Rooster: A Secret Baby Sports Romance (16 page)

Just before we head out to the rink, Kowaski pulls up alongside me.

“You see number eight”, he says.

The Islanders are already out warming up the crowd. I pick him out across the ice, the biggest guy in their team.

“You want me to take him?” I say, thinking Kowalski needs the back-up.

“That’s the guy that’s been keeping her warm for you”, Kowalski says. “He might have even thought Oscar was his for a while.”

My heart stops. Not many people have the ability to make my heart stop and for something that hasn’t happened all that often, twice already in two weeks seems like way too much.

“What the fuck did you say?” I ask him, but Kowalski’s already on the ice, several feet away from me.

I chase him down, number eight’s eyes all over me, other members of the opposition alongside him pointing and talking. I catch Kowalski up and have to skate alongside him to try and get his attention.

“What the fuck did you say?” I ask him again, and still Kowalski’s being evasive.

Finally, I have to hold him up against the cage to get his attention, the home crowd whooping and cheering behind us.

“Ask Izzy”, Kowalski says and slips out from my grasp.

I’m about to skate over to number eight to find out but he saves me a job. When I turn around he’s right alongside me.

“So you’re the guy”, he says. “I thought Izzy had better tastes.”

“Clearly not.”

“I’m going to give you one chance”, he says. “Give it up Rory and I promise I won’t embarrass you.”

I have to laugh at that. “Give it up?” I repeat back to him.

“Izzy. This. I don’t even know what the fuck you think you’re doing here. Isn’t prison more your natural environment?”

Who the fuck does this guy think he is?

“She deserves better than some fucking dirtbag Irish reject who doesn’t know how to do anything but fight”, he adds.

It takes me an inhuman amount of restraint not to go at him right then and there, pummel seven bells of shit out of him and hit his head so hard against the floor the ice cracks. If I do that before the game begins, though, it’s classified as assault. If I do it during, we are all good.

“You?” I say.

“I’m giving you a fair warning”, he continues. “This doesn’t have to go nasty.”

Oh, I’m going to show him nasty when this begins, that fucking prick. And as for Kowalski, if he wasn’t on the same team I’d be banging his head against the wall right now. After this game is over and I’ve chopped number eight up into little pieces I’m going to grab Kowalski by the scruff of the neck, drag him into the street and throw him into the pack of marauding Islanders’ fans.

Izzy has never mentioned anyone else, but I guess that’s not all that unusual. She wasn’t exactly all that forthcoming about Oscar either. I don’t care what’s happened in her past, there is no way I can change that and it’s not my place to do so anyway, but I do care about the future, and whoever this dick-weasel is in the number eight shirt, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he’s not part of it.

The crowd here are like drunks at an underground boxing match, and I’ve seen better behavior around a cockfighting ring, but this is the kind of thing that gets me going, and right now I’m completely fired up for it.

“Watch him”, is Kowalski’s last bit of advice, this time delivered in a voice that almost convinces me he’s concerned for my well-being. “He’s quick and effective, a fucking animal.”

We lost this fixture twice last year, and I’m not prepared to let that happen again. Especially not now that I know what we are really up against. I’m not a jealous man at all, I just have zero tolerance for absolute fuck-heads, and if he was serious about Izzy in any way at all, she wouldn’t have even come anywhere near me, let alone invited me to her house for the best cooked Irish stew I’ve ever had outside of my own mother’s kitchen.

We line up, the lights flashing, klaxons blaring around us, my whole body tense. Through the grill of my helmet, I get a reduced view of the world I’ve more than grown accustomed to from years on the hurling field, the rest of which I have to make up from memory and instinct.

This game is faster than I thought it was, and out of everyone on the ice, I’m definitely the slowest of everyone but the goaltenders, but I more than make up for it in bulk and aggression which is exactly the reason Francis brought me here in the first place. Of all games that I’ve started this year, I’ve only lost one, and that was because my head was swimming with the news about Oscar.

I’m settled again now, more so than I even was when I got here, absolutely one hundred and ten percent sure Izzy and I are making the right decision. I’ve got a clear head and I’m completely focused, which means I’m unstoppable at anything I put my mind to.

Number eight may think he’s got bigger balls than he does, which is fine. I’ve come up against a lot of people like that in my career before. I’m just going to make sure I cut off whatever marbles he does actually have and shove them all the way down his neck.

I don’t even follow the puck when the noise to start the game rips through the stadium, I go straight towards him instead, my stick out like a fucking club ready to smash across the back of his neck. Kowalski may have sharpened his to dig into the ice, mine is toughened up to make sure they know it when it rains down on them.

He’s quick but not quick enough, and too cocky to see it coming. I’m on him before the echo of the referee’s whistle dies out in the air above us, and number eight is flat on his ass a moment later, sliding across the ice.

That first one was a warning shot, the next is all about what I’m going to do to him if he refuses on keeping his mouth shut. Before he can get up, and before any of his teammates can get to him, I pin him down, my stick in his neck and my knees so deep up into his ribs he can’t breathe.

“That the kind of thing you mean?” I say, before Kowalski eventually pulls me off the top of him, and the referee sends me immediately to the penalty box while number eight scrambles to his feet and tries to catch his breath.

While I’m sat there, home fans and our visiting supporters chanting things across me, Francis comes over.

“Take it easy”, he warns. “I want you to fuck them up, but do it a little more subtle next time, alright?”

I don’t keep my eyes off him the full time I serve out the penalty. Action takes the puck to both ends, there’s more fighting but nothing more than slapping and stabbing with the stick, and a couple of attempts on goal, but nothing that troubles either goaltender.

