Page 8 of My Pucking Enemy (The Milwaukee Frost #4)
Wren
“Come on, come on.” I sit just behind the bench, watching as Luca shoots and picks up his own rebound, dropping the puck off to Callum. He needs to put more pressure on the goalie’s left side, but he hasn’t been doing it, as much as Callum tries to set him up for that positioning.
Of course Luca isn’t—he thinks everything I say is horse shit.
The air hangs with the scent of nacho cheese, hot dogs, that particular sharp smell of the ice.
To my left, a burly man in a Frost jersey keeps cheering too soon, each time they shoot on the goal, then sitting down embarrassed when he realizes the puck hasn’t gone in.
The crowd of Rangers around us is raucous, more than pleased with the way this game has been going.
We’re in New York, already two points down in the second period. Luca is clearly not happy about it, but if there’s one thing about him, it’s the way he plays when the team is down. Controlled, graceful, not letting the pressure of a looming defeat take any of his focus.
It’s strange, but it’s almost like Luca plays better when he knows he has a chance of losing.
Before this game, I gave the team my first full strategy run-down.
Luca was supposed to meet with me this morning, per Uncle Vic’s approval of us working on the strategy stuff “together” but he didn’t show up.
Sloane stopped by to check on the meeting—clearly worried her brother might make an ass of himself—and was very surprised to find he hadn’t appeared.
That surprise quickly morphed into worry as she pulled out her phone, checking it, saying, “It’s just not like him.”
I’d barely kept myself from saying, “I know.”
Because I did, and I do. I’ve been watching Luca McKenzie just as closely as he’s been watching me. Granted, I haven’t tried to follow him home from work, but I needed a few things and had a good time watching Callum squirm in the rear-view mirror.
Plus, there was something exciting about the idea of Luca spending time thinking about me like that. Knowing that I take up real estate in his head.
Now, Luca brings the puck back down into the Ranger’s zone, keeping close to the boards and sending it toward Cal, who knocks it over to Nikolai Petrov.
Petrov, a veteran in the league nearing retirement, rumored to be done after this year.
On the top line with Luca and Cal, a little stiffer in his play, more traditional.
During the strategy meeting, I could sense his reluctance to hear what I had to say.
He clearly didn’t like the psychological reports on the other players—the weaknesses I’d pointed out in each of them.
Maverick scoops up the puck on the Frost’s side of the ice and slides up and around the back of the goal, saying something to Grayson as he goes.
Maverick is the most receptive to my information and strategy, most likely to act on it. Now, I watch him pass the puck to Luca, go back to pressing up on Brownsworth—the Rangers’ right winger—with his mouth moving, barely perceptible behind his mask.
It will throw Brownsworth off—Maverick is great at shit-talking.
Petrov gets the puck, passes it to Cal. It comes back to Petrov, then to Luca, who fakes a hit at the goal and dumps it to Cal.
I groan loudly, thinking Cal is going to take the hit—on the right side of the goal—but he pops it back over to Luca, who looks visibly pissed as he rockets it at the net, just a little flick of the wrist with so much power behind it.
And it goes in.
“Yes!” The word bursts out of me before I can stop it, and I’m on my feet with the Frost guy next to me, cheering and hollering.
With that goal, we can come back from the hole we’ve fallen into.
I glance down at my notes, try to figure out if there’s anything else I can come up with to pass to Uncle Vic before the start of the next period.
When I look up, Luca is cruising, stick held horizontally across his body like he’s just finished a celebration.
And his eyes are on me.
Our gazes connect, and I find myself unable to look away from him, unable to read that expression on his face. Is he impressed that I was right? Does he realize that he finally pressed the left like I said, and that’s why they got the point?
Before I can figure out what he’s thinking, he looks away and focuses back on the other players, congratulating them with little smacks on the back.
A moment later, I realize my heart is beating hard in my chest, similar to the feeling I used to get when doing a job with my dad. Why is that? Because Luca is like the security guard, coming around the corner, about to catch me?
Except I’m not doing anything wrong. As much as he thinks I am.
And, for some reason, I have this nagging, pressing urge to prove to Luca McKenzie that I’m exactly who I say I am—and that I can do what I say I can. I can help this team get to the Stanley Cup.
If only he would get out of my way.
***
“No—there is no way we’re switching Chen to a lower line. That just doesn’t make any sense,” Luca says.
“It does make sense,” I say, looking to Uncle Vic, who also appears dubious.
