Chapter 1
Kiran was stressed. That was his excuse.
Stressed because the first practice of the season ran long, and he couldn’t get comfortable in the new net. Every puck that hit the net behind him had wound him tighter and tighter until nerves had him practically levitating off the ice.
The Special Teams coach had pulled him aside after and congratulated him on a solid first practice, even laughed at the disbelieving look Kiran had given him in response. “It’s first-day jitters, that’s all. You put on a good showing.”
“I barely broke 900.” It was his worst showing on the ice since he’d played with his high school team. After four years of collegiate hockey and seven years on the New England Whiteout, he should have done better, and it was hard to silence the voices in the back of his head telling him so.’
“First practice on the new team. Always an adjustment period.” Anton Volkov had been the goalie for the Russian Olympic team and taken home gold in his prime. Now, in his early fifties, the hair at his temples was going gray, and he had lines on his face that not even the best plastic surgeon could erase, but he had a friendly smile that set players at ease.
Kiran had heard stories of his hard partying days during his time on the Whiteout, and even though it had been a couple of decades, he still carried those years.
“You will do better next time, yes?”
“Of course.”
He’d let Kiran go then. The rest of the team had already left, but the team captain, Connor Blake, had been waiting for Kiran in the locker room, and his pep talk had just added to Kiran’s stress.
“Lot of people depending on you, Summers.” He’d said. “Paid a lotta money for you.”
Like Kiran needed the reminder of the ten million the Breakwater had paid for him. Meeting his salary demand despite putting themselves slightly over budget to do it. Kiran hadn’t expected the deal to go through after his agent had warned him they’d already signed a new Center for fifteen.
Connor Blake’s last contract had put him at twelve, and Kiran had heard rumors that he wasn’t happy that a newer, younger player had been signed at a higher contract. Blake was still the captain, had been the last five years, but he hadn’t won a cup yet either. Not while he was with the Breakwater.
Kiran had spent half an hour under the steam spray trying to relax the muscles of his neck and shoulders before they pinched so tight they got stuck that way. He’d only left when the water had finally started cool.
And he sure as shit hadn’t been any more relaxed when he’d found Mikail Aristova naked and unashamed in the locker room.
Mikail was…
Kiran wasn’t sure what Mikail was, but whatever it was, it was doing something that Kiran didn’t understand or have time for.
Mikail Aristova had been born in one of the smaller provinces of Russia. A hockey prodigy who’d come to the US in high school and never left. He’d played professionally for three different teams since his first contract, despite being Kiran’s age, though no one would officially talk about why. It was a higher trading average than most players during that period of their career, but Kiran had only met him for the first time a few minutes before practice. When they’d run into each other entering the locker room for the first time.
Kiran had been too lost in his thoughts to notice his surroundings, and Mikail had saved him from walking into a closed door with a warm smile and bright, bright blue eyes. Kiran didn’t even remember what he’d said, but Mikail had laughed. The moment had been broken by Blake hollering at everyone to move their asses, and Kiran had forgotten everything to focus on hockey.
It was his first love.
His only love so far.
But he’d hated it with a passion these last few years. He’d come to Maine and the Breakaway to remember why he loved it to begin with, and he’d upset his entire life to do it.
That was another part of why he was stressed.
Kiran had spent the last seven years of his life, all of his professional career, under stress. And surprisingly, none of it, from hockey.
Well, okay, some of it from hockey.
But much less than it should have been. All of his stress should have been from hockey, but instead, most of it had been from his family.
From his parents and their insistence on upholding the family legacy, and“Don’t forget where you came from, Kiran. What you represent.”
From his brother and sister, who bought into the family line and hated whenever it seemed like Kiran wasn’t pulling his weight.“We’re all in this together, right, little brother? Step it up.”
From the team, to just be good enough to justify his place.“You’re a Summers, that’s how you got on this team.”
He should have known better than to ever sign with the team his family owned, but he’d been fresh out of college and scared of not getting drafted at all. He’d been fifth overall.
Mikail had been first, but Kiran hadn’t remembered that until halfway through practice when Mikail was hammering pucks into the goal with enough glee that it was almost terrifying.