When I finally get back out, if anything, I’m even keener to make an impression. If he steps to me I’ll go hard, but if he leaves me alone I’ll hold my nerve, and lay off. Once is enough to get the message across, which we can drive home twice as hard if we win. I concentrate on that instead, holding tight in the center of the rink, letting Kowalski do his thing, freeing up the rest of our team and playing in such a way the Islanders get locked out. It works too, because number eight doesn’t say another thing to me, and when the first period ends, must to the dislike of the howling home fans, we go in 1-0 up.

Francis is upbeat at the break and even Kowalski shows a little bit of uncharacteristic emotion. By that, I mean he doesn’t actually sit on his own and zone out, he sits with the rest of the players and makes suggestions on what we need to do to win. Essentially, what that boils down to, is continuing where we left off, neutralizing their biggest threat, that jackass number eight who is apparently called Brad, closing the puck down quickly, and turning defense into attack. On paper they are better than us, but on the ice, even though they can outpace us, we are clearly the better team.

At the start of the second period, my eyes go to Brad again. That motherfucker is a name, not a number now, which makes him even more real.

If he steps to me like he did before the first period, I’m going to put him down again, but even Brad doesn’t seem that stupid.

Staal goes to the center to face off, while Kowalski and I hang back, Brad and some other big fucker they’ve swapped in facing us.

The puck falls, slaps on the ice and slips towards Staal’s stick. Quicker than his counterpart, he turns, and plays it back towards Kowalski. Kowalski’s a fucking demon on close control, and as soon as it under his blade, his twists away from one of them, dances through another and heads with the puck towards goal.

I’m skating tight in behind the action, ready to neutralize a threat should the puck get snatched or pop out unexpectedly, and my eyes are on the ice in front of me, which means I can see nothing of what’s behind.

This game moves so quickly you have to think twice as fast just to catch up, which means if there’s something going on off the puck and out of your field of vision, chances are you are going to miss it. If that thing is as cowardly and ball-less as sneaking up behind someone so you can get a dig in before they have a chance to see it, then there is no way you can avoid getting fucked.

Seriously, doing something like that is not only cowardly, it’s totally fucking unethical, seriously fucking dangerous and some of the most fucked up shit I’ve ever seen on a sports rink, field or anywhere else where there are unwritten rules of conduct, even between sworn enemies.

I know I got the jump on Brad at the start of the first period, but I did it face to face, and if he was quicker he would have seen me coming. What happens to me - two of them coming up from behind - is not even in the same ballpark. It’s like shooting someone in the back, taking a gun to a knife fight, holding out your hand for someone to shake, and then pulling it away at the last minute to put your thumb on your nose to wave your fingers around.

I’m face down on the ice before I even know it’s coming. One minute facing the action, the next wondering what the fuck has hit me. My face is numb and I know I’m concussed but that isn’t even the worse thing.

Before it happens, and before anyone else gets to me to stop it, I hear these words mixed with Brad’s hot spit straight into my ear. “I gave you a warning, now you’ve made my go nasty.”

The break can probably be heard all the way over in long island. I don’t know how the fuck he does it because my head is turned away, but I first feel something come down hard against the back of my knee, followed by a rush of adrenaline and a pain cut through me the like of which I’ve never before experienced.

It is absolutely debilitating, and in the panic and chaos that follows, I have fuzzy memories of the game stopping, medics and stretchers coming on, a mask of oxygen snapped against my face and Kowalski and Francis by my side as they carry me off, leg broken into what feels like a million pieces.

Right before I black out, all I can think of is Izzy and Oscar.

Nine.

Izzy

I get to the hospital as quick as I can. I wasn’t at the game, because I didn’t want to bump into Brad, that asshole has been texting me lately for some reason to try and hook up - guess the stripper from Atlantic City fell through - and the last thing I wanted was some kind of awkward confrontation in the stands with him, before or after the game. Besides which, I hate the Islanders’ supporters with a passion. You couldn’t pay me to sit at their ground and put up with all their insufferable shit, even if the Rangers went on and won.

Francis is the one who calls me, and I drop everything but the baby to get there. I can’t believe what’s happened. Not only the fact that Rory’s had his leg smashed in, but the way that it went down. Brad was hauled off the ice and will face a disciplinary board for his actions, which could mean a one-game suspension or a much longer period of absence depending on how severe they view the incident. Rory, on the other hand, is likely to be out of the game for at least until after Christmas.

He looks like shit when I get there. Dazed and confused with pain meds, his leg cast and pinned already, a framework around it that looks like the scaffolding they put around old trees to stop them from falling over.

I lean casually for a moment against the framework of the door, just to get a measure of him before I approach.

“I see you met Brad”, I say.

Even here, his leg strapped up and his future uncertain, even with what happened, Rory is still smiling.

“Nice guy”, he says. “I think he’s got some anger issues, though.”

I go over and kiss him. His face is clammy and drained of color, and even before I get him to squeeze my hand, I know he’s super low on energy.

“Francis told me what happened”, I say. “He’s going to make sure they go to town on him. Everyone saw what happened.”

“Everyone except me”, he says.

“How do you feel?”

“Fucking great. They’ve got me on these amazing painkillers, and all I have to do is press a button.”

I narrow my eyes. “Go easy on that, won’t you?”

“Don’t worry, the nurse says it’ll stop if I’ve reached my limit. You didn’t need to come, you know.”

“I couldn’t leave you with Kowalski, could I?” I say.

“His conversation is limited at the best of times”, Rory agrees.

“Anyway, I wasn’t doing anything else, just, you know, looking for a job, and a million and one other, largely non-important life-related things. Nothing as interesting as coming here and seeing what a mess they made of you.”