Page 2 of Brace and Chase

I have ten fucking abs, I can bench press two-fifty on any given day, and I can still take a slam against the boards like a bear—and give one right back.

Those are literally the requirements for my job, so why the hell should I stop working?

If I die from a punctured lung on the ice, then I die on the ice. It would be my preferred place of rest anyway.

The ice is where I reallylived.

The ice gave me a life that a little boy from a small town north of Moscow could never have dreamed of. It gave me enough money so my parents had a good life... the last years of their lives weregood. I made sure of that.

I managed to move them to Vegas, get them into a good care home and see them constantly before...

Before.

I’ve made this city my home. I’ve been here for almostfifteen years. This ismycity, not Charlie Heart’s, and he better be ready for me to remind him of that every single day of that one-year contract.

Even if I can never again be the easy going guy around here, I won’t let him take this from me.

ONE

CHARLIE HEART—SWEETHEART

One Week Before

“Shit,”I hiss, as I struggle to bend a corner of the box’s flap under the other flap. The contents inside threaten to overflow and with no one here to help me, it’s turning into a bit of a nightmare. But I don’t want to have to pack another smaller box of hand towels that I only own because my mom and my aunts decided I couldn’t possibly live without them.

One box of those is enough.

I fucking hate packing.

Hate it with a passion, but it’s only in the last week that I’ve rediscovered my hate for moving. I’ve lived in this house for ten fucking years, and every single dream I had when I bought it is now pretty much dead, buried, and turned to maggot food.

I’ve got no wife, no kids, no Stanley Cup rings... I do have five James Norris Memorial Trophies which is pretty cool, and I was the league MVP one year almost a decade ago. That only happened because my team made it to the playoffs when we had no business being there—a defenseman should never be a team’s top scorer, but I was, so I suppose I earned that trophy.

Being the player with the most awards that say I’m the best at being a defenseman is a privilege, but I’m not sure if it’s warranted considering I retired without ever getting to lift the most legendary trophy in all of sports.

It’s the only consolation for my battered self-worth, though.

I never dreamed of getting those trophies, and maybe that’s why I won them. Maybe ignoring your dreams is the way to get them?

I’m sure there are many people who believe in manifestation—like my mom—who’d balk at my thoughts, but the evidence does point that way.

I finally manage to close the lids of the box and I tear off a big strip of tape and slap it on top. Then I haul yet another flat box on top of the table after I carry the filled one to the growing pile that’s taking over what used to be my living room, when my phone starts vibrating furiously on the table.

I think about letting it go to voicemail since there’s only two options for who it could be.

On the one hand it could be any member of my family,who I adore, but they’ve been supportive in a pitying way since I announced my retirement, and because it’s been four months, I’m tired of it.

It could even be my uncle Enzo calling about the house I’m having built for myself back home, but I don’t really feel like talking about that while I’m leaving the home I thought I’d live in forever.

The other option is Woody, my agent, wanting to talk about the sponsorships or career opportunities he’s been telling me about the last few months, but I’m not ready to listen to them yet. I don’t have the heart to do it.

The fact that I know retiring is the right thing to do for me doesn’t mean that I won’t miss being a professional hockey player. I do have a retirement plan—one that definitely doesn’t involve anything to do with the media—but I haven’t told Woody about it. That plan won’t be bringing me millions of dollars a year, and call me a coward or soft or whatever, but I don’t want to disappoint the man who’s had my back since I was a teenager.

I don’t have any other people who could be calling me because I... have no one else. All my teammates understood why I was retiring. It was clear as day that the Atlanta Revenge were never going to trade me to a better team and there was also no way I was getting the Stanley Cup there. They don’t blame me, but that doesn’t mean they’re exactly happy with me.

I’ve been the oldest player in the team for a while nowand it’s been hard for me to connect with the younger players, so I’m not close to any of them.

Granted, if I thought the Revenge had any shot at going to the Stanley Cup finals next year then I might not have retired, but that’s not really a comment on their ability or talent.

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