Pre-Order Amazon
Pre-ORDER APPLE
PRE-ORDER BARNES & NOBLE
PRE-ORDER KOBO
PRE-ORDER SMASHWORDS
PRE-ORDER EVERLAND
1
Conner
I stare at my empty locker, take a deep breath, and slam it shut. Someone clears their throat behind me. I turn and see Barry Owens, one of the alternate captains on the team, standing in the doorway. “Garrison, are you sure this is the way you want to handle this?”
I shrug into my coat and grab the bag with all my personal effects. As a last-minute spite move, I yank on my nameplate until it snaps off. Owens rubs the back of his neck and stares at me with big, sad brown eyes. “Maybe talk to your dad. Get his advice on this before—”
“Bye, Owens. Thanks for being a great teammate,” I say and toss the nameplate across the room. It hits the wall and drops into the garbage below it. Maybe I should take up basketball since this hockey thing isn’t panning out. “Sorry, I couldn’t lead you guys better. Take care.”
“Garrison…” Owens calls after me as I head out of the locker room. He follows me a few feet into the hall and then stops. “Conner! Man, I don’t think this will help anything.”
I don’t argue with him because he’s right. Walking out on my team isn’t going to make my situation any better. It might, in fact, make it worse. But how the fuck do I keep playing for a team that’s already dumped me? I can’t. I won’t.
Owens stops calling after me and I don’t see another person until I’m pulling out of the private parking tucked below the Brooklyn Barons arena. I stop at the security booth and roll down my window. Maurice smiles at me, completely oblivious to what is happening within the team he’s worked for for the last twenty years. I hand him my security pass and parking pass. “Can you return these for me please?”
“Are they faulty?” Maurice asks. “If you give me a minute, I can replace the magnetic strip on the back. Sometimes they crap out.”
“No. I don’t need them anymore, Maurice,” I say.
He blinks, looks at the pass, and back at me. “Oh no. They traded you? The captain? Where to?”
“Take care Maurice and thank you for everything,” is all I reply and then, with a smile and a nod, I roll up my window and drive away.
The drive back to Silver Bay, Maine, is almost six hours. And I spend every single second of it reliving the last, hellish, twenty-four hours of my life. God, how did this all go so wrong? I’m only twenty-five. My career shouldn’t be on the brink of ending.
Hockey Royalty. That’s what every media outlet in the country has called me since before I was drafted. Hell, since I first strapped on skates at three and teetered around the arena with my dad for his team’s family skate. I’m the eldest son of the eldest Garrison brother. I was drafted second overall at eighteen. My father Devin, and my uncle Jordan were also both drafted at eighteen. My uncle Cole was actually even better than Uncle Jordan and Dad but he had a career-ending injury before he could be drafted and never got his shot. My uncle Luc—who isn’t an uncle by blood but was essentially raised by my grandparents alongside my father and blood uncles—had also been a professional hockey player.
I’m destined to do great things with a black rubber puck a stick and some skates. It’s in my bones, blood, DNA. And honestly, I’ve always believed that hype. I sailed through my junior hockey career. I scored the tough goals, I skated the fastest and was a born leader. It wasn’t even hard. And I loved every minute of it. I wasn’t just trying to follow in my dad’s footsteps because hockey was our family business and I felt like I had to. I was trying to be better, stronger, and earn more achievements than my dad and uncles combined because I fucking love this sport. I do. More than anything.
Yet here I am, driving home for Christmas because I don’t play for an NHL team anymore. This morning after practice the coach hauled me into his office, after yet another loss the night before, sat me down, and announced that he’d told management I had to go. I was shocked, to say the least. I’ve been with the Barons since I was drafted and have been the captain of the team for the last two and a half years. No, we hadn’t won a cup yet. Yes, last season we’d failed to make playoffs, but that wasn’t just on me. Did they think it was?
They fired most of the management, and the coaches, at the end of last season, but when we started this season by losing the first three games in a row, the new coach—Coach Landry—decided to start pointing fingers at the team. At me. We did not get along, but I tried my fucking best to eat my feelings and just work even harder. But no matter what I did, it wasn’t good enough for Landry. He, like the new General Manager Chance Echolls, seemed to have it out for me. Echolls, I get. He was from my hometown and his family and ours did not get along. But Landry? He had no reason to hate me, but he did. “You gonna live up to your hype one day kid or what?” he’d barked on just his second game behind our bench. He was an out-and-out asshole and a bully. And he pulled the biggest asshole bully move when he pulled me into his office today to tell me I wasn’t even being traded, I was being waived. Coaches and management didn’t tell players these types of things. They told agents and managers who then told players. That’s how this terrible shit was supposed to work. But Landry was too petty for that. He wanted to see the shock and pain on my face.
