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Anton by Brenda Rothert
Chicago Blaze, #1
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Anton
My brother’s a fucking asshole. I’ve known this since I first learned how to walk thirty years ago. My mom loves to tell the story about me taking my first tentative steps across our tiny Saint Petersburg apartment, my lips pursed in concentration. That is, until my twin brother Alexei crawled up behind me like a bat out of hell, laughing as he upended me and I fell on my ass.
“How’s that water?” He grins obnoxiously at me from across the table at our favorite Chicago steakhouse, his first glass of Heineken nearly gone already.
“Water’s water,” I say, shrugging. “How’s your liver?”
“My liver’s a fucking champ. It’s scrappy. If there was a Hunger Games for livers, mine would definitely be the winner.”
“You think?”
He arches his brows. “You only live once, man.”
Our server ends the conversation as he approaches with our dinner. Even though I devoured a salad already, my stomach growls as the plate with double portions of grilled chicken and steamed vegetables is set in front of me.
Alexei looks just as famished as he eyes his sixteen-ounce filet mignon and an enormous baked potato loaded with butter and sour cream.
“Another Heineken, sir?” the server asks him.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“I’ll bring more bread, too.” The server picks up the basket Alexei emptied, slathering each piece with butter as I ate my salad. “Anything else I can get you?”
“I think we’re good, thanks,” I say.
We both eat in silence for a couple minutes, until my brother sets down his fork and gives me a stern look.
“You do realize I had the game tonight, right? If Lenz hadn’t been fucking asleep in front of the net, we’d have won. Easily.”
“Here we go.” I roll my eyes.
“Don’t start that shit, Anton. You know I’m right.”
“I know you lost.”
“Lenz practically escorted you to the inside of our net, man.”
“4–2.” I remind him of the score. “A decisive win, I’d say.”
“We’ll have a new goalie by Monday, guaranteed.”
“We smoked you, Lex. The big talking Comets got shut down.”
He glares at me as he puts a giant bite of steak into his mouth and chews it slowly. This is his old trick for thinking of a comeback when he’s got nothing.
My brother and I played on the same team from the time we immigrated to the US from Russia at age five until we both graduated from Boston College, where we played hockey on athletic scholarships. My full-time job in college, in addition to playing hockey and studying for class, was keeping my hard-partying brother out of trouble so he wouldn’t lose his scholarship.
After college, we entered the NHL draft and signed with different teams. There’s only room for one Petrov brother on an NHL team, because while our personalities are like night and day, we’re very much the same on the ice. We’re both first line centers who fight hard and never quit. Both team captains who accept nothing less than one hundred percent. And we’re also both stubborn as hell.
Alexei started out playing for Minneapolis, but now he’s with the Austin Comets and I’m with the Chicago Blaze. No one gives me more shit than my brother, but no one loves me more either. I know for sure he’d walk through fire for me, and I’d do the same for him. Dinner at Robertson’s Steakhouse is our tradition after every game we play against each other in Chicago, no matter how pissed off or beat down the loser feels.
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