Page 6 of Home Ice Advantage

“You wanna sit down?”

He could almost see Murph’s expression, the way his eyebrows would have crawled up his forehead to his hairline. “Maybe I should find somewhere a little quieter. Sounds like you got some big news.”

“I can wait.”

Ryan listened to the noise recede a little into the distance. Murph and his family still lived in Dallas. His kids played peewee hockey in the rink Murph and Ryan had helped open together. That had been their thing, growing the game down south. Sometimes Ryan wondered what his life would’ve been like if he’d stayed in Texas after all instead of buying the offseason home in Newfields as soon as Shannon had asked.

Maybe less lonely. Maybe not.

“Joe Conroy called me yesterday.”

Murph let out an ear-splitting whoop, and said, “You’reshittingme, Sully.You’regonna coach the Beacons?”

“I didn’t even say what Conroy called about!”

“Sully, come on. Why the hell else would Joe Conroy be calling you? After firing his head coach?”

“Well, you were right. I’m gonna be the new head coach of the Beacons.”

“Holy shit, brother, that’sincredible. You’re going to be great. I can’t wait to—wait.” Ryan could hear the excitement in Murph’s voice, and he could almost see the smile. But then the good mood faded. “Hang on. What’d Shannon say? She can’t have been very happy about that.”

Ryan was relieved, for a second, that he hadn’t started the car yet. “Well...about that. She kicked me out. We’re getting divorced.”

For once, he had shocked Murph into silence. For once, he couldn’t imagine what his facial expression looked like, whether he was pitying or sympathetic or just plain disbelieving. They sat like that for a while until Murph finally said, “Well, shit. I’m sorry.”

“It’s...okay.” Ryan was surprised to find that it was true. He had been in survival mode from the beginning, but now that things had started to slot into place, he still wasn’t—as upset as he probably should have been. It was like they’d been building toward it for so long that when Shannon actually ripped the Band-Aid off, all Ryan felt was a numb sense of relief. “It actually happened before I got the job offer, if you can believe it.”

“Hey,” Murph said apologetically, “we have a lot to talk about, but this ain’t the place for it, and I really do have to get back to Sophia’s game. Can I call you back tonight?”

Ryan looked out at the parking lot. A woman was getting out of her car to scream at the guy who’d hit her from behind backing out. That was Boston for you. “Yeah, of course. Tell Mason to keep his head up.”

“No advice for Sophia?”

“Man, you know I can’t tell goalies shit.”

He hung up to the sound of Murph’s familiar laugh.

Ryan thought about McCaskill and Aronson, about whether Murph would’ve moved back home if he’d asked for help with the coaching staff. But that was stupid: Murph had his family and a life in Dallas, and Ryan was more than capable of managing this minefield on his own.

Without another pause, he pressed the ignition and backed up out of the space, looping a safe distance around the screaming.

Chapter Two

September

The more Eric thought about it, the angrier the new hire made him.

Ryan fucking Sullivan?Was Conroy kidding him?

If they were going solely by hockey careers, then Ryan Sullivan was aname. He was more than a name. He was a story. A guy who’d been told his whole life that he was too small to play hockey, who’d forced his way into the league and made it in a huge way.

Not only had he been a longtime alternate captain for the Desperadoes, he’d helped lead them to a Cup, scoring the game-winning goal in the Cup-clinching game. He’d had all of the hardware, the MVP award, scoring awards, sportsmanship awards...you fucking name it, Sullivan had won it. He had been inducted into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, because of course he was.

Eric remembered playing against him, too. He’d been an annoying little pest even back then, running his mouth at every opportunity and hiding behind Murphy whenever anyone took offense. Sullivan would fight if he had to, but the thing was that he almost never had to. Anyone looking at him funny found Murphy in their face first.

Fine.

Maybe Eric was jealous of the fact that Sullivan had all of the glory Eric had never managed to win with the Stampede. Even if he was jealous, it didn’t matter. The fact was that the highest level Sullivan had ever coached was peewee, while Eric had been in Boston this whole time, trying to wrangle the power play into something that actually had a breath of life even after losing three or four of the most important players the team had had over the past decade.

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