Landry smirked smugly at me and leaned back in his chair in his office. “We’re waiving you. Management, like me, thinks it’s the quickest, easiest way. We don’t want to waste time trying to sell you to another team. We doubt there’ll be any interest.”
And that’s when he got what he wanted. A reaction. My face dropped and drained of color and his smug smirk deepened. I’ll always hate that I gave him that, but I was too fucking shocked to hold it in. Being traded by the team that your father played for, was captain of, that retired his jersey, that was a slap to the face. But being waived by them, that wasn’t a slap that was a knife. And not to the back. Right through the heart while they stared you in the eye.
“I’m worth something.” I hate that I said that, but I did. It was weak and vulnerable and all the things I’ve never had to be and didn’t want to be in front of this asshole.
He folded his arms over his barrel chest and exhaled sharply like he was dealing with a particularly delusional child. But I was delusional. I couldn’t comprehend being waived. Waivers are when the team gives up the player and his contract to whoever wants it. They don’t bother negotiating something, or someone, in return like they do with a trade. Waivers mean that they think the player isn’t valuable and they just want to be rid of him. Like offloading a lease on a car they no longer like. Or putting an old piece of furniture on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign that says ‘Free’.
“You know you’re breaking rules by even having this conversation with me,” I reminded him, finally finding a way to rein in my humiliation and turn it into anger. “Also, you can’t waive or trade a player until December twenty-seventh, so why the fuck are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re a fucking nepo-baby player and I fucking hate all you entitled little shits,” Coach Landry snarled, his true nature finally unleashed. He uncrossed his arms and leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “You nepo-babies who coast into the league thinking you’re better than everyone else because your daddy played. You always want an easier ride than everyone else and I’m not the one to give it to you. You haven’t scored a goal in nine games. Your assists have been shrinking every year for the past three years, just like your face-off percentage. No one is motivated by you as captain. If they were, we wouldn’t be last in the division.”
“I’m contacting my union rep,” I said while yanking open the door to his office. “Do not speak to me again about any of this.”
“See you at the game tomorrow,” he said, stopping me from the grand exit I was hoping to make.
“Excuse me?”
He shrugged. “You said it yourself, we can’t waive you until the week after Christmas so you’re still playing. Well, I mean, I fully intend to bench you, but you still have to be here.”
“Really?” Now it was my turn to sneer. “Let’s see how that works out for you.”
I headed straight to the locker room. Most of the team had showered and gone home already, but Owens was still there because his wrist was acting up and he’d met with the trainer. He’s the only other person who knows about this. They haven’t even told my fucking agent yet or else he would have called me. And I really do need to call the union, but… I just want to get home first.
I don’t know why. I don’t know how I’ll face my family right now, but staying in Brooklyn felt… well it made me want to puke. I am the first Garrison to ever be placed on waivers. Yeah, I still want to puke, even as I drive down the turnpike to the little town on the big lake, where every single member of my family grew up.
How the fuck was I going to face my family? My cousin Tate plays for Los Angeles. My cousin Theo is set to be drafted this summer. Grady Garrison, only son of Uncle Cole and Aunt Leah, is the backup goalie for the Seattle Winterhawks. Hell, my baby sister Mae, who we all call Mayhem, is on a full-ride hockey scholarship at Boston College. Everyone says she’ll be the first female drafted by the NHL. And I’m the first Garrison to fail. I did not have that on my bingo card.
It’s December twenty-first and all of the NHL players in my family are still playing. But Mayhem will be home from college, as will my sister Liv who is studying at UCLA, and a bunch of my other female cousins, as well as Theo who is in his last few months of high school. Worst of all my dad and my stepmom are most definitely home. But that’s why I’m going home, I guess. Because I would rather tell them in person.
Although right now, as the lights of Silver Bay, Maine, glimmer in the distance, I’m beginning to think this wasn’t such a hot idea. Because I don’t know if I have the balls to see the disappointment on their faces up close and personal. And they will be disappointed. How could they not?
I pump the brakes as I descend the hill drawing me closer to town because it’s been snowing like crazy for the last hour and this road is notoriously slippery on a good winter’s day. Despite the precarious driving conditions my mind still wanders as I try to predict how this will go. My dad, two-time Stanley Cup winner Devin Garrison, will look like he’s been shot. Like this is happening directly to him and not to me. He’s never pressured me about hockey, but I know he has a lot of pride in my career. Or he did. This will sting. But then he’ll kick into supportive mode. Way too supportive. He’ll try to give me a pep talk and offer to make calls to league big wigs and I’ll want to puke again. Mom, well, she’ll be the opposite. Ashleigh formerly Garrison-now-Milligan, will ramble on about how this is for the best and how maybe the universe is showing me I shouldn’t have tried to copy my dad. That I should give up ‘that brutal, stupid sport’ altogether. They’re divorced, can you tell? Mom hated being a hockey wife so she stopped being one when I was little. Too little to really remember much, which is probably a good thing. She’s in Palm Springs for Christmas with her husband so if I’m lucky, she won’t even know this is going on. She doesn’t follow hockey at all. Has never even been to one of my professional games.
