It's releasing in less than a month, on September 18, 2014. Here's what it's about.
This is a novella of second epilogues to books 1-4 in the Portland Storm series. It is approximately 35,000 words long.
It’s the NHL’s draft day, but the whole Portland Storm team is back together for an entirely different event. Complete with a double wedding, an unanticipated guest, overdue apologies, unexpected goodbyes, and fresh starts, this big day has the potential to get them all called for a Double Major.
You can pre-order it now at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo.
Here's your sneak peek! I'll probably give you another taste or two in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
JAMIE
I’d
arrived early. It was an old habit, but one I doubted I’d break anytime
soon. One of my first coaches had always told us that to be early is to be on
time, to be on time is to be late, and to be late… Well, you’d just better not
be. Now, a decade or more later, I couldn’t seem to make myself show up
anywhere merely on time. Hardly
anyone else was there yet for the rehearsal—no one I knew, anyway—so I plopped
down on one of the seats up near the front, right by the altar, and pulled out
my cell to scan the half a million texts I’d gotten in the last hour from Levi.
Levi was my
younger brother, the oldest after me. We had five more brothers younger than
him, too. There were kind of a lot of us. And he’d been texting me like crazy all
day because tomorrow was the National Hockey League’s Entry Draft, and he was
expected to be picked in the top five. No matter what, he should definitely be
the first defenseman taken in this year’s draft. Two years ago, I was in a similar
spot. I was selected seventh overall by the Portland Storm, and I somehow made
the team right out of training camp as an eighteen-year-old rookie.
Because I had
been in that same position and could coach him on what to expect, right now I
felt like the shittiest brother in the world. Levi and the rest of our
family—even our uncle and cousins—had all been with me when I’d been drafted. And
they were all in New York with Levi right now, helping to keep him calm as he
went through his meetings and media interviews and physical tests, and all of
the other insanity that goes with being a top prospect.
But where was I
when I ought to be with him? I wasn’t in New York; I was in Providence, Rhode
Island. Two of my teammates were getting married tomorrow. That made me a good
teammate, I supposed, but not a very good brother.
Team captain
Eric Zellinger—Zee to the guys—and his childhood best friend, Brenden “Soupy”
Campbell, were both tying the knot, and for some reason they’d asked me to be one of their groomsmen. I
wasn’t sure why they’d chosen me and not one of the guys who had been around the
team longer, like Ny or maybe Monty. I mean, yeah, I’d lived with both of them,
but that didn’t make me groomsman material, did it? Either way, they hadn’t
asked those guys; they’d asked me.
I looked around
the mostly empty chapel. At least being here early gave me time to respond to
Levi’s texts. I spent a few minutes poring over them. He’d had a good meeting
with Jim Sutter and the rest of the Storm’s executives at the draft, but Jim
had already warned me countless times not to get my hopes up. He wasn’t slated
to make a pick until number eighteen this year, and Levi would be long gone by
that point. The only way Levi would be drafted by the Storm was if Jim somehow
worked out a trade with another general manager and was able to move up. But he
had told me again and again that it just wasn’t likely to happen. Which wasn’t
news to me. Trading up would mean losing prospects, and they were a commodity
he was trying to stock up on, not trade away.
Since Levi knew
he wasn’t likely to be chosen by the Storm, he had his sights set on the
Toronto Maple Leafs. They were the team we’d always been fans of, my brothers
and I, growing up in Ontario. They had the fifth pick this year, but Levi said
his meeting with them hadn’t gone well at all so he didn’t have a good feeling
about it.
It went much
better with the Montreal Canadiens, but they weren’t picking until number
twelve. He felt pretty confident about his interviews with the Buffalo Sabres
and the New York Islanders, too—both were slated to pick within the top five—so
in all likelihood he’d be playing for one of those two teams.
His best
interview of the day, though—at least so far—was with the Winnipeg Jets. There
was a small part of me that hoped the Jets would choose him. They were a
Western Conference team, like Portland, and so Levi and I would get to play
each other more often than if he were with some team in the Eastern Conference.
They were slated to pick sixth, and everyone was saying that they were looking
for defensemen in this draft, so there was a definite possibility there.
Levi still had
meetings scheduled with five other teams for later on in the day, so it was
anyone’s guess where he would end up.
I was just about
to respond to his slew of messages when the door opened and about a dozen
people came in—Zee and Soupy, their fiancées Dana and Rachel, and most of the
others in the wedding party like Liam “Kally” Kallen and his girlfriend, Noelle
Payne. I only had eyes for one of them, though—Katie Weber, the oldest daughter
of my former teammate, David Weber.
I’d had a thing
for Katie for two solid years, ever since I first joined the Storm. These days,
it was much more than that. I was half in love with her.
I hadn’t seen
her since I left Portland almost six weeks ago, and it took me by surprise to discover
that she had some hair now. A few months back, she’d been diagnosed with
leukemia. She’d had to go through radiation and chemotherapy and all that, so
she’d lost her hair and wore scarves to cover her baldness most of the time. Or
at least she did the last time I saw her.
I knew she’d
finished her chemo before we’d been knocked out of the playoffs, but I guess I
hadn’t thought about the fact that her hair would be growing back already. It
was short, like a pixie cut, and it looked soft to the touch. Thinking that
only made me want to touch it, though, and that probably wasn’t the best idea
with her dad standing right beside her.