None of his new teammates had seemed all that impressed with his ability. Kiran had caught the looks as they’d left the ice when practice was over.
Disappointment.
Disdain.
The rumors had plagued him since he’d taken to the ice on his first peewee hockey team. Kiran was used to them, but they still hurt.
And somehow, they hurt more as an adult than they ever did when he was a child.
So, he was stressed.
STRESSED.
That was why he missed her when he first walked in. He made it all the way through the living room, down the hallway to his bedroom, where he dropped his bag and equipment and took a shower, before he realized something had been off.
Someone was in his house.
Someone was in his house and sitting on his couch.
He froze; floss stuck between his teeth.
There was someone in his house.
There was someone in his house.
And she was still there when he dropped the floss and raced downstairs. Sitting on the couch his interior decorated had insisted was the only one that matched the eggshell walls. Six months of working on this house, and Kiran had never been able to convince her that eggshell and white looked the same to him.
She was dwarfed by the huge couch, which could seat almost his entire team if they squeezed in.
Kiran slid to a stop, finally stopping to look around, but she seemed to be the only stranger in his house. The lights were low; they were heading into autumn, so the light curtains were enough to make it seem darker out than it actually was.
“Wow.” She was shaking her head at him, which he figured was somewhat understandable.
He squinted at her, realized she was mostly in shadow, and hit the light switch on the wall, illuminating the room. She was dressed in sweats, bulky and terribly soft, the ones Kiran hid in the back of his closet for off-days and long plane flights. They were only a few shades off from the dark burgundy color of the couch.
“Do you realize how many times I could have killed you?”
Kiran squawked, insulted. “You blend in! How was I supposed to see you in the dark? Also, how did you get in?”
“You left the door unlocked, genius.” She rolled her eyes but made no move to get up.
Denial was on the tip of his tongue, but then he remembered he’d woken up late and been in a rush that morning.
He flushed, felt his towel slip, and scrambled to grab it before he showed her the whole world.
Her lips tilted up in a mocking smile, humor flashing bright in her steel grey eyes.
Kiran’s heart stuttered in his chest. There was only one person Kiran had ever known with eyes that color. “Dawn?”
Her smile lost some of its mocking edge, softening, which softened her entire appearance. “You remember me?”
Kiran stared at her, struck still and silent in disbelief. “You’re here? You-“ He fell silent.
“It’s been a while,” she offered quietly.
Which was a hell of an understatement, because it had been twenty years since Kiran had seen his oldest sister. He’d only been nine when she’d left at fifteen, storming out of their parents’ home in a whirlwind of rage and betrayal and a stubborn refusal to change her dreams in the face of their family legacy.
“Yeah…” Kiran trailed off.
They stared at each other across the expanse of the room, the air between them tight and fragile, stretched thin by the years between them and all the things that had been too long unsaid.
In the silence between them, the sounds of the world grew louder. The hum of the refrigerator in the next room. Distant sirens from the highway. The soft click of the heating system coming alive.
“You’re here,” he said finally, uselessly, remembering to catch his towel again at the last second. “I- sorry, I should…”
She looked amused. “Go.”
He took a step and stopped. “You’ll still be here, right? When I get back? It won’t take me long.” He said, suddenly desperate. “Just a few minutes.”
“I’ll be here, Kiran. Go put clothes on.” She shook her head at him as he darted back up the stairs.
He dressed in record time, not bothering with anything but sweats and a T-shirt. He was halfway back down the stairs when he remembered socks and the fact that his stylish wood floors were cold as fuck at night.
Dawn would probably laugh at him if she knew how much he hated having cold feet. He even slept in his socks to avoid them. The teenager he remembered had been an awkward, gangly-limbed thing that had seemed larger than life with the family coloring of dark hair and pale skin. Her eyes were the only thing that set her apart, that icy grey no one else shared. Kiran could still remember the nervous anxiety he’d had when he heard her argue with their parents. Something that had been unfortunately common, especially in the months leading up to her leaving.