“Think about Chen, his personality. He’s all about the spotlight, right?
He loves attention. You want to get him to play his A-game?
Give him something to prove. Take a little bit of time away from him by dropping him to the third line, and he’ll fight to get it back. ”
“Yeah, or,” Luca says, shaking his head and leaning forward, his hand splayed out on the table, “he gets pissed off that we’re arbitrarily moving him around on the lines and decides to trade away to another team.”
“That—” I point a finger at him “—is residual worry from the loss of Maverick Hawkins two years ago.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me—”
“Alright!” Uncle Vic holds his hands up, glancing between Luca and me, shaking his head. “This is a massive waste of time. The two of you need to figure out how to get on the same page.”
“Vic, come on,” I turn to him, trying to appeal to him. “It’s clearly Luca that has a problem with this. Maybe he should just be off the strategy team.”
Luca’s eyebrows practically disappear into his hair line. “Are you kidding? I’m not the one suggesting we move people around randomly just to see what it does to their heads.”
“I’m leaving,” Uncle Vic announces snapping his binder shut. “And I don’t want to see the two of you coming through this door until you’ve resolved your differences.” With that, he pushes his chair back, stands, and heads for the door, moving faster than you might think a man of that age could.
The moment the door shuts, I let out a long, tired sigh.
“Okay.” I look up, meeting Luca’s eyes. Some brown-eyed people are of the dark chocolate variety, but not Luca—his are something closer to gold.
The glinting of the setting sun off a bronze building at twilight.
Light shining through a bottle of beer. Caramel in the pan, bubbling and coating the spoon. “How can we ‘resolve our differences’?
“You could quit.”
At first, I think it’s a joke, so I laugh—until I see the serious look on his face and realize he’s not trying to be funny. “Wait—you’re serious.”
Leaning forward, Luca holds my gaze in a way that makes a shiver run down the length of my spine. “You have everyone else here fooled, Wren, but not me.”
“Fooled?” I ask, only half playing dumb.
The thing is that Luca has good instincts.
Five years ago, I would have robbed this team blind and not given a second thought to it.
Gone to other teams with information from both, been paid handsomely for it.
Maybe blackmailed the owner, or found a techy to help me get into the accounts.
If you have information, there’s always something you can do with it.
So maybe Luca can see that history written all over me. The muscle memory of always going for the lowest blow. It’s like something he can smell on me.
But this time, without my dad here to cloud my judgment, I genuinely am here to stay clean. Do a good job and get the bonus. I’ll make all my money without breaking the law to do it, and if that gets Uncle Vic his Stanley Cup, then even better.
And I’ll keep my nose clean, even with my dad calling me every morning, trying to get me to come back to him.
He viewed my time with the FBI as a sort of altered prison sentence. A parole I was just waiting out until I could rejoin him. But I realized something in my time away from him—my dad might have freedom wrong.
His view is that freedom comes from doing whatever you want. Taking the objects you desire, acting without regard to the law or other people around you. He chafes against rules, regulations, control. And I used to think he was right, that adhering to the rules would make life too claustrophobic.
But I’ve realized that, at least for me, the real freedom comes from not looking over my shoulder. Not waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, double checking locks. Moving locations just because.
I’m done with that life, and Uncle Vic believed me when I said that. Took a chance hiring me. I thought that would be the biggest hurdle, but now he’s actually staring me down, and I have no idea how I can get him to trust me.
Every time I make a good call, Luca sees it as me feeding information to another team, knowing something is going to happen because I’ve advised them to do it. Never mind all the times my advice has helped the Frost score, win.
“I’m onto you, Beaumont,” he says, the lines on his face hard, unmoving. “We’re not moving Chen. And that’s final.”
Something shifts inside me, and I feel myself smile at him, falling back into my old demeanor. “Oh, really? Good thing you don’t get to make that call, McKenzie. And Vic trusts me. He’ll do what I say, even if you don’t like it.”
Luca scowls, opens his mouth to say something, but before he can, I lean forward and give him a smile so sweet it’s sickly. “Also—next time you’re going to tail someone, consider bringing your EV. That Firebird is so noisy.”
With that, loving the way his mouth drops open, I turn and follow the same path Uncle Vic took out of the room. He’s sitting on the bench outside, and looks up when I come through.
“Really?” he asks, sounding dubious. “That fast?”
“Yep,” I chirp, unable to stop the competitive surge inside me, the desperate, fighting urge to win this. “And he even agreed to try the line change too.”