Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Claimed by the Rival Hockey God novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Safety Net
At the Harbormen gala Dario toasts his nineteenth girlfriend and calls Annette his safety net; she hands back her lanyard and walks out, and the rival captain outside gives her a card and a 6 a.m. flight.
Dario Marchetti raised a champagne glass in front of nine hundred people and called me his safety net.
It was the Boston Harbormen's charity night, in the ballroom of the Harbor Hotel.
He stood on the stage in a tux with one arm around a woman in a silver dress.
Her name was Brielle, and he had known her for six weeks.
"Everybody, meet the future Mrs. Marchetti!" he shouted.
The whole room roared, and phones went up.
I had sent eighteen goodbye bouquets on his behalf, and Brielle was on track to be the nineteenth.
I stood by the bar with my iPad, which had tomorrow's game film on it.
At 6:40 that evening he had texted me. "Whatever I say tonight is for the sponsors. You know you're my person."
I had read it in the coat check and smiled at my phone.
Now he found me in the crowd and pointed.
"And that's Annette, back there with the iPad."
Heads turned, and a spotlight swung over and hit me in the face.
"Ten years, and she still hasn't dropped me. Best safety net a guy ever had!"
The room laughed.
Somebody whistled.
A man near me held his phone up and filmed my face.
Gianna, Dario's mother, stood beside me in red silk, and she took my hand.
"Don't make that face, bella," she whispered. "He's nervous. Nothing changes for you, I promise."
Gianna had been hugging me since the week of the funeral.
She had also handled my parents' insurance money since that week, so I had never once opened a bank statement.
Her kitchen drawer held every paper I had ever signed, and I trusted her more than anyone alive.
"He does everything with me, you know!" Dario called, grinning. "Film study, meal plan, taxes. Annette, take a bow!"
He actually waited for me to do it.
I was eighteen when the fire took my parents and my little brother, and the Marchetti house was the only door that opened for me.
I turned down a graduate program in Colorado to stay in Boston near that door.
I took notes on every game Dario played for ten years, because he never read a play in his life.
I held the iPad against my chest.
Then I walked through nine hundred people, up the three steps to the stage, and nobody laughed anymore.
Dario's smile wavered. "Nettie, come on."
I took the Harbormen staff lanyard off my neck.
I held it out to Brielle.
She looked at me with big wet eyes. "I don't understand."
"His locker combination is 0719," I said. "He forgets it every month. You'll need that."
She took the lanyard.
"And you should know I send flowers after the breakup," I said. "The florist has your address already."
A woman in the front row gasped.
Dario stepped closer and dropped his voice. "Don't do this here. You're embarrassing me."
"Find another net," I said.
So I stepped out.
I walked down the steps, past the cameras, past Gianna with her hand over her mouth, and out through the lobby doors.
It was pouring outside.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
Gianna: "Come home, bella. We will fix this tonight. Everything stays as it is."
The condo I lived in was on the third floor of the Marchetti building, and I had never paid rent for it.
I stood under the hotel awning, shaking, with nowhere to go.
"You have good timing," a man said behind me.
I turned around.
Cillian Cahill, the captain of the New York Ironclads, leaned against a pillar with his tie in his hand.
He was the biggest man in the lobby and the one man Dario's team hated most.
His nose had been broken at least twice, and he looked at me.
"You're going to tell me I'm the safety net now too," I said.
"No."
He reached into his jacket and took out a card.
"The whiteboard in the visiting locker room, last March," he said. "The breakout diagram with the little arrows. That's your handwriting."
I said nothing.
"Your arrows have beaten my team six times," he said. "I've been trying to find your name for a year."
He put the card in my hand, and his fingers were warm and rough.
On the back, in blue pen, he had written a 6:00 a.m. flight to New York.
"Come beat him with me," Cillian said.
I looked at the card, and then at the doors where Dario was shoving through the crowd, shouting my name.
I closed my fingers around it.
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