But she’d never yelled at him. There were two siblings between them, a brother and a sister, but the two of them had been off in their own world most of the time. Connected by the fact that they were close in age, only a year apart, while Dawn and Kiran were more distant. Dawn had been the one who’d taken to Kiran, especially when he was small and trying to follow them all around while their parents were busy running the family business.
Dawn had been the first one to take him out on the ice, spinning him round and round until he was sick with laughter. Their parents made it a point to ensure one of the first things their children learned was how to ice skate, and they’d brought in a private tutor when Kiran was six, but Dawn had started teaching him a year before. Letting him hang onto her pant leg or hand while she did lazy loops around the frozen pond out back.
He’d spent hours watching her skate and showing off what he’d learned, especially when he’d started peewee hockey and been so excited it was the only thing he could talk about.
Despite a complete lack of interest in hockey, Dawn had always listened patiently and let him talk until he was exhausted. As the years went on, she’d been a confidant even when their time together had lessened due to both their lives getting busier with age.
Kiran had been the only family member who’d attended her figure skating competitions, since their siblings had taken after their parents in their disdain for any sport that wasn’t hockey.
He went back downstairs, ears echoing with arguments from decades past.
She hadn’t moved, thank God, and he paused to study her.
The teenager he remembered was still there, buried deep. Even stretched out on his couch, he could see the long limbs that she’d struggled with while she was growing. Her hair was dark and long and wavy in a way that only women managed to achieve. Her face had thinned as it lost the baby fat, but her skin was still pale, almost luminous in the warm light of the lamps.
Those grey eyes were sharp as blades, worn to such a fine edge that every glance felt like a cut. She looked like a fight. She always had. Out of the four siblings, Dawn had been the one at war with the world, questioning everything and asking why.
He wandered closer anyway. He’d never had the best sense of self-preservation.
Dawn watched him approach, but she didn’t rise, didn’t move to greet him. Just watched. Not unlike a predator watching its prey walk into a trap.
Kiran bit his lip, unsure how to start. Outside of the team and its staff, people mostly approached Kiran and started the conversation. And those were strangers.
This was Dawn.
He inched closer to the couch, then realized he was being ridiculous. It was his couch in his living room in his house. He could sit on it if he wanted to, so he threw himself down on the opposite end.
She winced, just barely, when he jostled the couch cushions.
“Dawn?”
“It’s fine.” She waved it off, shifting to get comfortable. Kiran recognized that look. The flash of pain that was weak enough to hide when you were still, but impossible when you weren’t.
Dawn had been in perfect health as a teenager.
“What happened?”
She gave him a weak smile, something that seemed terribly out of character with the girl he remembered. “Car accident.”
The words landed heavily between them.
His chest tightened. “How bad?”
“T-boned by a drunk driver, bad.” Her voice was even, cold, but there was tension under it. Dawn had never been good at hiding her anger. “I’m fine. Or I will be, just need a while to heal.”
Kiran swallowed, mind racing through worst-case scenarios, injuries, timelines. “Why didn’t you call?”
Dawn cocked her head to the side, studying him. “I didn’t know if you’d answer.”
“I’ll always answer!” It burst out of him without intention. He was hurt, and bit insulted that she thought otherwise. “You were one the who left.” It came out more hurt and angrier than he intended, but it was hard to pack it all away now that it had started to leak out.
Dawn’s expression softened. “I know. That’s why I didn’t call.” Her acceptance did nothing to assuage his feelings. “I’m not going to apologize for leaving. It would be a lie if I did.”
A flash of white-hot anger erupted in him, but it faded just as quickly. Kiran remembered the months leading up to her leaving home, the constant arguments and icy silences. How often she’d been grounded and confined to her room. He hadn’t blamed her for leaving back then, and even now, he couldn’t find it in himself to blame her, even if he was angry. “I didn’t ask for one.”
She raised an eyebrow, amused, but didn’t argue.
Kiran crossed his arms over his chest, sinking further into the plush cushions. “How long are you here?”
