Page 10 of Price of Victory (The Saints of Westmont U #5)

EIGHT

AIDEN

The ice felt different today, sharper under my blades, like it was waiting for something to happen. I could feel the tension radiating off the team as we lined up for drills, that electric anticipation that came when everyone knew someone was about to snap.

That someone was Rhett Morrison, and it was probably my fault.

He’d been sulking since we’d gotten on the ice, his usual focused intensity replaced by something darker and more volatile.

Every stride looked angry, every stick movement aggressive.

Even his warm-up laps had been faster than necessary, like he was trying to outrun something that kept pace with him no matter how hard he pushed.

I told myself I didn’t care. Rhett was perfectly capable of shooting back when I pushed his buttons, and he’d proven that plenty of times already.

If he was upset about our library encounter, that was his problem.

I wasn’t responsible for his feelings, especially when he’d made it crystal clear that he wanted nothing to do with me.

But watching him move around the ice with that barely controlled fury, I felt something that might have been guilt twisting in my chest. It was an unfamiliar sensation, and I didn’t like it.

Coach Webber was setting up for body-check drills, dividing us into pairs for controlled contact work. The goal was to practice clean hits while maintaining possession, the technical fundamentals that separated college hockey from the brawling mess of beer league games.

“Morrison, you’re with Whitmore,” Coach called out, because the universe had a sense of humor that bordered on sadistic.

Perfect. Just what I needed when my head wasn’t entirely in the game. I skated over to where Rhett was waiting, noting the way his jaw was clenched so tight it looked painful. His brown eyes were dark with something that went way beyond competitive focus.

“Try to keep up,” he said as I approached, and his voice carried enough venom to kill a horse.

“Always do,” I replied, because I wasn’t about to let him see that his mood was affecting me.

The drill was simple enough. One player would carry the puck along the boards while the other came in for a body check, trying to separate man from puck without crossing the line into illegal contact.

We’d done variations of this drill a hundred times at Michigan, and I was good at it. Clean, technical, effective.

But when Rhett came at me with the puck, there was nothing clean or technical about the hit that followed.

He slammed into me with the full force of his body, legal by the rules but loaded with every ounce of anger he’d been carrying around.

The impact sent me stumbling backward, my skates scrambling to stay on the ice as I fought to remain upright.

It was a perfect check, textbook execution, and it hurt like hell.

I recovered my balance and couldn’t help but grin. So that was how he wanted to play this.

“Nice hit,” I said, skating back toward the center for the next repetition. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

His response was a glare that could have melted the ice beneath our feet.

When it was my turn to carry the puck, I made sure to give him a target worth hitting. I came down the boards with speed, puck dancing on my stick, daring him to try and take it from me. When he did, I was ready.

The collision was brutal and satisfying, two bodies meeting with the sharp crack of protective equipment and the deeper thud of muscle against muscle. Rhett absorbed the hit better than I’d expected, riding it out and maintaining his balance, but I saw the flash of surprise in his eyes.

“My turn,” I said, close enough that only he could hear me.

We went back and forth like that for the rest of the drill, each hit a little harder than strictly necessary, each contact loaded with subtext that had nothing to do with hockey technique.

Coach watched us with the calculating gaze of someone who’d seen this before, senior players working out their issues through controlled violence.

He said nothing, which meant we were staying just inside the bounds of acceptable.

But my concentration was shot to hell. Every time Rhett lined me up for a hit, every time I felt his body against mine in that split second of contact, my brain went somewhere it had no business going.

The weight of him, the controlled power in his movements, the way his breath came hard after each collision.

It was all mixing together in my head, desire and competition and something else I didn’t want to name.

The guilt was there, too, nagging at me like a persistent headache. I’d been pushing Rhett’s buttons since we were kids, finding his pressure points and pressing them because that was what I did. It was second nature by now.

But watching him now, seeing the way that controlled fury was radiating off him in waves, I was starting to think maybe I’d pressed too hard this time.

The next repetition came faster than I was ready for. I was carrying the puck, focused more on Rhett’s approach than on the play itself, when he hit me again. This one was even harder than before, perfectly legal but loaded with enough force to send me careening toward the boards.

I slammed into the glass with a rattle that echoed through the rink, my shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. For a moment, everything went white around the edges, and I had to brace myself against the boards to keep from going down.

When my vision cleared, Rhett was skating past me toward the center of the ice, and he was close enough that I could see the satisfaction in his expression. Close enough to hear him if I said something.

So I did.

“You liked it,” I whispered, just loud enough for him to catch.

