[Tulsa Thunderbirds 01.0] Bury the Hatchet Read online

  “That’s all right,” I said, putting the last of the day’s dishes in the dishwasher so I could run it overnight. “I’ll be fine.” I’d be better than fine, actually. Because over the course of the last couple of weeks, I’d formed an idea of how I could fill my time, and it would be much easier to do what I wanted to if Hunter wasn’t around to realize what it was. If he didn’t know, he couldn’t attempt to stop me.

  HORIZONS, THE REHAB facility where they’d taken Kade, looked like a miserable place to live. The building had brick walls boasting very few windows, surrounded by a dry, brown yard with a high steel fence keeping everything private. I parked in one of the few open visitor spaces and had to pass through a group of smokers and the cloud of cigarette smoke surrounding them to reach the entry, holding my breath as I walked.

  A harried receptionist glanced up at me from the desk just inside the door and shoved a sign-in clipboard in my direction. “ID?” she said tersely, holding out her hand. “And you’ll have to empty your pockets and check your purse with the office. You can’t take anything in beyond the clothes on your back. You’ll be going through a metal detector before going in, too.” She narrowed her eyes at my hair, as though trying to determine if I’d somehow tried to put something in it that I could give to Kade.

  I took the ponytail holder out and shook my hair free, raising my brow in question as I did so. She scowled but kept quiet about it, so I figured that was her way of giving me the go-ahead.

  The whole place felt cold, clinical, and seriously closed in. Good thing I’d never had issues with claustrophobia. Just standing here with the antiseptic smell of the place assaulting my nose, the wood paneling on the walls and the gray folding chairs in austere rows jarring my vision, I wanted to get the heck out of Dodge as fast as I could. The thought of spending any more than the maximum-allowable thirty-minute family visit gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  I dug my driver’s license out of my wallet and passed it over to her, putting my cell phone and keys in my purse and zipping it shut before filling in my name, Kade’s name, and his patient ID number on the form.

  She keyed a few things into her computer and handed my license back to me.

  “Thank you,” I murmured, not that she had any reaction to my common courtesy. For a moment, I wondered if her parents just hadn’t taught her how to be polite or if she’d ignored their teachings. It wasn’t that difficult to be a decent human being, though. Even Lance could say please and thank you. I slipped my license into one of the outside pockets and double-checked to be sure I didn’t have anything else hidden on me anywhere. All clear.

  “Visits are limited to exactly half an hour, no longer,” she said, not even looking up at me as she spoke, “and you can’t be alone with your family member. You’ll be in a big room along with all the other patients and visitors. No trying to slip anything to anyone or you won’t be allowed back.”

  I wasn’t going to slip Kade anything other than maybe a dose of compassion. He didn’t even know I was coming, but I’d still never said more to him than a brief hello immediately before the wedding. Considering he had likely been high as a kite when that had happened, and quite a bit of time had passed since then, I wasn’t sure he would even remember me. I supposed I’d find out soon enough.

  The only reason I was getting in to see him at all was that I’d insisted on having John send me the details a couple of days ago, once Thunderbirds training camp had started. At that point, I still hadn’t found a good use for my free time, but here it was, staring me in the face. I could figure out a way to help Kade, and maybe in the process, I could do something to help repair the relationship between him and Hunter. I might not succeed, but I could damn well try. The only thing it would cost me was my time, and that was something I had in abundance these days.

  At least that was how I was looking at it. I wasn’t so sure Hunter would agree with my assessment, and I knew without a doubt that he wouldn’t be happy about me being here at all, but I hadn’t mentioned my plan to him. There wasn’t any point. He would just shut me down before I got started, determined to keep me as far away from his brother as possible.

  Today, I intended to discover why he was so insistent on protecting me from his brother’s influence.

  John had proven to be a little more willing to involve me, even promising to keep it from my husband. Darren had gone back home to his job after helping us settle in the new house, but John’s job was here right now, helping Hunter prepare for the season and overseeing our efforts for a media makeover. Here’s Kade’s patient ID number, he’d said to me the other day when Hunter was gone to practice. You’re going to have to tell them you’re immediate family or they won’t let you through the door. You’re his sister now. Don’t forget it. I’d had him brief me on the process of checking in, making sure I knew the answers to any pertinent family questions they might ask, just in case getting in wasn’t as easy as we hoped it would be.

  In all fairness, he had tried to talk me out of coming. I hadn’t let him. It was just a gut feeling, this sense that I needed to involve myself with Kade in some way, but I knew I had to do something. Only I didn’t know what that something would end up being. Hunter always clammed up the second I mentioned his brother’s name, so I had decided to take things into my own hands. Make my own decisions. Stand on my own two feet.

  And now I was here.

  I nodded my understanding to the receptionist. I’d gone over all the facility’s rules before I’d made the decision to come. The only real problem was that, beyond the visitation rules, I didn’t have a clue. I’d never known a drug addict before. All things considered, I’d led a sheltered existence. Mama and Lance had practically kept me under lock and key. I knew this, but Hunter had unlocked that door. Now it was up to me whether I was going to go through the door or stay where I’d been. I had the key in my hand. I could turn the lock again or toss the key away… There were any number of choices I could make, so many that I wasn’t sure where to start.

