s name, maybe you can get tickets for when we play Ottawa tomorrow?”
She smiled at me, nodded, but then the traffic moved and, after exchanging virtual high fives with Lucas, I headed on to the arena. I needed to get back to my visits to the hospital, I hadn’t been in a couple of weeks, and I hoped to hell I could sneak in and not have the whole Lacey shit causing me issues.
Decision made, I arrived at the arena with a huge grin on my face. I was Tate Collins, I was a hockey player, and no one could take that away from me.
Only the team lawyer, Dwight not-so-perky Perkins, was waiting for me, standing with one of the team owners, Mark, and I wished there was another way into the arena because the last thing I wanted to do was harsh the buzz I had going. But neither of them appeared to be pissed, or as if they had something to say to me that was going to change the direction of my life.
“A word?” Mark said, and opened the door to what looked like a janitor’s room, and then closing it behind the three of us. I can honestly say I’ve never had a meeting in a room that smelled of bleach and contained at least six mops.
“What’s happened?” I asked, because this was so unreal.
“We wanted to cross the Ts,” Dwight began.
“There are no charges,” Mark continued. “You ex has released this.” He thrust a phone at me, and I scrolled down the Twitter thread. “She admits that you’re a good guy, and that comments were taken out of context. She’s also mentioned that she’s seeking help for her mental health.” The post had seven thousand likes already, and it had only been posted two hours ago, right when I was arguing with Vlad. She’d played it to perfection, hundreds of thousands of likes of her losing her shit over me, and there would be just as many of her saying her pointed comments were taken out of context, with sympathy for her admission she looking for help. She was working this angle hard and I was caught in the crossfire.
“The million dollars,” Mark said, in that quiet tone of his.
“I shouldn’t have done that, but it wasn’t for the reason you think.”
“What was the reason?”
The last thing I wanted to do was go into details. “Do I have to say?”
Mark shook his