For the first time, she hesitated. Debating how much to tell him. “I still have a couple of months of healing before the doctors will sign me off completely. I can go somewhere-“
“No! No, it’s fine. You can stay here. I have plenty of room.” And the thought of her disappearing again hurt more than he’d ever imagined.
His outburst made her smile, something small and genuine. “Okay. Thanks.”
“What, uh, what happened? I mean, you were injured in the accident?” He was going to say she looked good, but ninety-five percent of her was covered by comfy sweats. There weren’t any bruises on her face that he could see, but he imagined it was possible she was wearing enough makeup to hide anything.
Dawn’s face fell, and she shifted again, planting her hands before moving her hips and legs. “My hip and leg. They’ll be fine, they just need time.” She frowned like the fact annoyed her. She’d never been very patient. Sitting still had been an anathema to her when she was younger, so this was probably the worst injury she could ever imagine. Kiran wanted to ask her more about them, about what had happened, but she plastered a smile on her face that wasn’t completely fake and asked, “What have you been up to?”
Kiran raised an eyebrow in a move he’d learned from her. “You mean in the last two decades?”
She glared mockingly. “Yeah, baby brother, every day for the last twenty years? Come on, are you married? Kids?” She glanced around. “Divorced?”
He flushed, heart jumping at the idea of a relationship, but he had no idea why. “No, no, and no.” He scowled and then realized how long it had been, and then scowled harder. “It’s been a while, actually.”
“Why? You’re young, rich, attractive, I guess?”
“What do you mean you guess?” He squawked. “I make the top ten hottest NHL players every year!”
Dawn grimaced. “Ew, you will forever be my embarrassing little brother. I remember when you used to run around with chocolate smeared all over your face because you wanted to save it for later.” She even did the finger quotes to Kiran’s horror.
“Oh my god, you promised never to talk about that again!” He buried his flushed face in a pillow, but the sting lessened when she laughed. When he peeked over the pillow, she had her head propped up on her fist, studying him.
“You look good, Kiran. Healthy, happy.”
He smiled. “I am. More now than I was, anyway.”
She didn’t look surprised. “I was surprised how long you stayed with the Whiteout.”
Kiran sighed. Leaving the Whiteout was still a sore subject, even though the deal had been done months ago and had been in the works long before that. “Yeah, well, it turns out you had the right idea.”
“Just because it was right for me doesn’t mean it was right for anyone else.” She admitted quietly. It was the closest she’d ever come to admitting any kind of doubt in her decision.
They lapsed into silence, enjoying one another’s presence.
“Do you need anything? I’ve got plenty of money now. I can find a physical therapist? A better doctor?”
Dawn smirked. “I have all those things and more money than you.”
Surprised, Kiran whistled. “Wow. What have you been doing?”
She looked surprised. “You don’t know?”
He reached for his phone. “No, I mean. I checked for your name a few times, but nothing ever came up.”
“I changed my name.” His eyes snapped up from his phone to her face. “Right after I left.”
“Oh.” He blinked, off balance to realize they didn’t share a name anymore. “Makes sense, I guess…”
“Can we talk about something else?” Exhaustion was creeping into her eyes. “Tell me about your new team.”
Kiran bit his lip, fiddled with his phone until he accidentally turned on the delete feature, and nearly deleted his email and photos. He put it down. “What about them? They seem cool. Today was our first practice.”
“And? How did it go?”
Kiran groaned. “I sucked. Mikail was awesome. Captain doesn’t like me. I sucked.” He rolled his head towards her. “I could go on.”
Dawn chuckled. “I doubt it was as bad as it seems. First practice with a new team, plus the first practice of the season. Everyone probably had cobwebs to shake off.”
Kiran pouted. “Not Mikail. He was perfect. Fucker scored on me a dozen times.” He tried to sound angry, but he couldn’t quite keep all the awe out of his voice.
“Mikail?”