  Other than here.

  “Turn in your purse and take a seat,” the receptionist said. “They’ll take everyone back in a group at three o’clock on the dot.”

  “Where do I take it?”

  She rolled her eyes and pointed at the opposite wall, where a woman worked behind a glass partition with a drawer like they had at the bank’s drive-through window. About a dozen other people were standing in line in front of her.

  I crossed the lobby and waited for my opportunity. When I got to the front of the line, the woman took my purse, locked it in a cubby on her side of the partition, and passed the key to me through the sliding drawer.

  Then I took a seat and waited, worrying my lower lip. I wished I still had my phone with me so at least I’d have something to do other than obsess over whether I’d made the right decision. Playing Bejeweled Blitz would at least pass the time, and maybe it would numb my brain some.

  I didn’t have to wait too much longer. A door opened opposite the front entryway, and a woman in scrubs ushered us all back. We went into another holding room and, one at a time, walked through the metal detector. Once the entire group of thirty or so of us had been cleared, we were led through a series of long halls.

  Finally, we reached our destination, a room filled with patients, with dozens of chairs and couches scattered around a few coffee tables. Several of the patients looked up when we entered, some getting up to rush over and hug their loved ones. A flat-screen TV was airing a Rangers baseball game overhead. Many of them were watching the game, but a few had their noses buried in books.

  The patients who’d already met up with their visitors took them to quieter corners to find a place to sit together. I scanned the room, searching for Kade. He had the same dark hair and green eyes as Hunter, although his had seemed cold to me that one time we’d met, not warm like his brother’s, and his hair was shorter. It didn’t take me too long to find him. He was sitting off by himself in a corner, staring out one of the few windows, an
d completely oblivious to me and everyone else.

  Since he hadn’t seen me yet, I took a moment to compose myself, taking a breath and tucking my hair behind my ears, all in an effort to build up my courage. Then I headed his way.

  When I reached him, I cleared my throat.

  He glanced up, thoroughly agitated. That was easy to tell. His annoyed face could be an exact match of Hunter’s. They both scrunched their eyebrows together and scowled.

  “You can take the chair,” he said offhandedly, waving a hand to hurry me along.

  I knew he meant for me to pick up the chair and go, but I decided to take him a little more literally. I plopped down in the seat next to him.

  His scowl turned to a full-on glare, but then I caught the moment that he recognized me. Well, that was good. It would be easier to get this conversation moving if he at least knew who I was.

  He pushed back from the table as though he was trying to get away from me. That was when I noticed the tattoos on his arms. Red and black nautical stars, one on the inside of each arm near his elbows. They both had a ribbon across the top point. The one on the right arm read Chantel. On the left, it read Kaylee.

  He crossed his arms in front of him when he saw me looking at his tattoos, but it was too late to hide them from me. I’d already seen them and read the names, not that I knew what any of it meant.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” he said.

  “Well, I did.”

  “Does Hunter know you’re here?”

  “No.” I settled in, trying to make myself comfortable in the folding chair even though my butt was almost numb already. I rested my arms on the card table between us.

  He was working on a jigsaw puzzle. The image on the box said it was 5,000 pieces, and it showed the Oklahoma City skyline. He shoved some pieces aside before crossing his arms again. “He wouldn’t be very happy about it if he knew. You should go.”

  “At the moment, I’m not particularly worried about what he thinks I should and shouldn’t do. What matters is what I want to do. And I want to be here. I want to talk to you.”

  “Why?” He narrowed his eyes at me.

  I shrugged. Heck if I knew. “You’re his brother,” I said feebly.

  “He doesn’t give a fuck about that, so why should you?”

  That was a fair question. “I think he gives more of a fuck than you think he does.” I would normally never use language like that, but it seemed like a good idea in dealing with Kade for some reason. Maybe it would help him to feel as if we were on the same level. Maybe it would help him trust me.

  “He wishes I was dead,” Kade scoffed. “Said so himself when they dumped me here.”

  Since I hadn’t been there, I couldn’t confirm or deny that claim. I wouldn’t be terribly shocked, considering some of the things Hunter had said to me about Kade, but I doubted he’d meant any of it. Better to move on than dwell on that subject.

  “What about you?” I asked. His green eyes flickered up to meet my gaze, a question hanging there, before he looked down again. I picked up a puzzle piece and placed it where it belonged. “Do you wish you were dead?” I clarified.

  He followed my lead, going back to his puzzle-making, but he didn’t answer. Not for a long time. I let my question hang in the air between us until he finally gave in. “Sometimes,” he said.

  “But not always?”

  “Not always.”

  “Right now?”

  He took a sip of water from a bottle, mulling it over. Then he shook his head. “No.”

  “Why not? Why not now, I mean, when you do sometimes?” I clarified.

  He traced a finger over the tattooed ribbon on his left arm, where the name Kaylee stood out in bold, black lettering. The corners of his lips twitched up, and I could tell he was trying to hide the smile that wanted to come forward. In that moment, he looked so much like Hunter it was eerie. Both of them fought against their smiles, almost as though they didn’t deserve to smile. Kade didn’t say anything, though. He picked up the same puzzle piece he’d been holding when I’d first sat down with him, twisting and turning it while his hand hovered over the table.

