Anton (Chicago Blaze 1)

Our team is a family. Most of the time, we see each other more than the guys with wives and kids get to see their actual families.

My folks will never leave Russia, even though Alexei and I have the means to give them a better life here. We visit them there, but they’re afraid to step outside their comfort zone and take a vacation here. They’ve been repeating the same day for the past forty years, and they’ll never stop.

Work has been engrained in me from birth. And while the American family that hosted my brother and I think of us as family, they’re not blood. Working hard is my way of honoring my parents and the sacrifices they made to get me here.

My brother’s my only blood relative I see more than once a year, so my team family is that much more important to me.

I’m just stepping out of the shower after practice when Adam approaches me, wearing a shit-eating grin.

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” he quips. “One for me and one for all the ass you’re missing out on.”

“Fuck off,” I growl.

“What crawled up your ass and died?” he demands.

“You’re an asshole.”

He advances on me. “Watch your fucking mouth.”

Knox steps in between us. “Walk away, guys.”

“Go home to your wife,” I tell Adam.

I know it’s not a comment I should be making, but I can’t help it. It just comes out of me, same as my feelings for Mia. Right or wrong, my logic disappears when she’s involved.

“Who the fuck do you think you are, mentioning my wife?” Adam pushes past Knox.

I was hoping he’d say she’s not his wife anymore. Damn, I was hoping hard.

“You know my car,” I say. “You got a problem with it, come find me in the parking lot.”

One of our coaches, Larry, steps in then.

“What the fuck is wrong with you two? You’re both right. Marceau, you are an asshole and Petrov, you are not his mother. And you both get paid too goddamned much to be getting injured fighting in the parking lot. Petrov, you’ve got ten minutes to get in your car and get the hell out of here. Marceau, you put your ass on that bench for the next ten minutes.”

I feel like an asshole. Larry’s right. And I’m never one of the guys the coaches have to yell at.

But I glare at Adam anyway before going to my locker to put on some clothes, grab my phone and keys and take off.

It’s such bullshit that a guy like him even got a second look from Mia. I don’t have to know her well to know she’s way too good for him.I hear an old man bitching about something before I even unlock the door to my Lakeshore Drive apartment. His voice gets louder as I open it.

“What are you, stupid?” Uncle Dix shouts. “Did your nursing degree come from one of those online outfits? You could’ve killed me!”

“Mr. Dixon, please settle down,” a female voice urges. “This isn’t good for you.”

“You know what’s not good for me? A twelve-year-old nurse that doesn’t know shit from shinola.”

I toss my keys on the table and walk into the living room, which has a great view of the lake, a pissed-off nurse on one side of the room and my Uncle Dix in a recliner on the other side, scowling.

“Did you find her number in a Cracker Jack box, Anton?” Uncle Dix demands. “Did you even ask to see her nursing degree?”

I turn to Leah. “What’s going on?”

“I took away his cigarettes.”

“Seems reasonable.” I look over at Uncle Dix.

“You can’t just take a man off his smokes cold turkey! I’ll have withdrawal symptoms. The shakes. And the stress isn’t good for my blood pressure.”

“Mr. Dixon, you’ve had two strokes,” Leah says. “You can’t be smoking.”

“Eh, what do you know? I’m seventy-eight goddamned years old. I served in combat. If I want to have a smoke—”

I cut in. “Uncle Dix, where’d you get the cigarettes? I told you, no more having shit delivered when I’m not here.”

He curls his upper lip at me. “Am I in prison? Last time I checked I wasn’t in no fuckin’ prison. If I want to have a smoke—”

“I’ll talk to the front desk again,” I tell Leah. “I told them no deliveries get past the front desk without me signing for them, but obviously he found a way around it.”

“I found a bottle of whiskey in his nightstand, too.”

“You better not’ve touched my whiskey, you bitch!”

Uncle Dix presses the button on his recliner that eases him up into a standing position. It moves slowly, his crippled body at the mercy of the special chair. I can’t help feeling sorry for this man who’s not actually my uncle. Strokes have taken away much of his physical control.