off the benches to head back in for the second period. We were holding our own tonight, especially after Kuznetsov had scored twice in the first period, but we’d been a little rough in the last two minutes. We were supposed to wait until the third period to fall apart, damn it.
We returned to the ice. The Snow Bears were playing against the Timberwolves tonight, which was my brother’s team. As he and I always did when we were on the ice together, we shared a fist bump before the faceoff. Once our brotherly moment was behind us, it was game on, and neither of us had any qualms about checking each other. Our mom still hadn’t forgiven us for the time we’d both done two minutes in the sin bin for fighting with each other.
“It’s bad enough when one of you gets in a fight!” she’d said over Thanksgiving dinner. “I don’t need to see both of you fighting like you’re still in middle school.”
“Dumbasses,” Dad had grumbled before taking a bite of mashed potatoes.
Troy and I had both been a little sheepish, especially since the black eye I’d given him had still been fading and I’d still had a hell of a bruise on my jaw, but we’d had to struggle not to snicker while we’d kept on eating quietly. We promised our parents that night that we’d try not to fight on the ice.
And we did…try.
Most of the time.
But he was defense and I was offense, and we were both way too competitive to give two fiery fucks about family ties when the skates were on. Tonight was no exception. Once the puck was in play, I was determined to get it into his net, and he was determined to stop me.
Maddox managed to wrestle the puck away from one of the Timberwolves. He quickly passed it to me. I was boxed in, so I passed it to Kuznetsov, who took it most of the way up the ice. By the time he was close to the goal, I’d broken loose, and I was closer, so he sent it my way again. I took the shot, but their goalie was quick, and he shot it back toward center ice.
I was about to go after it when a wall of pads and muscle slammed me against the glass.
“Nice try,” Troy said a second after we made impact.
I elbowed him as we separated. “Fuck off.”
Then I was chasing the puck again and didn’t give a damn where my brother was.
I lost track of the puck for a second. I found it just as someone passed it, and then Kuznetsov had it, and there was only one defenseman near him. Kuznetsov was too fast for him, and the crowd roared their encouragement for the Timberwolves to catch him as he sprinted toward the goal.
Kuznetsov fired the puck at the net, and a split second later, the glass lit up red as the goal horn blared over the cheering crowd.
Though this wasn’t a home game, there were very, very few hockey fans who weren’t Kuznetsov fans, so it was no surprise when hats began raining down on the ice. A few of them hit us as we congratulated Kuznetsov on his twelfth professional hat trick.
“Nice one!” Maddox clapped Kuznetsov’s padded shoulder. “Doesn’t mean you get to slack off the rest of the game, though.”
Kuznetsov laughed. “Does it mean you’re going to stop slacking off?”
“Hey. Fuck you.”
Chuckling, I high-fived Kuznetsov. “Hey, we can slack off all we want. You’ve got this tonight!”
He rolled his eyes and muttered something in Russian, which was probably to the effect of, “Fuck you, asshole.”
The hats kept coming. As I watched them rain down, my heart went wild. It was always cool when it happened, even when it was an opposing player, but after my last hat trick, the sight of all the hats took my breath away. The night I’d scored my fourth hat trick, one of the hats sailing out onto the ice had literally changed my life.
What would my life be like right now if I hadn’t made all three of those goals that night? In fact I’d been pretty sure I had missed that third goal, and by all rights, I should’ve missed it. Which meant I might never have seen Dallas’s note. I might never have emailed Devin. I might never have—
Okay, I didn’t need to go down that mental spiral. Maybe during my post-game comedown, but not now. Kuznetsov’s goals had