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We left the ice together that day and sat side-by-side as we unlaced our skates.

He stood and lifted his hoodie off, making his t-shirt ride up, showing off his abs and—

I gasped. “You have a tattoo? When did you get that?” I pointed at his right peck, right over his heart, where I spotted some black ink.

He laughed as he smoothed his t-shirt down. “I have tattoos , plural.”

My eyes widened. “Since when? Show me,” I demanded.

“No.” He laughed.

I sucked in a shocked breath. “Yes.”

He licked his lips and came closer. He bent toward me, his hands going to the sides of the table so that he caged me in where I was sitting. “Don’t worry, you’ll see…” The corner of his lip tipped up in a grin. “Just…not yet.”

I immediately shoved his chest. “You asshole!” My face flamed. “Never mind, I don’t even want to see.”

He picked up his skates and strolled to the door. “Already told on yourself, Viper,” he said, shooting me a wink over his shoulder.

My cheeks heated with anger. “I hate them!” I called out. “And your slutty little earring!”

His loud laugh rang out in the empty rink. “Keep lying to yourself, baby. It’s cute.”

I hated his overconfidence, and his stupid charisma, and I especially hated how the way he called me baby sent a little shock to my core.

________

The next week, Patrick joined me at morning practice because we needed the extra time to work on new choreography .

At the end of the session, Patrick and I watched Kappy.

He stopped suddenly on his side of the red line and lifted his helmet. “Out with it,” he demanded. “What are you two whispering about?”

“Your chest, you’re dipping too low,” I called out.

Patrick rubbed his jaw in thought. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re kind of a butt kicker? Your stride is wild, it’s making you lose speed.”

His shoulders dropped. “Wait, really?”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I nodded. “Your stride could use some work,” I echoed.

His eyebrows raised. “Can you guys show me?”

After that day, it became a routine: We would spend the last fifteen or so minutes of every session messing around together on the ice.

Sometimes Patrick joined us, sometimes it was just the two of us.

Sometimes I tried to teach Kappy more advanced moves, like twizzles, other times he brought extra sticks and tried to help us with wrist shots at the net.

I hated to admit it, but Kappy wasn’t half bad at the skating moves I showed him.

I had a feeling he’d nail them if he had a toepick, whereas I was completely awful at hockey.

When I tried to replicate the wrist shot he showed me, he had to stifle a laugh.

“Oh c’mon, that was better!” I complained.

His face cracked into a grin. “Debatable, P.” Skating closer, he wrapped his arms around me, and his clean laundry scent enveloped me.

“Hold the stick like this,” his deep voice rumbled against my neck as he wrapped his cold hands around mine on the stick.

“And then move your wrists like this.” He helped me shoot.

The puck actually lifted off the ice and hit the net.

“Goal!” I burst out. “Count it!”

His laugh tickled my skin. When I turned to look up at him, his heated gaze dipped down to my lips, making my heart beat rapidly in my chest. It felt like everything else in the world drifted away.

It was just me and him, absorbed in the hum of the rink.

And I wanted him to kiss me, God, I really wanted him to , but I couldn’t let it happen.

I broke contact first, smoothing away from him and skating over to retrieve the puck.

While I wasn’t lying when I said I forgave for ignoring me, I wasn’t stupid enough to go another round with him. I just…I didn’t trust him not to break my he art.

He cleared his throat. “All right, let’s see if you can repeat it,” he said, motioning to the net.

Lining up to try again, I flicked my wrists the same way he did it, but the puck’s speed wobbled out before it reached the net.

“We’ll work on it,” he said with a grin, but the smile didn’t make it up to his eyes.

________

“Enjoying your finance classes?” I asked one morning while drying off my blades.

He snorted. “No.”

My eyes shifted to his. “Then why are you taking them?”

“Figured studying finance was the best way to not be poor anymore.” He must’ve seen the confusion on my face, because he said, “Oh c’mon, I’m literally broke, you had to know that.”

My forehead creased in confusion. “But hockey is expensive, how…”

“Hans.” He stared down at his skates for a beat, then bit out a humorless laugh.

“It’s weird to say it out loud because it always felt like a stupid secret.

” He swallowed hard. “My mom worked it out with Hans. I was the sponsored player at Centre Ice, so we had discounted bills for ice time and stuff. When I made it on the Hamilton team, I thought I made it just because I was getting paid to play, but it wasn’t a lot, and by the time my agent got his percent, it was barely enough to pay for groceries and expenses and shit. ”

“Then how are you paying for school? Is your mom helping?”

