Trade Deadline - Avon Gale Page 0,13

the season, but when he’d suggested a potential move to Miami, she’d just shrugged gamely and said she’d be willing as soon as she found a job and a new place to live. He was a hockey player, and she knew a possible trade was always on the table. In the back of her mind, she’d always expected it to happen, and plus, the kids would love being so close to one set of their grandparents. Her own folks lived in South Carolina, so aside from their friends, there wasn’t much to tie them to Georgia. Miami to Charleston wouldn’t be an unreasonable distance for the kids to visit her parents either, if they were settled in Florida.

But while she’d been open to moving to keep their family close together, she hadn’t accepted his offer to put her and the kids up in a rental while she searched for work. Best friends and co-parents they might be, but Tabby wasn’t looking for handouts. During their divorce, Daniel had to fight to get her to accept alimony and not just child support. In his eyes, even if they weren’t in love anymore, she was still family, still one of his own, and he needed to take care of her in whatever way she allowed. He couldn’t ask for a better partner to raise his kids with, no matter what had occurred in their romantic relationship. Ryu had joked about them having the healthiest divorce of anyone he knew, and it was true. There was no animosity, no fighting. They’d been friends then, and they were friends now, as they always would be.

Daniel tore his thoughts away from his family and focused on shooting on Spacek, the Thunder’s starting goalie. He hadn’t quite gotten to the point where he’d started thinking of Spacek as his goalie, not after having bonded with Ryu and Army. He’d drop his gloves for Spacek in a second, but they had no camaraderie at all. Not yet. Maybe never, if Cedric had his way.

Daniel put a little more force into his next shot, and the puck sailed over Spacek’s left shoulder. For a second, he had a flashback of Army blocking that exact shot and cockily throwing the puck to the ice. Daniel smiled to himself and circled around to collect another puck and join the line to try again. He’d bled green and gold for the Venom, and he’d bleed blue and white for the Thunder. Daniel didn’t do things by halves, and he wouldn’t start now, tension with his teammates or not. He was determined to get this season off to a good start.

* * *

Barely one period later, Daniel wasn’t feeling so positive anymore. The Condors had already put five goals on the board, and if morale had been low at the start of the game, it was now buried somewhere beneath the ice. Maybe even under the building itself.

Demetrius had been scowling since goal number four, and the expression only intensified when he scored and the play immediately got put under an offside review.

Daniel grabbed his water bottle and took a few deep swallows, lingering by the bench while the referees conferred. Cedric sat to his left, his deep blue eyes cast downward, an already familiar glare twisting his handsome features. If he’d been a player on the Venom, Daniel would’ve said something, offered comfort or encouragement, maybe even just a quick shoulder squeeze or a stick slap to Cedric’s pads when he came over the boards onto the ice. But he didn’t think Cedric would appreciate or welcome any of those gestures from him. Daniel looked around instead, scanning the row of seats directly behind the bench. He skimmed past a guy with fiery red hair and caught a hand lifting in a shy wave out of the corner of his eye. Something about the guy drew Daniel’s gaze back, and he stared at a face that seemed oddly familiar.

The guy lifted a hand and waved again, his smile sheepish and his freckled cheeks flushing pink. Beneath his chunky brown cardigan and the blue-and-white scarf draped artfully around his neck, Daniel caught a glimpse of a T-shirt with the Thunder’s logo—a lightning bolt emerging from a dark, puffy cloud—on the front.

Daniel’s eyes returned to the guy’s face.

Wait a minute... Holy shit.

Daniel knew that smile and those freckles and the floppy red bangs that fell over hazel eyes. As a kid, that blazingly bright hair had always reminded him of the flames in