  “Who’s Kaylee?” I asked.

  “The only good thing I’ve ever done with my life.”

  “And she’s why you don’t want to die right now?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, using the same sarcastic tone Hunter used so often. “It won’t last long. I’m clean enough to remember I’ve got a daughter, but reality is already setting in again.”

  I knew I was pushing my luck, but I had more questions that needed answers. In fact, the more he talked, the less I understood. I was here, and he was talking, so I had to keep pushing until he pushed back. “What reality is that?” I asked softly.

  “The reality that I’ll never see her again. And if I can’t have my baby girl in my life, I’m not sure there’s any point in trying to live.”

  “Do you think she’d agree with that?”

  Kade shrugged.

  “Where is she now? With her mother?”

  “Chantel’s dead. That’s my fault, too.” This time, he lifted his head and stared so hard I shivered and felt gooseflesh pop up along my arms. He narrowed his eyes. “You really shouldn’t be here. Hunter could answer all of these questions for you, and you could do it without being in a place like this. You should go be the sweet thing he married and forget you ever met me. I’m trouble with a capital T, and that’s not going to change any time soon. Probably not ever.”

  “I don’t believe you. And I’m not leaving.” Not until time was up and they made me go. I still didn’t have a good grasp of what I was doing here, but Kade needed someone to listen. Maybe someone to believe in him. Someone who wouldn’t give up on him but who wasn’t his mother. I got the sense that she had been enabling him for a long time, and that was definitely not something in my plans…but I could listen. I could care.

  Right now, caring seemed like just what the doctor ordered.

  Kade let out a mirthless laugh. “Do you put your foot down with my brother like that? I’d love to see that someday. He’d either shit himself or get so turned on he wouldn’t know what to do about it.”

  “Well, then I guess you’ll just have to make up your mind to live, won’t you? Straighten up and fly right, because you can’t very well see anything if you’re not around to see it.”

  His lips quirked up again. “Fair enough.”

  Now that he was loosening up with me a bit, I wanted to delve a little deeper. I bit down on my lower lip, saying a silent prayer that he’d tell me what I wanted to know. “If Kaylee isn’t with her mother, where is she?”

  “With Carrie. Chantel’s twin.” He lifted a brow. “You know—Hunter’s fuck buddy back home. That was who he was expecting when he picked me up at the airport, actually—the two of them. Probably hoping he could get in a quick fuck before the ceremony or some shit like that.”

  For the first time since I’d sat down at this table, I wished I’d never come.

  “ALL RIGHT, BOYS, let’s get some business out of the way,” Gary Asher said. He was the team’s general manager, and we’d just come out of the gym following our final preseason workout session before the first exhibition game tomorrow. All I wanted to do was hit the showers and get the fuck out of here, but now we had to sit through a meeting. Although, if Gary was running it, at least we weren’t talking about systems and other shit like that. It was sure to be pure business.

  There were still about fifty guys in camp, all of us currently milling around the big, open locker room at Thunderbirds headquarters. They would have to cut us down to twenty-three before opening night in a couple of weeks. I knew I was going to make the cut, along with about a dozen of the other guys I could name off the top of my head, but several of the slots were still very much up in the air. That meant a lot of the men in this room would be trying to show off as much as possible over the next ten days or so, hoping to make an impression and—ultimately—make the team
.

  I remained at a loss as to why anyone would want to be part of this ragtag team, but I kept that thought to myself. I supposed I was finally learning to keep my trap shut, to think before I spoke. At least I hoped I was.

  They’d set up rows of chairs, so I took a seat in the one nearest to me close to the aisle, guzzling my Gatorade. No matter how much time I’d spent in the gym over the summer, these preseason workouts were always grueling.

  Ray “Razor” Chambers—a guy I knew from his days with the Storm organization back before he’d been traded to the Sabres—took the seat on my right, grumbling something under his breath about fucking long-winded speeches. We weren’t exactly friends, but I didn’t hate the guy. So there was that. I supposed he felt the same way about me or he would have sat somewhere else.

  There were a number of other familiar faces in the room, but I couldn’t say I knew any of them well.

  Like Zee. Maybe I should know him well, but I didn’t. Eric Zellinger took a seat in the front row, much as I would expect. He’d been the captain of the Storm the whole time I’d played in Portland, but we’d never exactly hit it off. Probably because he was just too fucking perfect, and I was about as far from perfect as you could get. He was on the wrong side of thirty now, though, and his age was starting to catch up with him on the ice. I wasn’t sure how many more years of hockey he had left in him. But he’d been claimed in the expansion draft, just like I was.

  Branislav Reznik was another guy I halfway knew. Bran, a Slovakian winger around my age, was a guy I’d played against in the minors quite a bit before we got called up to play for our NHL clubs. I’d never liked him. The last few days of training camp hadn’t changed my mind on him. He talked too much and focused too little, always shooting off his mouth with nothing to back it up. He sat down on the opposite side of the room from me, keeping his distance.