He stopped so suddenly that his skates threw up a spray of ice shavings. When he turned to look at me, his face was flushed with something that definitely wasn’t exertion.

“So did you,” he snarled back, and the words hit me like a punch to the solar plexus.

Because he was right. Completely, devastatingly right.

I had liked it. I’d liked the feeling of his body against mine, the controlled violence of the contact, the way he’d looked at me afterward like he was deciding whether to hit me again or do something else entirely.

I’d liked the way it felt to be the focus of all that intensity, even when it was wrapped up in anger and frustration.

The realization shut me up completely because it meant I wasn’t nearly as in control of this situation as I’d thought.

I’d teased the guy plenty until now, but I’d imagined that I was capable of keeping myself under control.

Rhett Morrison was getting under my skin in ways that had nothing to do with family business and everything to do with the way he moved, the way he looked at me, the way he made me feel like I was seventeen years old and completely out of my depth.

The rest of practice passed in a blur of drills and conditioning that I went through on autopilot.

My body knew what to do, muscle memory taking over while my brain tried to process what had just happened.

Every time I caught sight of Rhett across the ice, that sick twist of want and confusion tightened in my chest.

By the time Coach called us in, I was ready to get off the ice and figure out what the hell was happening to me. The locker room was already filling with steam from the showers, that familiar post-practice fog that turned everything hazy and intimate.

I was pulling off my helmet when I caught Rhett looking at me from across the room. It was just for a second, his eyes meeting mine with an intensity that made my pulse quicken, before he looked away and started unlacing his skates with more force than necessary.

But that second was enough. I’d seen something in his expression that matched what I was feeling, that mixture of want and confusion and anger that came from realizing you were attracted to someone you were supposed to hate.

The team was already starting to file out, guys heading home or to the dining hall or wherever they went to decompress after practice. But Rhett was taking his time, moving slower than usual as he packed up his gear.

I made my decision.

I waited until most of the guys had cleared out, then made my way over to where he was sitting on the bench. He looked up when I approached, wariness flickering across his features, but he didn’t tell me to go away.

“Can we talk?” I asked, keeping my voice low and nonthreatening.

He studied my face for a long moment, like he was trying to figure out if this was another game. “About what?”

“About what happened in the library. About what just happened on the ice.” I sat down on the bench across from him, close enough to talk quietly but far enough away that he wouldn’t feel cornered. “I didn’t mean to humiliate you. I just wanted…”

“What?” Rhett cut me off, his voice sharp. “You just wanted to prove you could make me lose control? You wanted to see how far you could push before I cracked?”

The accusation hit closer to home than I wanted to admit, but that wasn’t the whole truth. “I wanted to understand why you hate me so much.”

“You know why.”

“Do I? Because from where I’m sitting, it feels like there’s more to it than just business rivalry.”

Rhett’s hands stilled on his gear bag, and for a moment, the only sound in the locker room was the hiss of showers running in the background. When he looked at me again, his expression was guarded but not entirely hostile.

“You think everything’s a game,” he said finally. “You think you can charm your way through life, manipulate people into giving you what you want, and there won’t be any consequences.”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But that’s not what this is about.”

“Isn’t it?”

I leaned forward, close enough to see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes, close enough to catch the scent of his soap and the lingering smell of ice rink cold. “If I were just playing games, do you think I’d be sitting here trying to apologize?”

“Are you? Apologizing?”

The question hung between us, loaded with all the tension that had been building since the moment I’d walked into the locker room weeks ago. His face was inches from mine, and I could see his pulse jumping in his throat, could feel the heat radiating off his skin despite the cool air of the rink.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I am.”

For a moment, neither of us moved. The air between us felt charged, electric, like touching it might result in actual sparks. I could see the conflict playing out across Rhett’s features, the war between his rational mind and whatever he was feeling.

Then he stood up abruptly, shouldering his gear bag with more force than necessary. But instead of walking away, he paused next to where I was sitting, close enough that I could feel the brush of his leg against my shoulder.

“You want to know what I think?” he said, his voice low and rough. “I think you’re dangerous. I think you’re the type of person who destroys things just to see if you can and then acts surprised when people get hurt.”

The words should have stung, but there was something in his tone that suggested he wasn’t entirely convinced of their truth. And when he moved past me toward the exit, his hand brushed against my arm in a contact that lasted just a fraction of a second longer than it needed to.

It was deliberate. Electric. And it left me sitting there on the bench with my heart pounding and the absolute certainty that whatever was happening between us was far from over.

I watched him disappear through the doorway, and for the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure who was really in control of this game we were playing.

But I was starting to think that might be exactly what I wanted.