Page 42

Chapter 42

Nat

We make it to the rink with thirty minutes to spare.

The place is packed. I’ve never seen so many cars overflowing the parking lot, so many people crammed outside on the sidewalk. Luckily, I have a designated employee spot around the back, or we’d never have made it.

I let us in through the back door. We head down the hall, and I remind myself to keep breathing. Olli walks close enough for me to take comfort in his warmth. If he senses how my heart races or my breath snags, he doesn’t let on.

But the glance he tosses my way says he understands how much this game means.

The team’s inside the locker room, music blaring, in various states of dress or undress.

“Shit, Cap! You made it!” Everton yells, the instant before he barrels across the locker room to engulf Olli in an embrace. “I’ve basically been shitting myself here.”

Olli smiles—tired and a little wavery—and gently nudges Everton off. “I’m here. And I’m gonna skate. But I’m gonna suck, just to warn you.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, I’m a bit . . . under the weather. But we’ll talk about that in a minute.” Olli slinks off to his cubby, leaving me standing in the doorway .

“Are you skating?” Charlie’s voice is a low murmur beside me. “You got an invite, right?”

“I’m skating,” I say.

But before I can slip out to find a spot in one of the public locker rooms, Everton pops up in front of me. “You’re changing in here, Forty-Seven.”

I flinch in surprise, but don’t bother denying it. Everton winks, lays a finger across his lips. His other hand extends towards the cubby beside Olli. “Sit, Taylor.”

My stomach churns.

“You look a little green, Tay.” Charlie leans over my shoulder. “Nervous?”

“Don’t remind me, asshole.” I shove him away, then head towards that cubby. “I’m already doing deep breathing fucking zen exercises over here.”

Charlie follows. “That’s so cute.”

“Fuck off.” I lift a middle finger, but he just grins back, using what feels like far too many teeth. “You’re a shit best friend.”

“That I am.” He dives for his cubby on the other side of Olli before I can follow through on any inherent rageful urges.

“He’s fun,” Olli says simply. “Really upstanding guy.”

I laugh in spite of myself. “I’ve known him since we were like . . . seven.”

“Really?”

“My curse.” I bite the inside of my lip. “His too.”

“Yeah, I see that.” Olli tips his shirt from his shoulders, and my eyes stray towards the ink on his back. I trace the lines, shifting over his muscles, trying to uncover the scars.

I don’t find them.

Still, a vise of pressure like icy fingers grips my lungs, and my heart beats too quickly. I feel high again—on adrenaline and nerves, on pressure and angst. This time, there's no coke chemically heating my blood to a froth. Clouding my mind to rationality and reason —

“You breathing?” Olli leans in towards me. “Need to make sure you’re breathing.”

“I’m breathing,” I say, and despite the tumultuous current of my thoughts, I smile. “Thanks.”

“You got this, Mouse.” His voice is soft, a murmur, little more than a whisper. “This game? You got it.”

“Sure.” My reply is half laugh, half scoff. “Just like all the rest.”

Without warning, his fingers close around mine. Lifting my hand from the hem of my shirt, leveling it out flat between us. My heart thrums in my ears at the feel of those fingers—soft, warm, ever so gentle.

Like a whisper of skin on skin.

Like wind through the trees.

Like a suggestion, rather than a touch. I can only stare at those long brown fingers on my paler hand as his thumb smooths over the ridge of knuckles, just beneath the ink scrawled on my fingers.

“I mean it. You got it. And if you don’t?” He shrugs, and his eyes bore into mine, dark, untouched by the light of the locker room. “Then I got you. You know that, right? I got you.”

“Right.” I exhale a slow, shaky breath. But he’s right. Because maybe I didn’t have it in me to bet on myself—then or now. But tonight? I’m not betting on me.

I’m betting on Avery Bennett.

So I snatch up the jersey balled into the cubby next to me, careful not to let the number show as I stuff it into my helmet along with my mask. Then I slip out of the locker room and into the hall to finish changing so no one’s privy to my deceit.

I nearly run headlong into a broad-shouldered man standing outside the door. “Sorr— Jess ?”

I stop so short, the door thumps against my ass as it closes behind me. Because there, right in front of me, is none other than Jesse Taylor. In pleated dress pants and a button-down.

I stare .

“Hey, Nat.” Jess ruffles his hair, offers me an awkward grimace-smile. “You’re playing, huh?”

“Surprised?” But the word doesn’t come out with the bite I intended.

“No.” He tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear. “You always were way better than you thought.”

I huff, a sad sort of half laugh. I’ve no idea how to respond to such a sentiment. Fortunately, my brain finds something else to focus on. “You’re not dressed.”

“No.” Jess’s smile is half a grimace. “You kidding? I wouldn’t last one round in the Ice Out. I could barely watch it.”

