Page 5 of Ice Cold, Red Hot (Coldwater Firehawks Hockey #1)

CELESTE

As soon as school officially started, I was under water faster than I would’ve ever thought possible.

My workload in the first couple of days was nearly triple what it had been as an undergrad—and not completely thanks to other people giving me work.

No, a big part of that was my own doing.

I had no opportunity for failure. Unlike some of the kids here, whose families could provide a safety net if their academic plans didn’t work out, I was the first in my family to go to college—definitely the first to go to grad school.

And while I knew my parents would love me even if I failed, that was something I would never allow myself to do.

Shepherd’s presence continued to be both a distraction and a thorn in my side. I hated that my ears perked up every time I heard voices in the hallway, every time I heard the door across the hall open or shut.

I tried to play it off, but evidently, it came out as anger.

“What do you have against the guys on the hockey team?” Nat asked me one afternoon as we walked back from campus together.

“What do you mean? Nothing. I don’t care about them.” Might’ve gone a little too far in my defense there.

“Yeah, I would assume you didn’t care about them, except it seems like you really do care. Not in a good way.”

“It’s nothing. They’re just a bunch of entitled jocks who think they own the school. It’s annoying.”

Nat looked at me longer than I would’ve liked, then let out a light shrug of her shoulders. “If you say so.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that I remember that my first crush looked a lot like hatred.”

I stopped walking and turned to my best friend. “First of all, I’m way too old for a first crush. Secondly, there is no crushing happening here. Only irritation. I’m trying to focus, and those guys are the complete opposite of focus.”

Nat was wearing a very irritating smile, one that told me she was about to say something I wouldn’t like at all. “You only think that because you’ve never seen them play hockey.”

I let out a bark of laughter. “That’s because I don’t give two shits about hockey.”

Nat raised an eyebrow. “You can’t dislike something you know nothing about.”

She had a point. I disliked Shepherd very much because I knew way too much about him.

As we started walking again, she hooked her arm through mine. “So I guess I’m going to have to educate you,” she said.

I did not like where this was going. “Educate me? ”

“Yep. First game of the season is tonight. You and me—we’re going.”

“No. I don’t have time to go to a hockey game.”

“Sure you do. It’ll be the most exciting sixty minutes of your life, trust me.”

Nat was not taking no for an answer, and that was how, a few hours later, I found myself sitting rinkside at the first—and hopefully only—hockey game I would ever attend.

Nat and I sat side by side, surrounded by other students who chattered and laughed as we waited for warm-ups to begin.

She explained that each team would take the ice to warm up, and then the game would start.

I had no idea why we’d had to come this early.

I was about to voice my complaints about wasting time just to get good seats when the Coldwater Firehawks took the ice.

They were decked out in pads and gear that obscured most of their faces, but I would’ve known Shepherd anywhere.

Even without the name Renshaw printed boldly across the back of his blue-and-white jersey, I would’ve recognized him.

By the way he held his broad shoulders. By the tilt of his square chin. By the swagger with which he moved.

On skates, Shepherd was somehow even more devastatingly handsome. I didn’t have to see his face to understand the way his body moved beneath the pads and the uniform. Graceful and deadly. Those were the words that came into my mind as I watched him fly around the ice.

Ice skating was something I’d done as a kid—once or twice. It had been a shaky-ankled, unsteady, silly thing to do. I might’ve gone around the rink a couple times and then collapsed in a heap of giggles as I took off the uncomfortable skates and ate pizza with my friends.

But this? This was something completely different.

The men moving around the ice now did so with the targeted focus of a deadly missile. There was intent and purpose in every motion they made, and I found myself unable to look away as Shepherd warmed up with his team.

When the game began, Shepherd took center ice across the small circle from the captain of the other team, and I found that my heart was in my throat.

Shepherd crouched low, stick hovering over the ice, his whole body tight with focus.

Across from him, the other player did the same, their movements sharp and mirrored, both waiting for something?—

The puck dropped.