And then there’s my stepmom Callie. The woman has never heard of the word boundaries, and normally I don’t mind it at all. I absolutely adore it, actually. She’s there for me, rain or shine, day or night. And I have had some of the most raw, honest conversations of my life with her. So she’ll expect me to open up about this. She’ll demand it. Truth is, I don’t know what to tell her. I don’t know what went wrong. I don’t know when I lost my magic touch or why. I don’t know how to stop sucking at hockey because I don’t know why I started to suck at hockey in the first place.
A number pops up on my nav as a ringing sound fills the car. It’s my agent Clark Abbott. I swear and punch accept. Before I can even say hello he’s talking. “Want to tell me where the fuck you are and why the Barons general manager just called me to say you’ve gone AWOL?”
“They’re putting me on waivers, Clark.”
“What?” He sounds genuinely stunned. “They haven’t informed me, why are they informing you? You can’t be on waivers until—”
“December twenty-seventh,” I interrupt and grip the steering wheel a little tighter as I kick my wipers up a notch faster to deal with the snow pelting the windshield. “But that little bitch of a coach, Landry, pulled me into his office today and told me anyway. Calls me a bunch of bullshit names and then expects me to show up to the last game before they publicly humiliate me, even though they aren’t even going to play me. Naw. Fuck that. If I’m going out, I’m doing it my way.”
“First of all, you should have called me. Immediately,” Clark barks, annoyance dripping from every pointy, stabby word and I can’t even get uppity about it. I should have called him.
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m spiraling.”
He sighs so loudly it rumbles through my car speakers like wind. His voice is soft when he speaks again. “This is terrifyingly egregious on their part. On Landry’s part. I don’t know what the fuck to do next, because no team has ever been this fucking stupid with one of my players, but I will sort this out and get back to you. I can’t believe they’re calling me up like you’re the villain here and not even mentioning this waivers bullshit.”
“They can do it, though, right?” I ask because I know they can, but I need someone with a brain not melting into an emotional mess to tell me. “They can dump me this way?”
“They can but it’s one of the worst business moves I’ve ever heard of,” Clark confesses. “You are still a hot commodity, Con. Yeah, your year hasn’t been great but that team is a sinking ship and you are just one bucket. They can try to blame it all on you, but I won’t let them. In the meantime… where are you and are you okay?”
I swallow and feel a lump in my throat. “As good as expected. I kind of freaked out and got in my car and started to drive to Maine.”
“Fuck,” Clark sighs again. “There’s a fucking blizzard.”
“I know but I’m fine. Almost home.” I swallow again. Fucking lump. “I can turn back around if you think I really have to go to the game tomorrow.”
“Nope. Get home and stay safe,” Clark advises. “And pick up the phone when I call, no matter the hour, okay?”
“Yeah. Promise.”
“Bye.”
The phone goes dead before I can thank him. The snow is a bit heavy now. Not exactly a whiteout but on its way to one. Luckily I’m going to be done driving before it gets too bad.
Seven minutes later I’m passing the sign that says Welcome to Silver Bay. Home of Hockey Royalty. And then underneath, on individual hand-carved wooden signs made by a local artisan are the names: Devin Garrison. Jordan Garrison, Luc Richard. Conner Garrison. Tate Garrison. Grady Garrison. There will be a ceremony to add Theo Richard’s name after the draft this summer. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just took my plaque off and replaced it with Theo’s. They should. Maybe I’ll drop the idea in the suggestion box outside city hall. I don’t deserve to have my name up there anymore.
I used to think that sign was the coolest thing ever, but now it’s humiliating. It’s not long from the city limits to the lake, which is huge, and the town’s main attraction. Callie and my dad built a big place on the lake, next to Uncle Luc and Aunt Rose’s place, after Liv was born. Then, Uncle Jordy and Aunt Jessie bought the land right next to Dad and Callie and built a home there. It’s a regular Kennedy Compound as the three homes take up a quarter of the lakefront.
