Page 32 of Game Misconduct

“Which ones?”

“We’re gonna work our way through all of them, so whatever you want to start with, it doesn’t make a difference.”

“Danny—” It slipped out before he could stop it, and then it was too late. He was sober, and he’d used the nickname, and he couldn’t take it back. He was never going to live that one down. “All of them?”

“You want to improve, right? You’re going to work your way through all of them, and then you’re going to do it again, until you get it right.”

There was no hint of any of the warmth or humor Mike thought he could pick out of his voice sometimes. It was all business, and a little cruel, like if he didn’t squash Mike’s ego a bit, he knew Mike wasn’t going to do it. He was right about that, which sucked, but those were the breaks. Too bad he needed that for motivation and found it boner-inducing.

“And then what?”

“We’ll talk about your game later, but I want you to start working on just forcing this shit into your muscle memory first. You’ve developed a lot of bad habits that we need to break.”

The longer he talked, the more Mike felt that vicious little animal stirring, the one that reared out when he wanted things too much. The nasty urge to destroy anything good in his life before it could destroy him. “Remind me again why I’m doinganythingyou tell me? Last time I looked we were basically on the same lineup depth, dude. Same level. Same shit, except you’re a hell of a lot older than me. The fuck do you know?”

Danny was silent for a minute, and Mike could feel the chill across the phone line. Glacial. At first Mike thought he might hang up. Instead, he said very evenly, “You’re young and you’ve got full use of all your limbs. Maybe you can actually appreciate that for a fucking change, all right, instead of pissing it away. Do the drills, and then we’ll talk.”

He hung up.

The fact that Mike knew he had crossed some kind of a line didn’t make it any easier, knowing he’d fucked up and really upset Danny. In a way that any other charged interaction hadn’t. Mike looked down at his phone and frowned. For all he’d been stalking Danny’s social media, he hadn’t really read anything else about him. He googled it now.

And read.

And read.

Danny had grown up in Detroit, and his parents, José Luis and Verónica, owned a diner. There was a picture of it in the Wikipedia article. It was a Detroit institution. It had been there since the 1930s, in continuous use. Danny played Tier II junior hockey, been drafted like 150 spots higher than Mike anyway, and got a single season in the minors before being called up. There had been some stuff about how promising he was, how underrated he’d been during draft scouting, how his size combined with his speed and his ice sense meant great things for Chicago. He was a defenseman who had the potential to do it all: a great two-way game. He’d just needed some time to gain experience and mature as a player.

In his first full season with the Boilermen, Danny had been hit from behind by a guy on the Royal and landed badly, and then a teammate had tripped over him, too. He’d broken his hip and his leg.After surgery, Garcia was never able to return to the same level of play he had achieved before this potentially career-ending injury, the article said, then listed all the times Danny had been injured. He’d had surgery on the same knee three times in total, the other one twice, his shoulder once, a shitload of concussions. He’d been traded or claimed on waivers, and then the results were mostly articles about what a goon he was and how it was a shame he’d never been able to live up to his earlier promise.

Mike felt like the worst kind of asshole in the entire fucking world.

To try to distract himself he read about Danny’s family. His parents had emigrated from a city called Torreón in the early 1980s and lived in Detroit since then, but Danny’s sister was a therapist in Philadelphia.

Well, that explained a lot.

He found Araceli Garcia’s Insta, and maybe he creeped on it a little. She was a tall woman, strongly resembled her brother except for the fact that her nose had never been broken. If Danny hadn’t played hockey he probably would have had a nose like that, long and proud, only a little natural bump at the bridge. But they had the same firm mouth and chin, the same stubborn jaw, the same dark eyes and long eyelashes. Her curly hair was threaded with gray, and in most of the pictures she was holding her daughter, an adorable toddler, or laughing with her husband, a distinguished-looking professor type with smooth brown skin, a twitchy mouth, and eyes that fucking twinkled.

It occurred to him that Danny was, like, a real person, with a real history, not just a sexy voice on the other end of the telephone or a guy he wanted to punch in the face in person. It was a weird fucking feeling, and he wasn’t sure if he liked it. It was unsettling, to know shit wasn’t the way you thought it was.

Mike closed the window and called Bee, who picked up on like the second or third ring.

“Michael? Is everything all right?”

“No—I mean, yeah, everything’s fine, why would you think everything isn’t—”

“You just don’t usuallycall.”

Jesus Christ, he was an asshole. “Can I ask a favor?”

“Of course,” Bee said without hesitation, “what is it?” and he loved her so fucking much his chest was going to split open.

“Will you.” He hesitated. “Will you come to the rink with me on our off days? And do some drills?”

“Drills?”

“I have to do a lot of skating. I’m trying to, um, improve my play.”

“Of course I’ll be there. Just give me the time and day.”

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