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“Hopeless,” he repeated and hugged me tighter to his chest.

Eighteen

Max

Ihad the worst fucking game of my career.

Maybe they’ll send you straight back home.

I somehow managed to hit my own teammate with my stick—twice!—and had hit him so hard Bo blacked out for a second. Jerke immediately pulled him off the ice.

And that fucking arsehole of a Fox man, Jarno Lipponen, kept taunting and mocking me. Untilhesnapped. I had never seen Arne lose his composure before.

One minute Lipponen called me a fucking loser, and the next my Viking had him up against the boards, stick caging him by the neck.

It took Nikolai and me to pry him off the Polar Fox hybrid. Arne breathed like an angry Dragon, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see smoke curling from his nostrils.

“Game misconduct,” the confused, but angry, referee snapped, daring Arne to argue. He didn’t.

All the fight had gone out of him. He glanced at me, then down, and skated towards the Pumas’ bench. His substitute, one of our rookies, entered the penalty box.

We lost spectacularly without our two main defencemen. They gave their best, but Nik wasn’t in his usual form. Luis tried, too, but it was his first game with the team.

The poor thing.

Arne had showered and changed, and a tired Jerke led him away for a talk in his office when we approached the locker room.

Nobody spoke much.

“Sorry, kid. Your first game with us should have been a better one.” Our blond defenceman clapped a hand on the rookie’s shoulder.

Luis gave him a wide smile, clearly high on postgame dopamine. “It’s okay. I got an assist. Not a bad turnout for my first game with you guys.”

Nik huffed a laugh. “True dat, kiddo.”

We all showered and changed, and because it would have looked weird to hang around and wait for Arne, I left the rink.

I had barely entered my flat when my phone chimed with a message.

Arne: Can I drop by?

Arne: I want to see you

Shit.

Arne was never one to use excessive emojis, but this level of neutrality was unusual even for him. Maybe he had confided in Jerke…

Is he going to end this between us?

Max: Sure.

He arrived in under fifteen minutes, coming straight to my place from the rink. He was still in his functional gear, his dark hair soft and gleaming in the overhead lights and an unreadable expression in his startling blue eyes.

Damn, why is he so beautiful?

“Hey, can I come in?” No smile, no wink, just careful neutrality.

We’re over.