Everything exploded. It was too fast for me to process. One second, Shepherd flicked his stick, and the next, the puck was gone, swallowed up by the whirlwind of motion around him.

The game wasn’t like anything I’d expected.

There was no slow build-up, no easing into it.

It was relentless, constant, a battle fought in motion.

Bodies crashed into the boards with the force of a speeding train.

Sticks clashed. The sound of blades cutting into the ice was a sharp, rhythmic scrape that reverberated through my bones.

And Shepherd?

I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Even when he didn’t have the puck, he was moving, circling, adjusting, watching.

He skated like the ice belonged to him, his legs powerful, his movements effortless, his confidence undeniable.

At some point, someone sent the puck toward him, and Shepherd caught it like it was second nature, like the thing was drawn to him.

In an instant, he was gone, cutting through the other players like they were nothing, shifting direction so fast my brain could barely keep up.

I had no idea what he was trying to do, but it didn’t matter—I felt it.

The sheer force of him.

Then, without warning, he pulled his stick back and slammed the puck toward the goal. The shot was so fast, I almost missed it. The goalie lunged, barely getting a piece of it, and the puck deflected to the side, not going in the net.

Bodies crashed together in front of the net, sticks colliding, fighting for control, but then—somehow—of course—Shepherd was there again.

He shoved past someone, angled his stick just right, and nudged the puck toward a teammate.

A flick of the wrist. A flash of red light. A roar of sound.

I sucked in a breath.

Shepherd barely reacted, just a tap of his stick against the ice, a brief, unreadable glance toward his teammate. No celebration, no over-the-top moment—just calm, steady focus as he circled back toward the bench.

Like it was just another play. Like it wasn’t completely breathtaking to watch. What must it have been like to live it? To know you were solely responsible for the insanity of the crowd shrieking all around us.

I exhaled slowly, my pulse still hammering, my fingers curled tight into my lap.

Nat bumped my arm, grinning. “They’re pretty focused now, huh? ”

I swallowed.

Watching him like this—seeing him in his world, where he was untouchable, undeniable, unstoppable—It was doing something dangerous to me.

The game went on that way, with Shepherd at the center of it all any time he was on the ice.

And then, in the last period, I watched in horror as one of the other team’s players barreled toward one of our guys, bending down low and aiming with his shoulder.

He slammed into him, catching our guy in the gut and throwing him hard into the boards with a resounding crash.

I knew nothing about the game, but even I knew that was a dirty hit.

“What the hell?” I asked.

Nat sat at my side, tense. “That was Griff.” I glanced at her to find worry etched into every feature of her face. Interesting.

I didn’t have time to say anything else, because suddenly, the whole team was flying toward Griff, lying on the ice.

Shepherd was at the front of the rush, and before I understood his intentions, he threw off his gloves, dodged the ref, and yanked the jersey of the guy who’d slammed Griff so they were facing each other.

Shepherd’s fist slammed into the guy’s helmet with a sickening thud, knuckles colliding with hard plastic instead of skin. The effort barely fazed him—just pissed him off more, even though Shepherd’s hand must’ve been demolished.

But he wasn’t done. With one hand, he fisted the guy’s jersey, yanking him forward. With the other, he ripped at his opponent’s helmet, tearing it loose before throwing it aside like it offended him.

And then, he reached up and pulled off his own.

A hush rippled through the crowd. I didn’t know much about hockey fights, but that felt important. Like a declaration. Like a warning.

Shepherd barely took a second to steady himself before swinging again.

This time, nothing was in the way. His bare fist cracked against the guy’s cheek, snapping his head to the side.

The crowd erupted. The guy stumbled, shaking his head, and then—he swung back.

I gasped as Shepherd’s head jerked with the impact, but he didn’t even flinch. He just licked at the corner of his mouth like he tasted blood—like he liked it.

And then, he came back harder. It wasn’t just fists flying—it was rage. Precision. A raw, violent kind of beauty.

And I couldn’t look away.

