I Want You Back (Want You #1)(86)

Early on Mom realized that hockey wasn’t a hobby sport for me; it was everything. In retrospect, that’s probably why she refused to let Nolan play. At the time she claimed she wouldn’t raise her sons to be rivals and hand them sticks to beat each other with. But looking back on the sheer number of hours it entailed getting me to practices and games and hockey camps . . . I suspected she’d had her fill of the hockey mom life with me. Yet even through my adulthood, she’d attended my college and pro hockey games. I’d never asked her if my retirement was a relief. And here I was, less than a year after retirement, back in the arena with her only grandchild following in my footsteps.

“You okay?” Lucy asked, adding another couple of strokes down my back.

I loved having her affection, from the soul-stealing kisses to something as simple as a touch. “Not really.”

She whispered, “I’ll bail you out if you get thrown in jail for taking a swing at him.”

“Are you advocating violence, Lucy Q?”

“Just this one time, so make it good.”

Laughing, I turned and kissed the crown of her head. “He’s the type that’ll sue, so no threats. Besides, that’s not a side of me that our daughter needs to witness.”

The instant that phrase left my mouth I knew it’d come back to bite me in the ass.

And it did, sooner than I’d expected, when Coach Dumbass opted to pull the goalie with five minutes remaining in the third period.

After the visiting team scored two more goals in less than a minute, another parent started raising a stink.

“Come on. Give ’em a little dignity, Coach D.”

“Have a heart.”

Someone else said, “He doesn’t have a brain, so as far as I’m concerned his heart is in question too.”

Lucy snickered beside me.

Gabi spoke to Coach D loud enough that I heard it. “Come on. Ask the ref to end the game. Pulling the goalie makes you look like a fool.”

Wrong thing to say.

“You’re out of line and that means you’re out of here,” he said, pointing to the locker room entrance. “Leave the ice.”

She laughed. “Make me, little man.”

He yelled for a time-out, then he turned his venom on her, ignoring his team skating toward him for instructions.

“You think you can boss me around and get away with it? You figure you’re such a big shot that you’re immune from repercussions? Wrong. I will have you fired, just like that.” He snapped his fingers in her face. “Now get off my bench.”

And that did it.

I stood up. “If Coach Welk leaves the ice, so will my kid.”

“Mine too,” someone said behind me.

Then the bleachers shook as every parent stood in solidarity.

His face had turned the color of an eggplant. “You’re all banned, hear me? From games and practices in this rink. I’ll see to it.”

“Try and keep me from my kid even one second of ice time, Dennis, and you’ll see exactly how I earned my nickname.”

His eyes widened. I knew he knew who I was, but he’d never acknowledged it to me.

Until that moment when he opened his big mouth. “You’ve got no power here, Lund, so get over yourself.”

“I don’t want power. I want my daughter to learn the skills to play hockey, and that’s not happening with you as her coach.”

“Stonewall is right,” a woman chimed in.

“If it was one of us complaining about your lack of coaching experience and skills, it’d be one thing. But all of us?” another guy inserted. “We’re done letting you call the shots.”

“Yeah, where’s the rink manager?” someone else said.

Margene had been sitting at the officials’ table. But as soon as Gabi signaled to her, she skated over.

“What’s going on here?” she demanded.

That’s when the ref got involved. “We’ve got a serious delay of game, so wrap this up and deal with it later.”

“No,” Gabi said. “We’re forfeiting.”

Coach D sputtered like a teakettle about to boil over. “You d-d-don’t. She c-c-can’t—”

“As the assistant coach, she can make that decision,” Margene retorted. To the ref she said, “Call it.”

The ref skated to center ice and blew the whistle.

That’s when I realized whatever was going on between the coach and the parents, the kids didn’t need to witness it. I turned and faced the group of about twenty-five behind me. “Who can supervise the kids in the locker rooms while we deal with this?”

Two hands went up, and then they were herding kids away.

Margene looked at Coach D, furiously texting on his cell. She said, “Put it away, Dennis, and quit tattling to your aunt.”

“That’s not who I’m texting,” he snapped back. “I think the Tribune sports section would love an exclusive on how Stonewall Lund is a bully and a troublemaker at a private ice rink where his daughter is enrolled.”

That smarmy little fucker.

Lucy’s hand on my arm kept me from launching myself at him. Or maybe her death grip was so she wouldn’t go after him after he brought Mimi into this.

While Coach Dipshit grinned like he’d just won the lottery, Gabi reached over, plucked his phone from his hand and smashed it beneath her skate.