Page 41 of Playmaker

I kind of wondered how I was going to be able to play next to her after all.

Do you have any idea how beautiful you really are?

Chapter 16

Sabrina

The buzzer sounding the end of that game may as well have been singing angels. I was so relieved, I almost collapsed right there on the ice.

Finally. It was over. In overtime, too—Anastasia scored with twelve seconds left on the clock, earning us an OT win and saving us from going to a shootout. I was good at shootouts, and they were kind of fun, but I wasn’t in the right headspace for it tonight.

Not after that stunt my dad had pulled.

I didn’t know what message he was trying to send, or if it was just his way of thumbing his nose at me and my sport, but I’d spent the entire game trying not to let it get under my skin. To some extent, it had, but at least I’d managed to play as if it hadn’t. If Dad had been watching—to see his trolling take effect, not to see his daughter playing hockey—then I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of hurting my performance.

So I’d played my heart out. Two goals. Two assists. I’d drawn the penalty that had given us the power play that led to our game-tying goal in the final minute of the third period. For a few panicked minutes, I’d been afraid we’d take the L in overtime,but a highlight-reel steal by Anastasia followed by a dagger of a goal had ended the game in our favor.

I’d given my father nothing to criticize. Of course, he’d find something. That turnover in the second period that led to a scoring chance. Losing an edge at just the right time to allow an odd-man rush. The fact that I was suited up for a women’s hockey game in the first place.

But everybody made mistakes every single game. Even the most legendary players lost edges and turned over pucks and did just bone-headed stupid shit sometimes. It was part of hockey. I’d played a solid, respectable game. He’d have to work at it to find a reason to shit on me tonight.

And he wasn’t going to keep me in suspense about it, either—I’d finished getting dressed and was heading into the lounge to eat when his ringtone chirped in my pocket.

“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered, and I stayed out in the hall for some relative privacy while I answered. “Hi, Dad.”

“Hey, kiddo. You home?”

“Still at the arena. The game just ended.”

“Oh,that’s right,” he said, letting the sarcasm drip. “You had a game tonight, didn’t you?”

“Mmhmm. I did.”

There was silence on the line for a solid thirty seconds. It was a type of staring contest I was used to with him. There was an elephant in the room, and we were each waiting for the other to break eye contact and look at it.

I was way too irritated tonight—and too stubborn in general—to let him win this one.

Eventually, he spoke, his tone light and casual but with a taunting edge: “You know, ticket sales for girls’ hockey must be through the roof if almost an entire section was available.”

I rolled my eyes, grateful he couldn’t see me. “Lower bowl tickets are expensive. Sometimes people can’t—”

“Sure they are.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, fighting back the temptation to push out an exhausted sigh. If I had to guess, Dad had bought all those tickets back when they’d first gone on sale. Back when enormous swathes of the arena were available. He was probably gleeful as all hell that the night I ignored his call was just before this game. Was that why he’d been calling so much lately? Because he knew I’d eventually ignore him and he’d be able to throw that in my face?

“He is such a goddamnedchildsometimes,” I remembered my mom telling her sister one night when she didn’t think any of us kids could hear her. “How does a grown man think this is the right way to act?”

I’d never forgotten my aunt’s caustic retort of, “Do you honestly think Doran counts as a grown man?”

There’d been a time when Mom would chastise her sister for making fun of Dad or his perpetual immaturity, but that night, she’d just laughed, shaken her head, and taken abiggulp of wine.

In the present, Dad gave a quiet chuckle. “Well, you did tell me that the ticket sellers don’t care who’s buying the tickets or filling the seats.”

I gritted my teeth. For fuck’s sake. That was an angle I hadn’t considered. “So you bought a whole section and left it empty—why? Just to prove a point?Whatpoint?”

“You wanted me to support you,” he said in that patronizing way that drove me up a wall. “So I bought tickets to your game. A lot of them.”

“But you left all the seats empty.”

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