Delayed Penalty (Crossing the Line, #1)(72)

Sure, I could have been fine without her, but this girl was worth it.

Just as I grabbed my keys and wallet, Ami giggled, reading a text message on her phone. "Granny B blocked the door to her room with a chair and then called in a bomb threat to save her lazy boy," she said, completely straight-faced as she took a bite from her cereal.

"No shit."

She nodded, milk dripping down her chin. She wiped her mouth with a smile and then spoke with her mouth full. "Yep. Good times. I f*cking love your family."

I couldn't help but laugh. "I'm surprised they didn't arrest her for that."

"Oh, they did. Your mom decided to leave her in there over night to simmer down." She gave a thoughtful shrug and then added, "Poor Granny B is always getting the shaft. I don't think she'll make the game tonight."

"Don't say shaft."

"Why?" Her nose crinkled and then she smiled, knowing I was thinking dirty.

"Because. I have a game. I can't be distracted by words like shaft coming out of your mouth."

Naturally, she rolled her eyes and went back to her cereal and the movie she was watching.

Ami and I had yet to have sex. We'd gotten close so many times, but it was just...it was hard and even harder after the situation with Dave. He was charged last week and sentenced. He got ten years for what he did, and I was a little bent by that. He should have gotten life as far as I was concerned, but then I looked at the bigger picture. What would be the one thing that would hit home for a guy like Dave Keller?

Hockey. Hockey would because from the time he was two to thirty two, hockey was all he ever knew. He would never play again, professionally at least. That was gone for him.

So when I looked at it that way, only through the convincing of my dad, it made it a little easier to handle.

When my suspension was finally lifted, I was able to play again. It was like a weight had been lifted. It was like I couldn't move on from what happened unless I could play hockey again.

Once we arrived in Philly, I was running late to the morning skate and tried to sneak in unnoticed. My laces were cut again. Leo.

"I tried to stop him," Ryan said, grinning.

"Yeah, sure you did." I knew Ryan hadn't warmed up to Leo, and he was only saying that because I never stuck up for him. Regardless of laces being cut, it was good just to be back around my boys and getting ready to play on home ice.

"You're such a *," Leo said, delivering a punch to Ryan's stomach. Everyone laughed but Ryan.

Whenever we were around Leo, we knew that salt would be replaced with sugar, our laces would be cut, and we'd often wonder why an NHL player did shit like that. It might seem like adolescent humor, but we needed guys like Leo. Every team had them for a reason.

The locker room was lively and bursting with energy, having made it this far in the playoffs. It was loud, and it was meant to be. Invigorating, it paced the mood of the room.

When a team found what we had, what we worked for, whether we were in a bar, on a plane, on the ice, or in the locker room, we had a noise about us. It was the type of noise that no one necessarily heard but they could feel it.

We were half-naked players, shouting for tape, laughing, cutting laces. After everything that happened that first round, the fight, the suspension, trading Travis, our team had been shaken up.

But now we'd found our noise again.

Leo shouted at Ryan and Shelby, nasty references that no one would admit were funny, but you couldn't help but laugh at how they were delivered. Jeff Westby, our veteran player, traded stories about who's best and who bagged who. It set the motion of the day, a comfortable noise that all of us had been looking for to gain focus—that little bit of edge to take on the Flyers.

Suddenly, Ryan blew up at Leo, the noise still present but in a different way. "That's it, Leo, you cut my f*cking laces one more time…"

He didn't get to finish because Leo reached down with his pocket knife and clipped the fresh laces.

"You better run," Ryan warned before he took off after Leo.

Drew glanced over his shoulder when he heard Leo screaming like a girl in the showers. "He's something else."

"You have no idea."

The talk around the room quieted when Coach walked in. Laughter halted. O'Brien wasn't always yelling; sometimes he let us have fun. All right, he was almost always yelling. That was exactly why we shut up when he walked in.

Following him across the room, he walked to the white board. His tone was the usual, calm and conversational, maybe subdued, but it often began that way, and we were never quite prepared for it. We only ever saw the screaming side.

We waited quietly.

"What we gotta do is work these guys. Get in their heads," he said, pointing to Leo and then to the Flyers center he had written on the board. "This is a key guy. He holds the puck and knows how to make plays, like Leo." His voice picked up speed. "If ya give him that f*cking blue line, he'll own your ass!"

Because of his song and dance, we mouthed the last few words with him. Leo and I looked at each other and smiled.

Coach yelled the line-up we'd been waiting on. I had barely played this series, and I understood why once the suspension was lifted. I had put my team in a tough spot going after Dave like that during a game. Coach had his reasons and I understood.