The refs stormed in, grabbing at Shepherd, wrestling him back, trying to pull him off. He fought against them, still trying to get one last hit in. His chest was heaving, fists still clenched, knuckles already split open.

And then, his eyes lifted. Straight to me.

My pulse stuttered.

His face was flushed, wild, his jaw tight, his expression unreadable. But there was something dark in his gaze. Something possessive.

Something that made my stomach twist in a way I didn’t want to analyze.

Beside me, Nat let out a breathless laugh. “Yeah. That’s why they call hockey fights ‘five minutes for fighting and a lifetime of foreplay.’”

I couldn’t even respond.

Because Shepherd Renshaw was still looking at me.

And I wasn’t sure if he’d won the fight… or if I had just lost something to him I’d never get back.

When the place had calmed down and Nat seemed to have reassured herself that Griff was okay, I turned to her.

“What the hell was that?”

The game had resumed as if nothing had happened. As if two guys hadn’t just beat the shit out of each other in front of an entire stadium full of people.

“That’s hockey,” Nat said with a smile. She raised an eyebrow and bumped her shoulder against mine. “Kinda hot, huh?”

“I mean…” I didn’t know what I thought about what I had just seen. Everything in me was going haywire, thinking about the look on Shepherd’s face—the way he made eye contact with me, like he’d known I was sitting here the whole time.

“The funny thing is, Shepherd’s not even the enforcer.”

“Enforcer? What’s that?” It sounded like some kind of stormtrooper in a Star Wars movie.

“The enforcer is the guy on the team who handles the fighting. That’s actually Griff’s job. But Ren has a tough time with… controlling himself.”

Nat giggled as she said this, and I did my best not to let my mind race back to this summer—when Shepherd had had some trouble controlling himself. When I had prided myself on my ability to make him lose control.

“So fighting is part of the game? Like, it’s in the rules? ”

“I mean, he did get thrown out of the game.”

I refocused on the ice, where the Firehawks were attacking the puck into the net one final time to close out the game 4-2. When it was over, we stood, and I was surprised to see Dr. Gunning making her way through the stands to where I stood.

“Celeste, I’m glad to find you here.” She smiled at me, glanced at Nat, and then continued.

“I’ve actually got to pick up some notes the athletic trainers for the hockey team are helping me compile—some of the research on sports psychology I told you about.

Would you mind coming down to the locker room with me so I can make an introduction? ”

Nat elbowed me and wiggled her eyebrows, as if I’d just been invited to the locker room to watch the team take showers.

But Dr. Gunning’s presence had reminded me that, even though I might have come to the game recreationally, I was here at Coldwater to work .

Not to watch Shepherd pound people into the ice.

And not to get all hot in the lady bits when he gave me a certain meaningful glance.

I needed to find a way to steel myself against Shepherd Renshaw and the effect he had on me. The only way I could think to do that was to stay as far away from him as I possibly could.

Of course, going to the locker room after a hockey game was probably not the best way to avoid Shepherd Renshaw, captain of the hockey team.

Luckily, Shepherd was nowhere in sight as Dr. Gunning escorted me to the training room. It connected to the locker room, but most of the team would be busy dressing down, debriefing, and showering, which left the athletic trainers with a few minutes to talk.

Dr. Gunning introduced me to Joseph Weeden and Sonia Leeds, who were working with her on the sports psychology study she had suggested I might be interested in. Sonia produced a thumb drive and handed it to Dr. Gunning.

“It was nice to meet you both,” I told them as Dr. Gunning and I left the training room.

“These kinds of connections will be very important for you as we do our research, Celeste,” Dr. Gunning told me.

In the hallway outside the training room, she stopped suddenly. “Oh, I forgot—I need to ask a question. I’ll see you in my office tomorrow.”

Dr. Gunning disappeared back inside the training room, leaving me standing in the hallway, not quite sure which way was out. I was still considering my options when the locker room door opened, and Shepherd Renshaw stepped out.