“No.” He reared back like that was a crazy suggestion. “Hell no. I wouldn’t ask her to do that. Plus…” He shifted on the bench. “She’s not exactly happy with my decision to be here.” He smirked thinking of his mom. “She wanted me to play one more season.”

“Smart woman,” I quipped. It wasn’t the first time I wondered about his dad, but he’d never mentioned one, and it didn’t feel like my place to ask about him. “How are you paying for school then?”

“Now that,” he wagged his finger at me, “is a secret.” He gave me his signature lopsided grin.

My mind raced through all the reasons he wouldn’t tell me. “It better not be illegal,” I blurted out. “I am not bailing you out of jail, Richard.”

“No.” He barked out a laugh, then looked at me flabbergasted. “You really think I would—”

“Yes!”

“Ah, you’re right.” He laughed and smoothed a hand through his sweaty hair. “But no, don’t worry about me, Miss Wyndell-Hamilton, it is not illegal,” he said in a teasing voice, and his mischievous eyes danced. “Let’s just say I’m using my…talents.”

What in the world? “But what does that mean?” I narrowed my gaze at him, trying to break the truth out of him. “Are you coaching hockey?”

“Absolutely not. Coaching is for when I retire. Plus, I don’t think I’d be that great at it. That’s more JP’s thing.”

He was probably right about that. JP was the responsible one with the patience of a saint. Kappy would probably join in on the kids’ shenanigans and end up getting yelled at along with them.

“Then…what are you doing?” I pushed. “Serving? Bartending? Bouncing?”

He rose off the bench and grabbed up his skates and stick. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart.” His gravelly voice, that word, and the way his eyes roamed over my body had me heating from the inside out, throwing me all off.

He turned on his heel and sauntered to the exit. Right before he left, he looked over his shoulder and winked at me, shaking me out of my trance.

He totally threw me off on purpose.

“I’m gonna find out!” I yelled at his back.

His laugh echoed in the empty rink. He just lifted his hand in a wave before disappearing out the door.

And then his little secret haunted me the rest of the day.

_______

“It just…it irks me,” I announced, flopping on my back while munching on a twizzler after dinner.

“What irks you?” Ria asked without taking her eyes off her bio textbook.

“That he won’t tell me what his stupid job is.” I stared up at our ceiling fan going round and round. “It’s gotta be something bad if he’s not telling me.”

Ria was so silent that I lifted up on my elbows to make sure she was still breathing.

Her face lit up with an amused grin. “I love this.”

“Love what?”

“You’ve got it bad.” She threw her textbook aside and tore off her reading glasses. “ Finally, you’re the one losing it over a guy, not me.”

“I am not losing it,” I argued.

“Yeah, you kinda are, girlie. And that’s perfectly okay, but you know what this calls for, don’t you?”

“No?” I asked more than said.

“A stakeout.” She wagged her eyebrows. “We have to follow him to his job. I bet he’s a waiter, we’ll follow him to the restaurant and sit in his section. I wanna meet the man that finally made my bestie fall. C’mon, let’s go.”

I was shaking my head in an instant. “We can’t just follow him.”

She grabbed my wrist to pull me up off the bed. “Uhhh, yes, we can, and we will.”

_______

A half hour later, Ria, Paige, and I were all sitting in Ria’s warm truck, avoiding the drizzly fall night while watching the entrance to the Smithson guys’ dorm.

“I think those are overkill,” I said, motioning to the binoculars Ria was holding to her face.

“Hey, can we get some mozzarella sticks when we get to the restaurant?” Paige asked from the backseat.

“Ooh yeah, hopefully your man gives us dinner on the house, you think he would?” Ria asked.

“Guys, he might not even be a waiter.”

“Yeah, you never know, he could be—” she cut herself off with a gasp. “There he is!”

Wearing black joggers and a hoodie, Richard Charles Kappers the Third strode across the campus lawn, stopping to chat a couple times with different people.

He’d only been here about a month and he already seemingly made more friends than I had in a whole year.

It wasn’t fair. Where he attracted people with his warmth, it felt like I had some kind of freezing power that kept people away from me.

I was a nice person, damnit, why couldn’t I—

“Maybe he’s a personal trainer? Like at a gym?” Ria frowned. “He’s not really dressed for anything else.”

Richard pulled up his hood and took off in a jog down the sidewalk toward downtown.

Now I was really curious. “Follow him, just stay back.”

We inched along, pulling into random driveways and turning down a couple different sideroads just to pop back to the main road a couple times while we followed him.