Comeback by Catherine Gayle Read Free Book Online Page B

his own legs!” Hugo said in fervent awe. “I’m going to score a goal just like that.”
    “Do you think he can teach us how?” Nils added.
    “I doubt even he knows how he did it,” I said, laughing and trying to move into the living room with both boys hanging on to me, but they weren’t making it very easy on me.
    “He wouldn’t have scored on you,” Hugo said emphatically.
    The Coyotes had come back in the third period and tied the game, but with only twenty-seven seconds left in regulation, Ghost had managed to get out on a breakaway. He’d had a defender coming hot on his heels, but he’d somehow deked a couple of times and then dropped the puck back between his skates, getting off a backhander. I was pretty sure he’d actually lost the puck in all the stickhandling he was doing, getting too fancy with it, and that was why it had gone between his skates like that. But he’d still managed to score an amazing goal, so I doubted that Bergy would give him a hard time over it. Next time, though, Ghost wasn’t likely to be able to repeat a performance like that. Bergy would want him to keep it simple. If he’d lost that puck completely and hadn’t managed to get off the shot, the defender would have overtaken him and turned it back the other way, and the game would have had a completely different complexion.
    Bergy was already upset enough that we’d given up a two-goal lead in the third, capitulating to their style of play instead of sticking to our speed-and-transition game. They wanted to bang bodies, and we’d let them. We tried to do some of that ourselves, but playing a hard-nosed, physical sort of hockey wasn’t where our team excelled. We were built to fly, not to bruise.
    I finally made it to an armchair and collapsed into it, and Nils climbed on my lap. His brother joined Elin on the sofa. She’d been there, right by Emma’s side, since I’d walked through the door. I was beginning to notice that Elin stayed with Emma almost constantly, and I didn’t think it was because she was trying to make the most of the time they had left. I got the sense that she was taking care of her mother, almost as much as Henrik was. She looked after her little brothers a lot, too, always being sure they cleaned up after themselves and ate their vegetables. She was a little mama, far too grown up for her age. I wanted to take some of that responsibility off her shoulders, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know if she’d let me.
    “Are you going to play tomorrow?” Nils asked, oblivious to the direction my thoughts had gone.
    “Maybe.” Bergy hadn’t definitively said which of the two of us would start the game. With it being a back-to-back, my chances of getting in were pretty decent, especially with the way Hunter had struggled in the third period tonight. But it was just as likely that Bergy would want to test Hunter early in the season to see what he could handle. I likely wouldn’t know whether I was going to play or not until we went in for morning skate tomorrow.
    “I hope you get to play,” Nils said. “You’re the best.”
    I scrubbed a hand affectionately over his hair in response. I doubted there were many people who would agree with his assessment right now, but he was allowed to be biased. I was his uncle.
    “Vladdie said a bad word,” Hugo put in.
    “And you better not repeat it!” Elin said. “Mama doesn’t like you using those words.”
    “That’s right,” I said. “None of us can use those words.” I always had to think a lot harder when I was around the kids to be sure I wasn’t cursing in front of them. I had to pretend there was a microphone in front of me and a camera recording everything I said or else I would slip up more often than not.
    “I won’t say it,” Nils said, big eyes serious as he looked at me.
    Emma moved her head slightly in response. She’d been typing into her computer since I’d come in. She used a text-to-speech program to communicate since the