I almost laugh. Almost. But I’m too shocked to say anything.

“Nah, tonight’s all you, little brother.” He tilts two fingers against his forehead in a mock salute. “Good luck.”

And then he turns and walks away. Leaves me standing there, shocked, like someone’s dumped cold water over my head.

Eerie silence washes over the arena as the national anthem pours out over the crowd, the ice, the players waiting atop it. Nothing has ever felt so foreign and familiar all at once, the emotions so tangled and interwoven I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

It’s been eighteen years since the last time I did this.

It’s like no time has passed.

It’s like the entire world’s come between.

It’s so different—the cloth mask presses up against my cheeks, around my mouth. The other four skaters on my team, and the opposition hovering across the ice, also cloak themselves in obscurity.

And yet, it’s the same. All of us in this arena caught up in this singular moment, the pause between breaths, the calm before the hurricane. Unified, all of us humans, by this one simple song—actually, Olli once informed me, the national anthem is a poem set to an old British drinking shanty.

Masks or not, jerseys or shirts or pads or skates and sticks, Ice Out and Dingoes—it’s pucks on the ice and those who chase dreams across it. It’s hockey. And all of us in this arena were born for it.

The anthem ends.

The cheering resumes. Flashing lights and stomping feet and pounding music and pulsing energy that floods me in a torrent I haven’t felt in eighteen years. The rink hasn’t seen this level of excitement in almost as long either.

But now isn’t the time to think about that. Not when I’m standing on the blue line, my makeshift team around me, and the crowd around all of us.

I don’t know who my teammates are. We’re all masked, our numbers assigned by Coach.

Except, of course, I know exactly who stands beside me. Who’s always stood beside me, since the very first day he waltzed into town and sat down beside me at the bar.

Olli James, my Aspen, my little ghost. He’s wearing his mask and his Twenty-Three jersey. But I’ve traded my Forty-Seven for Avery Bennett’s Seventeen.

Ironically, my high school number.

Olli and I skate side by side, from the blue line to the center face-off dot, where the ref stands with the puck. My heart thuds a steady rhythm against my ribs as I crouch down on the right side. On Olli’s other side, Charlie’s skating left wing; he tilts his head towards me in acknowledgement.

Olli flexes into position in the middle, head to head with the opposing center—Devereaux, I think. The way Olli moves, so soft and silent, I can’t help but think of him as a predator. A panther, poised for action.

Focus. Determination. That’s what will win us this game.

Wanting it fucking more.

The puck drops in slow motion .

The music cuts out as it tumbles from the ref’s hands, but Olli’s moving long before that. He beats Dev to the drop, snaps the puck back towards our right defenseman.

I’m moving too.

So when our D lifts his head, looking for an open pass, I’m ready. Puck to tape, I catch the pass without breaking stride. And when Olli cuts hard cross-ice, I’m expecting that too.

“Tay!” he yells, but he doesn’t need to because I’m already on the same page. My pass hits his stick half a second before he crosses the blue line. He’s moving so fast, he barely has to deke before he’s around that first opposing defenseman.

I fly up alongside him. One quick flick of his hands has the second defenseman looking the wrong way and the puck on my stick this time. I fake the pass, fire back, and Olli’s landing the one-timer deep in the back corner of the net.

The crowd explodes. Music thunders from the speakers.

We’re less than twenty seconds into the game.

“Yeahhh boi!” Holls crashes into my back, wrapping his arms around my pads, and I’m grinning. Olli’s grinning. The rest of our line—grinning behind their masks as we hop onto the bench.

The play starts up, music and crowd fall silent, and I settle in next to Olli to dump water on my face and watch the second and third lines tear up my carefully cut ice.

Then we’re back out.

It’s not like the first shift. We scrabble in the neutral zone. Pass-pass—and Dev swoops in to intercept. He’s playing good—hands smooth, feet smooth, head up. But there’s one thing he doesn’t have.

Olli shoots across the ice to Dev’s side. His body connects, the puck swings loose—and I swoop in to snatch it up.

Breath tears at my lungs, and my legs burn. In an instant, a defenseman’s on me, his shoulder ramming mine to throw me off course—“Yo, Seventeen. Not so fast this time, eh?”

The heavy body collides with mine, slamming me into the boards with a resounding smash, but I bounce the puck up the boards towards Charlie.

“Better run if you’re gonna catch that.” I nudge the D off and beeline for the bench. Leaving the defenseman—some Ice Out grunt who thought he was tangling with Avery—flat-footed in the neutral zone.

The next three shifts go the same. Back-and-forth battles that lead to a handful of paltry shots on net from both sides.

“What happened to all your energy?” Coach demands as we pile onto the bench after our third unsuccessful shift.