I turn onto the long driveway and see the large, two-story, wood and river rock structure that is my dad and Callie’s house loom into view. Even half-obscured by the thick sheet of falling snow, it’s still imposing. They’ve hung their Christmas lights. Rows and rows of big, old-fashioned, multi-colored lights skirt every peak and roofline on the house and four-car garage. The two massive Douglas firs that flank the drive are also twinkling with lights. Callie supposedly was bah-humbug about Christmas before she married my dad. Everyone says it’s because of me, Liv, and Mayhem that she became the epitome of Christmas spirit.
I loved how special she made Christmas my whole life. But tonight as the fresh snow crunches under my rolling tires and the house grows closer and closer, I’m filled with dread. Because my eyes are focused on the pile of cars in the drive. More than just the three that should be there—my mom’s, my dad’s, and the car Mayhem and Liv share. There’s, like, four… no, five other cars here. I park behind them and turn to look out the passenger window, towards Uncle Jordan and Aunt Jessie’s house. The gate in the middle of the fence that separates the properties is wide open.
When I turn back to look out the windshield at the house, I notice Mayhem is on the front porch swing. She’s wearing her entire ski suit as well as a hat, mitts, and balaclava, but I still know it’s her. She’s the only one crazy enough to be reading a book outside in a blizzard. Her dark chocolate eyes are staring right at me, and she gives me a little wave. She’s the only reason I get out of the car.
Mayhem is someone I never ignore. She’s not my favorite sister, I love Liv just as much, but she’s special. She’s an old soul. She’s always seemed wise beyond her years, like Yoda. It’s kind of funny that we all call her Mayhem because she’s the calmest, quietest of all the Garrison spawns. But she’s also the quirkiest and she came into the world in a terrifying birth ending in an emergency c-section that almost ended both her life and Callie’s. I still remember that night as one of the scariest of my life.
“Welcome home, bro,” she says in a deep voice like she’s trying to imitate one of my teammates.
“Thanks, Mayhem,” I say as I climb the snow-covered stairs, she lifts a mitten-clad hand up for a high-five. I give her one, and it almost makes me smile. “How many of them are here?”
“Many. So many. Too many.”
I blink and stare down at Mayhem, who has shifted her gaze to the paperback in her hands. If she’s not reading a book on her phone, it’s one on her tablet, or a good old-fashioned paperback, like tonight. “Elaborate.”
“Uncle Luc, Uncle Jordan, Aunt Jessie, Aunt Rose, Aunt Leah, Uncle Cole, Grandma, Grandpa, Dad, Mom, Liv, Tenley, Harlow, Theo, and Grady.”
“Why is Grady home?” I ask.
“Grady is injured, Con,” Mayhem explains and her brows pinch together enough to become visible through the eye holes in the balaclava. “Didn’t you look at the family WhatsApp? Groin pull. He’s out until the new year so the team let him come home for the holiday. Mom decided to throw an impromptu Christmas party. I was in there, with all of them, but they’re so loud and distracting that I kept reading the same page over and over.”
Mayhem frowns. I frown harder. I am not ready to deal with all of them at once. I run a hand through my hair and then scrub my stubbled chin. I haven’t shaved in a few days and it’s gone from five o’clock shadow to scruff, which isn’t my normal look. Mayhem watches. “You need a shave and a haircut.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “Actually, I’m going to go do that now.”
I about-face and start back down the stairs. “What? Are you kidding? You just got here!”
“I know but… no time like the present.”
“It’s late and there’s a blizzard, Con!” Mayhem sounds confused and maybe a little concerned. I open the door to my SUV and jump in as Mayhem stands up, the bench swinging behind her. “You live here! Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back tomorrow, okay. Just… can you not tell them I’m here yet? I just… I’ll be back. Just give me a minute.”
She nods, but it’s hesitant. Concern is still all over her pretty features. “Con-Con… are you okay?”
“Yep. Back tomorrow!”
I do a U-turn on the drive. Mayhem yanks off her hood and balaclava and I can see her sweet, confused face in my rearview, and I feel bad. But not bad enough to turn around and face all my relatives.
I drive aimlessly around Silver Bay as the weather conditions worsen and the roads get icy. I can’t go back to my parents’ but I don’t know where else to go. And then it hits me. When cousins Tenley and Tate are in Silver Bay they share the old farmhouse Aunt Jessie and Uncle Jordan used to live in when they first got together. The old barn, which is a home gym the whole family uses, also has an apartment. Aunt Rose used to live there before she married Uncle Luc, but no one has lived there since. I’m pretty sure everyone has forgotten it exists. But it does. So I turn left and head to my new hideout.
Pre-Order Amazon
Pre-ORDER APPLE
PRE-ORDER BARNES & NOBLE
PRE-ORDER KOBO
PRE-ORDER SMASHWORDS
PRE-ORDER EVERLAND