“Aristova. He came over from the Boston Victory. Which, Maine is okay, but that was a serious step down for him. I don’t know why he took the trade. Nobody does. They were talking about it on all the podcasts for months after it was announced mid-season. He’s Russian, but he’s been in the States since he was a teenager. Came over for one of those hockey programs and got picked up for the majors right out of college. He was Rookie of the Year, his stats are crazy strong, but when he plays bad, he’sbad. It’s kind of crazy to see the difference. He can play one game and make Gretzky look like a nobody, and the next game, he looks like he’s never been on the ice before. He has more good days than bad, though. And the fans love him; they call him Zhenya. Some Russian nickname.”
Dawn raised an eyebrow, pursing her lips so she didn’t smile too widely as Kiran rambled on. She didn’t bother pointing out that it wasn’t a nickname. That it was probably just Mikail Aristova’s nickname, and the public that didn’t understand it had romanticized it.
“It’s crazy to watch him on the ice. He’s almost so fast I can’t keep track of him. The way he moves, it’s- it’s like- I can’t even describe it. He’s made to be on the ice. His legs, I swear to God, you’d think they’d be like tree stumps, but the guy’s weirdly perfectly proportioned. Like one of those marble statues in the museums.”
Given that Kiran had never had any interest in history or the arts unless they were related to hockey, Dawn was interested to know where he’d seen these statues.
Kiran pinned her with an intense look. “You know he scored thirty-seven goals his rookie year?”
“I had no idea.” Dawn drawled.
“He’s never had a season with less than thirty. His shot accuracy is off the charts when he’s on his game. I don’t know what he’s doing in Maine; he’s definitely too good for what they paid for him. But I guess I don’t know what they paid for him unless the rumors are true. And they never are. He doesn’t seem to be money-obsessed, though? Some of the guys are always chasing a paycheck, whateversponsorshipthey can get. They end up repping the stupidest shit, but Mikail doesn’t do many of them at all. Maybe he doesn’t like being in front of a camera? But he’s always playing to them on the ice. And he’s gorgeous. I mean, I’ve never been interested in a guy, but even I noticed. He had these crazy blue eyes, like, you remember that funny movie about models? The one with whatshisname? Blue steel, that’s what his eyes are. And he has these lashes, I think they’re fake. No one has lashes like that naturally. I mean, you should see them, Dawn, they’re so thick it’s like he has butterfly wings lining his eyes.”
Dawn’s eyebrows crawled toward her hairline. It was hard to wrap her mind around the man in front of her and the boy she remembered. The last obsession Kiran had that she remembered before hockey was bugs, and he talked about them the same way. Going on and on without pausing to take a breath. She’d followed his career after he left, and she knew he’d gone on to get degrees in entomology despite choosing hockey as a career.
His favorite had been the Orchid Mantis. He’d always been desperate to see one in person, but as far as she knew, he’d never managed it.
It was strange to see him so in love with something else. Something she’d missed because she’d been gone for so long.
And this was what it had taken to bring her back. To him, at least, not to the rest of that family she’d worked so hard to escape. An accident that was probably going to end her career and a loss she’d never recover from.
The reminder of everything she’d been trying so hard not to think about made her throat tight. Her composure fractured, just a little.
She fought down the tears. She hated crying in front of other people, even the ones she loved. It was a feeling of weakness she’d never been able to shake, even though logically, she knew it was cathartic and healthy.
She took a deep, shaky breath. Then another. And another before the tears finally started to dry.
“Dawn?” And of course, Kiran would notice that when he hadn’t noticed anything else during his rant. “Hey-“
He crossed the space between them without thinking, remembering her wince at the last minute and moving to kneel on the floor beside her. He wrapped his arms around her, as gentle as he could be, and then she was crying in earnest, all her effort to hold the tears back gone.
She smelled faintly of soap and something sharp, unnatural. The medicinal smell Kiran distantly recognized as the smell of the medical rooms at the rink. He didn’t ask now. He wasn’t the best with people or emotion, but he knew now was not the time.
Dawn had hated crying even as a child. It was one of the things their parents had often applauded her for. Even as a child, they said she never cried.
Kiran hadn’t realized until he was in college and he’d mentioned it to a girlfriend who was studying child development that it wasn’t a good thing.
He didn’t speak, just held her, unbothered that she didn’t try to hold him back, just curled in on herself in his arms.
~ tbc