“They got half the Dingoes on their team,” Olli says through panted breaths. “They’re reading us.”

“Then don’t be so fucking predictable.”

At which point, a masked opponent hops the boards to snatch up a breakaway. A quick flick of his hands and the puck’s in the net, and our whole bench starts swearing.

We’re back out. Crouching for another face off. Olli wins back to the defense, and our D sends it forward to Holls on the left wing. I cut in for the pass, head-man it forward to Olli as he soars over the blue line. He draws the opposing D in close, drops the puck back to the point.

I tear free of the player attempting to cover me, wide open for an instant, an instant our D sees. The puck sails across the ice to tap my tape, and the player I lost comes charging back.

One deft flick of my wrists and he’s miles behind, and I’m setting up for a shot—a shot I could take, maybe should take.

I hesitate a second too long, and someone shoves me hard. Nearly throws my feet out from under me with the force of his hit. I lose the puck, my balance, stumble to try to regain my footing.

“Nice job, Seventeen.” It’s the same grunt as before, and he’s gone before I can recover.

My hands shake with adrenaline as I head back to the bench.

“Don’t let that get in your head,” Olli murmurs beside me, but I do, because who does this guy think he is, picking on a kid like Avery ?

Another line change has us flying over the boards. Olli cuts in to snatch up a wayward puck, and I haul across the ice to get open as he flies over the blue line.

Me and him, him and me. Pressure from the D forces him back behind the net, so I swoop low along the boards to give him a pass. He sees me—

Someone grabs the back of my jersey, hauling me away. I whirl around to shove the guy off me.

It’s the Ice Out grunt. Picking on Avery. Again.

My gloves and stick hit the ice.

Whistles ricochet in the background—refs? Refs I don’t hear, because my vision’s tunneling down to me and him, the two of us with our fists lifted.

“You wanna go, kid?” he grunts.

He’s bigger than me, which is probably why he thinks I’m Avery. But I’d be willing to bet he hasn’t tangled in quite as many stupid fights as I have. “Bring it.”

He moves first, fist swinging. I duck smoothly aside, and my answering left cross doesn’t miss its mark. My knuckles crack his masked cheek. He stumbles.

“Nat.” Gloved hands circle my shoulders, spinning me, and I turn to shrug him off, but suddenly a helmet crushes against mine, and soft, dark eyes bore down on me. A soft, sweet-bitter scent invades my nose.

Forehead to forehead, Olli James stares me down. “Nat. I got you. Breathe for me, okay?”

I breathe. Like I have no other choice, like his command fucking compels me, like the word of Olli compels me, pulls me through the red of my rage.

I breathe. Strawberries. Coffee. I breathe.

I’m thinking of the last time I fought, the last time my knuckles bled, and we sat in the locker room, me and the ghost of my present, holding each other together while he taped me back up .

“I’ve got you,” he says again, his gloves on my shoulders, his forehead still against mine, sharing my breaths. “I’ve got you. Breathe.”

I fucking breathe.

I’m back on earth, back on the ice, breathing, struggling to remember even the shreds of my anger. I breathe.

“You ready to show them all how this game’s supposed to be played?” Olli murmurs.

So we do. And this time, when I’ve got the puck in front of the net, lining up for a shot, it’s Olli with me.

The goalie goes down, and I turn and fire a pass under the second D’s stick.

Olli finishes the play as the goalie dives.

The arena explodes.

“That was the sweetest fucking goal ever,” Holls says, mashing his glove into my chest.

“You’re making me look better than I deserve,” Olli pants around the mask.

“Never,” I reply.

“Now do it again!” Coach growls.

And we do. We’ve found our rhythm, Olli and I. We’re like machines, built only to skate, pass, score, win. We are of one mind, puck sliding back and forth across the ice between us to now and again slip past the goalie and find the back of the net.

But even here, together, Olli is the true talent behind the plays. I am but a complement to his artist’s prowess. The audience knows it, too. They scream his number every time he touches the puck, watch with bated breath as he crouches for the face-off. They roar for every perfect pass, every shot, every flick of his wrists, every smooth deke.

He understands the game in an instinct beyond teaching, beyond learning, beyond developing, and that makes him untouchable.

By the end of the game, the scoreboard reads 7 – 5. Our makeshift team piles in around me and Olli, smashing us into a massive many-armed hug that has Olli muttering. “I want fresh air! I don’t want to die beneath a pile of stinking, sweaty pads and bodies!”

“Worse ways to go.” I wrap an arm around his neck to pull him close.

“Dude, that was fucking awesome!” Holls yelps, shaking my pads back and forth like he’s trying to collar me. I’m too busy smiling to care.

Even Coach looks mildly flabbergasted as we file back into the locker room, but he naturally tries to play it off with a sobering, “Well, you couldn't try half that shit in a real game.”