Page 31 of Puck Wild (Storm Warning #1)

Chapter twenty-two

Evan

T he shower was running, which meant Jake hadn't bolted.

I blinked at the ceiling, processing that fact while my brain caught up to the rest of my body. The sheets still held his warmth where he'd sprawled across three-quarters of the mattress, one arm flung over my ribs like he was claiming territory.

My shoulder blade ached where his chin had dug in during the night, but it was the good kind of ache—proof that last night hadn't been another stress dream about perfect defensive positioning.

Water drummed against the shower walls down the hall. Jake's voice drifted through the steam, off-key and completely unselfconscious, butchering what might have been Coldplay's "Viva La Vida."

Flashes of the night before hit me in fragments—his laugh rough against my throat, the weight of his palm over my heartbeat, and how he'd whispered my name like he was testing the shape of it.

I rolled onto my side and buried my face in the pillow that smelled like his shampoo. The shower cut off.

I sat up, running both hands through my hair, trying to look like I hadn't been lying there sorting through every detail of the night before, obsessively tucking it away in my mental archives.

Through the thin walls, I heard the rustle of towels and the soft thud of Jake's feet hitting the bathroom floor.

He emerged three minutes later wearing nothing but a towel slung low around his hips. Steam followed him down the hallway, and he was humming again—the same melody he'd been murdering in the shower, but quieter now.

"Morning." He caught my eye through my half-open bedroom door. His grin was crooked and unguarded, the black eye starting to fade to yellow-green around the edges.

"Morning. Sleep okay?"

"Better than I have in weeks." He paused in the doorway, water still beading on his shoulders. "You?"

"Good. Really good."

"Earl Grey?" he asked.

"Yeah. I'll be right there."

I waited until he disappeared into his room before pulling on jeans and a clean t-shirt. By the time I reached the kitchen, Jake was already at the counter.

The electric kettle gurgled to life. I pulled bagels from the freezer and dropped them in the toaster. When Jake reached past me for mugs, his arm brushed my shoulder. When I turned to grab the cream cheese, my hip bumped his thigh.

Small touches. Accidental but not accidental.

Jake poured hot water over tea bags in two mugs. He handed mine over.

"Thanks."

"Welcome."

The bagels popped up. I buttered them while Jake leaned against the counter, sipping his tea.

I should have asked about Rockford. About the fight and whatever had gone wrong and why he'd thrown away his shot at moving up. The questions sat heavy inside me, demanding answers, but asking them would crack our peaceful morning.

I wasn't ready for that.

Jake straightened up and offered a neutral topic of conversation. "Big game today."

I nodded. "Sudbury's tough. We'll need to be sharp."

We were in my car twenty minutes later, heading toward the Barn under gray late October skies. I turned onto Cumberland Street, and the arena's familiar bulk rose ahead of us.

Whatever conversation we needed to have about Rockford could wait until after the game. Inside the arena, I found my stall and started my pre-game rituals.

Shoulder pads first, adjusting the straps to exact specifications. Elbow pads next, testing the range of motion. Everything had to be perfect, predictable, and controllable—particularly when the rest of my life felt like I'd sketched it in pencil.

"Well, well, well." Hog's voice boomed across the room. "Look who's got that post-cuddle glow this morning."

Across the room, Jake's head snapped up from his gear, and I saw a flash of panic in his eyes before he grinned.

"Don't know what you're talking about, Hog. I always look this pretty."

"Uh-huh", Hog smirked. "And I suppose Spreadsheet over there just happens to be humming a show tune for no reason while he gets dressed."

I wasn't humming. Was I humming?

"That's not a show tune," I said, pulling my jersey over my head. "It's—"

"It's adorable, is what it is." Hog clapped his massive hands together. "Roomie reunion energy! I fucking love it!"

Before either Jake or I could respond, Hog launched into full-bore hockey motivator mode.

"You know what we got tonight, boys? We got chemistry! We got passion! We got two guys who've remembered how to play for something bigger than themselves!"

Pickle's head popped up from his phone. "Are we talking about hockey or—"

"HOCKEY!" Hog roared, though his grin suggested otherwise. "Always hockey, Junior. Hockey played with heart, purpose, and—"

"With less talking and more taping," Coach Rusk's voice cut through Hog's speech. He'd pulled his backward cap down lower than usual. "Save the poetry for after we win."

