Rites of Passage

Prologue - Rites of Passage

DREW

"I SHOULDN'T EVEN be here," I said. I tugged at the collar of my dress shirt and tie, wishing they did a better job of hiding my scars. That was a vain hope, though. The gash in my neck stretched from behind my ear almost all the way to my Adam's apple. Unless I wanted to wear a full scarf or something else completely out of place in this drought and heat, there was no hiding it. This ugly thing was out there for the whole world to see, whether I liked it or not.

And I most definitely did not like it. Especially because it still hurt like a son of a bitch, depending on how I moved. The wound had closed and the stitches were gone, but I didn't know if my neck would ever feel the same again. I could personally guarantee that taking a hockey skate to the throat was not in anybody's best interests, just in case anyone out there was wondering. Not only that, but I felt like it branded me, my own personal scarlet reminder of the things I should have done differently in life before it was too late.

Dmitri Nazarenko rolled his eyes, one of the few features on his face not hidden behind his beard. He'd shaved it off at one point during the season, but now he was letting it grow back. At least so far, he seemed to be keeping it trimmed and tidy, unlike before, when he'd looked more like a lumberjack than a hockey player. "Why you shouldn't be here? You're my teammate. We want you here." He shrugged.

"London hardly knows me. Why would she want me at her wedding?"

"Because I want you," Dima said.

He was deliberately being obtuse. And my head was such a fucking mess I didn't even take the obvious opportunity to crack a joke about Dima wanting me.

I was one of only two guys from among our Tulsa Thunderbirds teammates who had shown up here today. Ray "Razor" Chambers and his Russian wife, Viktoriya, had stuck around for the summer-Razor had said something about his wife's citizenship status being the reason they weren't heading to Canada, not that I'd paid much attention-so they had shown up. Razor always called her Tori. Anyway, she and Dima had a weird brother-sister sort of relationship going, so their presence at the festivities wasn't too surprising.

The rest of the team had gone back to their off-season homes to spend the summer, and since Dima and London wanted to keep it small, they hadn't invited everyone to come back for the ceremony. Because most of the guys probably would have come if he'd invited them.

London's family was all present, and a few of her coworkers had come to support her on her big day. Dima had flown in his best friend, Sergei Mironov, and Sergei's mother from Siberia. Otherwise, there were only a smattering of their friends and acquaintances.

Under normal circumstances, I would be gone, too, spending the summer with my family in Victoria and not in this hot, dry misery. But this off-season was anything but normal, and the drought that blanketed all of Oklahoma was far from the only reason. My mother would tell me I was acting like a Grumpy Gus. She'd probably be right.

There was no getting around it. I'd already been in a bad enough mood well before my injury in the final game of the regular season due to my own marriage falling apart. But now it wasn't just my marriage that was gone; it was my entire life. Or at least my life as I had always known it.

The officiant signaled to Dima that he was ready to begin, so instead of arguing with Dima any more than I had been, I got out of the way and took a seat near the back.

There weren't too many people here, but at least if I stayed away from the rest of them, I couldn't cast too heavy a pall over the proceedings. I felt like that was all I did these days. I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to be around me, because I sure as hell didn't.