Page 14 of My Pucking Enemy (The Milwaukee Frost #4)

Luca

Wren doesn’t quit.

And she doesn’t tell anyone else what I told her. I know she doesn’t tell Sloane, because if my sister knew, I would know. Mostly because she’d be at my house, banging on the front door, demanding answers.

Wren doesn’t tell anyone, and after the incident with the private detective stuff, things get even easier between us. We mesh during meetings on strategy, building off of one another, and every game that comes and goes is another opportunity for us to test our theories, implement new approaches.

“It’s just weird,” Callum says, putting his hands up after we sweep the Pittsburgh Penguins, and we’re walking back to the bus that will take us to the hotel. “You hated her so much, and now, all of a sudden, the two of you are best friends. Honestly, I’m kind of hurt that you replaced me so fast.”

“We’re not best friends,” I insist, even as I save a seat for her on the bus, snag her wrist and pull her down next to me so we can talk through the offensive strategy for the next game. “Not even close.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, Wren and I get together to go over game film, talk about the different players. Slowly, and in a very round-about way, she tells me some of the stories from her past. Things that relate to what we’re talking about.

“Psych them out—it’s a real thing,” she says one morning in early December, after someone has gone through the complex and decked every room with winter-themed decorations.

They were trying very hard to be inclusive—this room has a Christmas tree, a menorah, and something I’m pretty sure has to do with the winter solstice.

“Hockey isn’t a poker game,” I say, thinking of the stories she told me about her and her father playing their way through Atlanta, only to leave with several jackpots and several pissed-off casino owners.

I’m still fuzzy on the details, since Wren has never directly told me, but I’m getting the sense that her dad might have something to do with the fact that she’s on parole.

She’d laid out the details quickly, without fanfare: she couldn’t leave the country, and she had to check in every few months.

There was also the sense that someone was always watching her.

But on the whole, her parole is much more relaxed than what other people get.

Something to do with the time she spent working for the FBI before coming here.

And her dad, her past, are all tangled up with the reason why she doesn’t have a passport today. Someday, I’d like her to tell me the entire story. My brain aches for the minutia of her past.

“Luca.” She stands from her chair across the table, circles the room, and points at the projector screen where Dillon Stanch’s face is blown up.

“Listen to me. When have I steered you wrong? This guy—he thinks the two of you are natural rivals. He’s obsessed.

I’d go as far as saying he’s got some sort of Luca McKenzie shrine back at his place. ”

Why are my cheeks flaming? Wren is in her pacing mode, moving back and forth in front of the projector with a frenetic energy that makes me feel antsy.

“He does not.”

“I’m telling you, Luca, listen to me—act like you have no idea who he is.

Or just casual, like ‘Oh, hey man!’ Like you didn’t expect him to be there.

It’s going to drive him insane. I’ve watched hundreds of hours of film on him—his play style is all about thinking.

Analyzing. Trying to stay three steps ahead of people.

But you flip that around on him by pushing it too far, making him over think. ”

“I appreciate that something like this might work during a card game, Wren—”

She crosses the room, planting her hands on the arm rests of my chair, making them rock back slightly so I’m looking up at her.

In the split moment between her doing it and when she speaks, time is suspended.

I stare at her, my eyes on hers at first, then breaking off and flitting over her face.

The freckles, her nose—so slight, so small, compared to my own—the fringes of strawberry blonde hair over her forehead coming clean from her braids.

Hazel eyes mostly green, but ringed with gold and dark blue around the perimeter of the irises. Darker eyebrows than the light of her hair, painting her face in contrast and almost always drawn down in a frown or scowl.

Wren Beaumont is beautiful, and having her this close makes my heart thud a little too hard, like it’s beating inside out. Skipping far too many beats.

She looks back and forth between my eyes seriously, like she’s going to hypnotize me. For some reason, I feel like it’s already working.

Wren would make an excellent vampire. People would bend over backwards to become a thrall. She has that sort of magnetism.

The seconds end, and time returns to normal, Wren saying, “Luca. Trust me on this. Stanch operates in a logical, methodical manner. One of his core beliefs, going into this game, is that you see him as an equal competitor.”

“And I do—”

“Shh—the media has been doing back flips to make the two of you seem like you’re going head-to-head.

McKenzie and the Frost against Stanch and the Sharks.

It’s working. He believes it. And what you have to do is kick that core belief right out from under him.

It will shake him, before the game even starts. You’ll knock him off his game.”

“Do you ever consider that what you’re doing might be psychological warfare?”

“If this was war, maybe,” she laughs, pushing up off my chair like it’s nothing, like my entire body hasn’t gone into panic mode with her that close for minutes on end.

It’s been a long time, that’s all. And she smells nice.