I glanced over at Jake's stall. He was stretching his hip flexors, movements fluid and controlled—no sign of the manic energy that usually preceded his best games. If anything, he looked... settled. Like he'd found his center.

Interesting.

"Let's go earn it!" Coach barked, and twenty bodies moved as one toward the tunnel.

The first period was pure grinding hockey.

I spent most of the period moving pucks under pressure, making the basic plays, trying not to get cute when cute would get me killed. Jake's line got limited ice time in the defensive slugfest, but I noticed something different when he was out there.

He wasn't forcing it.

The old Jake would have been trying to thread passes through traffic that didn't exist. He would have been hunting for the highlight-reel play that would make everyone forget about Love on Ice and viral rap videos.

Instead, he played within the system. Made the safe passes. Backchecked hard and picked his spots instead of creating them out of thin air.

The second period started with us down 1-0.

Three shifts in, Kowalczyk buried a rebound to tie it up, and the Barn exploded like someone had lit a fuse under the bleachers.

I watched Jake celebrate from the bench—arms up, mouth open in a genuine yell of joy.

No performance. Pure happiness for his teammate.

Two minutes later, Pickle had the puck along the boards, looking for an outlet, and Jake broke toward center ice, calling for it. The pass was there, barely, threading through two defenders' skates.

The old Jake would have taken it. Would have tried to deke around the defenseman and create something magical out of nothing.

This Jake pulled up. Let the puck slide past him to Hog, who chipped it out safely.

I blinked, sure I'd misread the play. But no—Jake had made the mature choice. The team-first choice.

Who the hell was this guy, and what had he done with my chaos-agent roommate?

The third period hit like a freight train with caffeine jitters.

Two minutes in, their defenseman took a stupid penalty, slashing Pickle behind the play.

Our power play had been garbage all season, but tonight something clicked.

Jake won the face-off clean, Hog walked the blue line like he owned it, and when the puck squirted loose, Kowalczyk was there to bury it.

2-2. Game on.

The crowd noise was deafening, but through it all, I heard Hog's voice booming from the bench: "That's soft hands, baby! Fucking surgical!"

With time winding down, I picked off a cross-ice pass and rimmed it around the boards. Jake collected it in stride, muscled past their winger, and suddenly we had numbers the other way.

This was it. This was when old Jake would have tried to do too much.

Instead, he made the perfect play.

Driving wide, he drew two defenders to him before threading a pass between their skates—right onto Kowalczyk's tape. The shot went high glove side, and the red light went on.

3-2.

The bench erupted. Pickle tried to climb over the boards to join the celebration and nearly took out a referee.

And Jake... Jake was looking at me again.

Across the chaos of the celebration, through the maze of bodies and flying helmets, he found my eyes and held them.

There was something in his expression I'd never seen before—not only happiness, but pride.

It wasn't the desperate, look-at-me pride of someone trying to prove himself.

It was the quiet satisfaction of a job done right.

As we neared victory, time slowed the way it does in moments that matter. I saw the lane to their empty net—a narrow corridor between two defenders. I saw Jake breaking toward the boards and drawing attention. Saw the clock ticking down: 1:18... 1:17... 1:16...

My shot was pure instinct, muscle memory from a thousand hours of practice—wrist shot, low and hard, aimed for the back corner of the net. The puck rose enough to clear the defenseman's stick and drop into the mesh.

4-2.

The Barn lost its collective mind.

I'd scored maybe a dozen goals in my entire career, and most of them were garbage-time, meaningless. This one mattered. Suddenly, Hog was there, wrapping me in a bear hug that lifted my skates clean off the ice.

"SPREADSHEET WITH THE DAGGER!" he roared in my ear. "THAT'S MY BEAUTIFUL DEFENSIVE BOY!"

Pickle crashed into us next, nearly toppling all three of us in a tangle of limbs and euphoria. The rest of the team piled on, a Storm-colored avalanche of celebration.

Through it all, over Hog's shoulder, I saw Jake.

He was hanging back from the scrum, watching. His grin was open and unguarded and aimed directly at me like a spotlight in the dark. When our eyes met, he raised his glove in a small salute—teammate to teammate, with a little more underneath.

Seconds later, the horn sounded. Game over. We'd won.

The locker room was a barely controlled explosion.

"SOFT HANDS!" Hog bellowed over the chaos, pointing at Jake with a protein bar. "Did you see that pass? Threading the needle like he's working with surgical equipment!"

"It was a good play," Jake agreed, ducking a flying towel. "Team effort."