Webs caught my
eye and inclined his head in my direction, but I still couldn’t ever determine
what the looks he gave me meant. Hi? Come
on over? Take one step in this direction and I’ll rip your balls off and stuff
them down your throat? I couldn’t be sure. If his wife, Laura, had been
paying attention, I might have been able to get a read on him from her, but she
was caught up talking to Sara Thomas, our former head coach’s daughter. So
Laura was no help to me right now.
Webs had just
retired as a player, and this season he was going to be one of the Storm’s
assistant coaches. That should work out just great…as long I didn’t
misinterpret any of the looks he gave me.
The Storm made
it all the way to Game Seven in the second round of the playoffs last season,
but the LA Kings had gotten the best of us in the end. We couldn’t really hang
our heads over that. Our team hadn’t been to the post-season at all in the
previous five years, so getting to the second round was a lot further than
anyone had expected us to go. Plus, the Kings went on to win the Stanley Cup,
and we’d nearly taken them out in the second round. That was definitely nothing
to be ashamed of. We were all hoping to take what we’d done last season and
improve on it this coming year—and that meant making the most of the time off
we had this summer.
I’d gone home to
my family pretty much as soon as I’d finished clearing out my stall. I think I
slept for about a week straight once I got there, but then I’d gone back to
life as usual. All my brothers played hockey, too, so we were all training
together—some of us more seriously than others. But then again, Jack—the
youngest—was only eight, and most of the boys really didn’t need to work out
like Levi and I had to. It was still fun, us all being together like that.
Especially since Levi and I had started using the youngest boys as our weights,
bench pressing them, that sort of thing.
Katie and her
family had remained in Portland after the season ended because she and her
younger brother and sister had to finish out the school year. Now she’d
graduated, though, and she’d finished all of her cancer treatments. Webs had
let us all know a few weeks ago that her latest tests showed she was cancer
free.
That meant she
could move forward with her life. I just wasn’t certain if I was part of it.
I’d taken her to
her prom, and we’d spent some time together since then…but she had been sick and
still in high school, and I had been in the middle of the playoffs for the
first time in my career, so we hadn’t really been able to date. Not like I
wanted to, at least.
That hadn’t
stopped me from sneaking her away from her dad to steal a few kisses every now
and then. I hoped to be able to do more of that this weekend—and to find out
what she had decided to do next year. Each time we’d talked about it before,
she’d been too caught up in trying to get healthy to worry about whether she
was going to go to LA to meet with an entertainment agent she’d talked to once
about some ideas he had for getting her a career in Hollywood, or if she was
going to stick around Portland and her family and maybe go to college, or
something else.
The selfish part
of me wanted her to stay in Portland.
The part that
was already half in love with her wanted her to do whatever would make her
happy, even if that meant her leaving.
No matter which of
those two voices decided to talk the loudest, I just wanted to know what she’d chosen.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket and got up, and she immediately turned
her head in my direction. Her whole face lit up when our gazes met. I could
make out the sparkle in her eyes even across the distance, and Katie’s smile reeled
me in like a fishing line; my feet started moving in her direction before my
head could catch up.
“Hey,” she said
when I was almost to her.
My tongue got
thick, and she’d hardly said a word. I was a fucking wreck over this girl. I
shoved my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t do anything stupid, since Webs was
still giving me that look, and I cleared my throat. “Hey. Your hair… It looks
nice like that.”
She blushed and
ran her fingers through it, just the way I’d been imagining doing myself. It
was still that dark brown she’d always had, and her eyebrows were, too. It
looked as soft as a kitten’s fur and was just long enough to spike up or play
with like that. “Thanks. There’s not a lot I can do with it yet, but it’s
coming back in.”
“It looks nice,”
I repeated, feeling like an idiot.
Her parents were
in the middle of a conversation with Zee and Dana, so that meant Webs wasn’t
giving me the evil eye anymore. I had just taken Katie’s hand and was about to
pull her off to a corner somewhere so we could talk when Soupy’s dad whistled
loudly.
“I think we’re
all here now, so why don’t we get started?” he said once all eyes turned to
him.
Katie’s hand
fell away from mine almost instantly, and she shrugged her shoulders with an
apologetic downturn of her lips. “Later,” she whispered. “We’ll find time to
talk.”
Before I could respond,
she went over to her mother’s side, looking back at me over her shoulder and
giving me a wink.
I trudged over
to join Keith Burns, Cam Johnson, and Webs—the other groomsmen—up near the
altar so we could get things underway.
“Babs,” Webs
said when I got there, and I shot my eyes up to look at him. He scowled. “She’s
gotta do what’s right for her. Whether it’s what we want or not.”
That didn’t
sound good at all. I definitely noticed he’d said we, though. Like we were in this together.
The wedding
coordinator started talking, telling us what each of us were supposed to do and
how things were going to go down, not that I was paying any attention to him at
all. Had Katie made up her mind to leave? Just then, my phone started buzzing
in my pocket. It had to be more text messages from Levi. And they kept coming
and coming.
I wasn’t just a bad
brother; I was the shittiest brother ever, hands down.
Especially
because I was more worried about what the cryptic warning Webs had given me
meant than I was about the half million text messages from my brother.
Grin.
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