“Yeah, you’re right on that,” I agreed. “I have to make the team first.”
The rest? I wasn’t sure she understood what it meant to be the caregiver at twenty-three years old. Hell, I’d been doing it since I was fifteen, and it was unfair to expect anyone to really understand.
I stood, then took my wallet from my back pocket.
“Absolutely not,” she told me, waving her hand at me.
“I’m not going to short your drawer,” I argued.
She snorted. “I’ll make you a deal, West Coast. You make the team, you can pay me for the drink.”
“And if I don’t?” I asked.
“My guess is that you’ll run up another tab getting shit-faced, so I win either way.” She shrugged with a little smirk that made me want to haul her across the bar and kiss her.
“That’s a deal. You are something else, Echo.”
Her eyes widened. “You know my name.”
“You’re not exactly easy to forget.” I grinned, throwing her words back at her as I walked out of the bar.
My heart pounded as I stood in the locker room, my gear snapped, and my skates tied.
The eleven other contenders headed out silently. It had been a full half-hour of blatant appraisal as we dressed in the locker room. There were some players I recognized from the minors, and three I’d played against in college.
They were all on the ice more frequently than I was, that was true.
But I was better than they were. And I hadn’t been licking my wounds for the past six months. I’d been at the gym every day. On the ice a few times a week. Running six miles every morning. My body was a machine, and it was ready for whatever my heart wanted.
And it wanted that Reaper jersey.
I followed the line out of the locker room and down the hall toward the ice, then stopped when I came to the line of players who waited at the glass.
“We’re not waiting for you, dumbass, move along,” Cannon Price snapped at the guy in front of me, and the goalie rushed past. The notorious hothead out of Detroit was the fastest skater I’d ever seen, but I wasn’t sure even he could keep up with his mouth.
“Jesus, Cannon, we might have to play with these guys,” Lukas reminded him, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Faith’s husband had gone from being a rookie on the Sharks to the experienced player on the Reapers in the time I’d known him.
Cannon transferred his helmet to his other hand and shook his head. “It’s going to be McCoy. Just don’t fuck up out there.”
“What he means,” Porter growled at him, stepping forward with a shake of his head. “Is that we support you. We want the best goalie for the team, and we know it’s you.” Porter was another player out of Seattle, who’d used his free agency to move his career and his family to South Carolina.
“Thanks, guys,” I said as they all pounded on me in friendship, their gloves softening the blows.
“You already have a Reaper jersey with your name on it,” Axel said in heavily accented English, towering above me by a good four inches. “Now let’s get you a nametag in that locker room. Get out there, kid.” He thumped my back as I moved forward.
God, the arena was fucking huge. But the ice? That was the equalizer. It didn’t matter how many fans you had watching—that net stayed the same size.
“Look at me,” Nathan Noble said quietly as I paused just before the ice.
I turned my head to look at Harper’s fiancé, who’d worked his way up through the minors with sheer grit and determination.
“You’ve got this. What’s the difference between a guy whose career ends in college and the one-in-a-million shot?” he asked me, just like he had last year after I’d failed to make the Sharks.
This time I knew the answer because he’d given it to me.
“Talent and drive.” My chest expanded, knowing I had what it took. Knowing this was my dream. Hockey was my passion, my reason.
“Damn right. Get out there and prove you’ve got both.” He slapped me on the back, and I took to the ice like I owned it.
Because that net was my home and that fucking jersey? It was mine.
2
Echo
I wiped down the black granite bar for the umpteenth time that day, ensuring the custom stone gleamed between rushes. We were finally slowing down for the night and since there wasn’t a Reapers game—or a bachelorette party—I’d likely already seen all the action I was going to get.
A soft smile shaped my lips as I tossed the towel in the bin I kept handy behind the bar. I loved this place, loved every single thing about it, from the amber lighting and the smells of cedar and whiskey to the sounds of rambunctious men shouting at the top of their lungs about hockey.