Wren goes on, “But this isn’t war. It’s hockey. Trust me—if you do what I say, you guys are taking home the win before Christmas break.”

“Fine,” I say, shaking my head and turning to the table quickly, flipping through my notes just for something to do with my hands. “But if we mentally break the guy, it’s going on your conscious.”

***

Stanch reacts exactly how Wren says he would.

At first, he laughs, brushing it off when I barely even look at him during the captain’s meeting. Then he glances at the other players, and over to the reporters on the side of the rink, as though they might catch the interaction. Like they might already be writing juicy headlines about it.

When I glance at Wren, she gives me the world’s dorkiest thumbs-up.

We set up for the face-off, and when the puck drops, I forget about everything else.

I forget about Mandy and the divorce lawyer, about the incident with Wren the other day, about the fact that I’ll be coming home to an empty house at the end of the night. Even the conversation I had with Cal—about him taking a year off—falls to the back of my mind.

Instead, I focus on the feeling of the ice against my skates, calling out to Callum and Hawkins. Keeping my eye on the puck. I’m completely zoned in.

Stanch, however, is not.

He comes at us hard in the first period, his stick work aggressive and sloppy. He takes bad shots on the goal, he argues with his teammates, and he chirps at me.

About my stats, technique, anything he can think of.

Just like Wren said, I don’t bite. I don’t straight-up ignore them, but rather, look at him in surprise. Like I might if it was my own teammate talking shit to me—slightly startled that he’s there. Like I’ve forgotten completely about his presence.

I glance at him with mild disinterest, nod, and even smiling at him once.

When I’m on the bench, I can see Wren sitting in the stands with an old notebook open in her lap, grinning ear-to-ear. I catch her gaze, and she mouths, “I told you so.”

Stanch’s passes are a half-second too late. His positioning off. Several times, he wipes out, landing flat on his ass on the ice for no good reason.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Maverick mutters, skating by me after the Sharks are called for a penalty. “What the hell is going on with that guy? It’s like he’s lost his mind.”

In the third period, Stanch takes a stupid penalty—charging after I casually poke-check the puck away from him. Two minutes in the box, and we score on the power play.

When he comes back on the ice, he’s still rattled, whiffing on an easy shot.

It’s actually startling how accurate Wren was about what we should do and how he would react. It’s startling to know that if we hadn’t enlisted her, she could be working with another team right now, picking apart our weaknesses.

Halfway through the third period, I glance over and notice the press jostling around, peering out toward the ice, looking more agitated than normal. The Sharks have been having a great season so far—it’s a little unprecedented for us to beat them this bad.

We win the game four to one.

We file off the ice and toward the locker room, and some of the press crowd around the tunnel, their badges swinging. I keep my head down and try to think about what I’m going to say during the post-game press conference.

“That was sick,” Tyler Chen says, wrestling into a sweatshirt, his black hair springing out when he pops his head through. “Did you see Stanch totally fall apart? What the hell was that?”

“Beaumont, right?” Maverick asks, rifling a hand through his hair and cutting his eyes to me.

I shrug, but I can’t keep the smile off my face. What would it be like to apply Wren’s effect backward throughout my career? I think about all the times I lost a game because my mental game was off. All the times I was sure I was physically and skillfully there, but something just wasn’t right.

Then again, maybe it’s unnatural to go into a game like this. To play multiple games at once.

Callum, Maverick, Petrov, and I file into the press room, tired, hungry, and just waiting for this to be over so we can go home and get something to eat.

Normally, a PR person might give us a run-down before we take the stage.

But tonight, there’s nobody waiting for us, so we just continue forward, heading out and lining up in front of the microphones.

Questions start like always—about the game, about how we played, about how our opponents played. Maverick fields the questions about defense. Callum charms and does his boy-next-door thing. Petrov answers in his thick Russian accent.

I field fewer questions than normal, my mind still on Wren, already working ahead to the next game, the next team, whether or not she’ll be flying to Canada with us.

“What do you have to say about the photo, McKenzie?”

I blink, jolted from my thoughts at hearing my name. “Sorry, what?”

“I asked what you have to say about the photo,” he says, raising his voice slightly.

I stare at the reporter and try to figure out if I heard him wrong. We just swept through the San Jose Sharks, securing our top-of-the-league record and playing to the very best of our abilities, and they’re asking me about some picture taken during the game?

“What picture?” I ask, glancing down the bench at Callum and Maverick, who look equally as confused as I am.

The reporter’s eyes go wide, and they practically start to drool, microphone held up toward me. “You haven’t seen the picture? You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” Frustration starts to rise up in me, and I grit my teeth, trying not to let it show. Something in the look on his face tells me that I’m not going to like what comes next.

“The picture of your wife,” the reporter says, clearly trying not to grin from ear-to-ear, “on a date with Christie Elle.”