Page 5 of Puck Wild (Storm Warning #1)

Chapter four

Evan

I had my stick taped before most of the team finished their coffee.

The equipment room was mine for exactly seventeen minutes before the chaos started—seventeen minutes of clean tape jobs and aligned gear. I'd stretched in the hallway, checked my blade edges twice, and mentally rehearsed every defensive zone coverage we'd drilled that week.

The whiteboard in the hallway held the day's scrimmage pairings, written in Coach's messy scrawl. I already knew what I'd find but hoped I was wrong. Carter/Riley. Again.

I stared at the board, willing the letters to rearrange themselves into something more manageable. Like Carter/Murphy. Or Carter/anyone who didn't treat hockey like performance art.

"Roomie!"

Jake's voice ricocheted off my spine. I didn't turn around. I felt his arrival—loose energy and morning swagger, humming something under his breath.

"Ready for some top drawer disorder?"

His hand landed on my shoulder, warm and solid through my practice jersey. Too familiar. Too comfortable.

I nodded once. "Ready."

Coach Rusk appeared in the doorway. He looked at me from across the room—not Jake, me—and he gave a slight nod. You'll deal.

Not you'll succeed or you'll figure it out. Just deal.

I'd been dealing my entire life. Foster homes that lasted six months if I was lucky.

Teammates who tolerated me as long as I was useful and invisible.

A juniors coach who'd benched me for a week after I'd missed a team party because I was working on defensive zone homework instead of getting drunk in a hotel room.

Dealing was what I did.

Jake wasn't a problem I could solve with a spreadsheet or a labeling system. He was a storm front on skate blades, with an unpredictable smile that meant twelve different things depending on the light.

And somehow, Coach thought pairing us together would work.

I adjusted my shoulder pads and tried not to think about how Jake's hand felt on my shoulder. Warm. Steady. Real.

The locker room filled with the usual pre-practice noise—tape ripping, sticks clacking, and Pickle laughing with Hog over something on Pickle's phone.

I pulled on my gloves, testing the fit around the still-tender spot where I'd caught a puck funny during yesterday's practice.

The bruise was yellowish-green, healing but persistent.

It was a reminder that hockey always left marks.

"You good to go, Spreadsheet?"

Coach's voice cut through the ambient noise. I looked up, surprised to find him looming over me.

"Ready, Coach."

"Good. Keep Vegas in line out there. Kid's got hands, but he plays like he's trying to impress his ex."

A few guys chuckled.

I wanted to say something. Defend him, or at least point out that Jake's showboating had led to two assists in our last scrimmage. The words stuck in my throat the way they always did when speaking up mattered most.

I stood and headed for the door, stick in one hand, helmet in the other.

Jake fell into step beside me. "So, any kind of mess you'd like me to avoid today? Or should I wing it and see what happens?"

I glanced at him sideways. He was grinning.

"Stick to the system. It's early in the season, but every game matters when playoffs roll around."

Jake's expression turned serious. "Playoffs. Right. The big picture. The long game. All very responsible and adult of us."

"It's not a joke."

"I know. Trust me, I know exactly how serious this is."

We reached the tunnel entrance, and I gazed at the ice beyond. It was where I made sense.

"Evan." Jake stopped walking. I turned to face him. "I'm not trying to screw this up for you, or for the team. I know you don't believe that yet, but..."

His voice trailed off, shrugging like he'd run out of words. Probably a first.

"Prove it," I said.

"Deal."

The ice was fast under my blades, a perfect combination of fresh Zamboni work and just enough give to let me carve turns without fighting for my grip. I took three warm-up laps, testing my edges and settling into a familiar rhythm.

Coach dropped the puck for the first drill—a simple 3-on-2 rush we'd run a hundred times. I settled into my position, reading Jake's approach with my peripheral vision. He was supposed to hold the blue line, force the play wide, and give me time to step up on the puck carrier.

Instead, he jumped the gap early.

The forward saw it coming and slipped a pass behind Jake's reaching stick. Now, I had two attackers coming at me with my partner three strides out of position, scrambling to recover.

I managed to break up the play with a poke check, but barely. The puck skittered harmlessly into the corner, and Coach's whistle shrieked across the ice.

"Again," Coach barked. "And Riley? The blue line isn't just a suggestion."

Jake skated back into position, shaking his head slightly.

We reset. Same drill. This time Jake held his position for two seconds longer before jumping again. Different timing, same result—me scrambling to cover for his freelancing while he chased a play that existed only in his head.

The whistle came again, sharper this time.

"Carter, Riley!" Coach's voice was like a Lake Superior foghorn. "Figure it out or hit the bench!"

I coasted to the boards, breathing hard. Jake followed, his blade working loose and easy, as if he hadn't just blown two consecutive defensive coverages.

"The timing's all wrong." He looked at me. "They're reading our setup from the red line. If I jump early, it forces them to adjust."

"You're leaving me alone back there."

Jake grunted. "For two seconds. You can handle two seconds."

"It's not about what I can handle. It's about the system. Everyone else manages to follow it."

"Everyone else isn't trying to make plays happen. Sometimes you've got to trust that the guy beside you sees something you don't."

I held my ground. "Trust works both ways."

"Work it out!" Coach yelled from the bench.

The next rush started before I was ready. Jake held his position, but his body language screamed reluctance. When the play developed, he stayed exactly where the system said he should be—and watched a perfect scoring chance develop because he hadn't trusted his instincts.

"Shit," he muttered, loud enough for me to hear.

The puck found the back of the net. Coach's whistle stayed silent.

We lined up again. This time, Jake caught my eye before the play started. "I'm going early on this one. Trust me."

I wanted to tell him no. The opposing forward carried the puck across the red line, exactly where Jake had predicted he would be.

Jake jumped the gap, but this time I was ready.

When the pass came behind him, I was already moving, sliding across to cut off the angle while Jake recovered to take away the back door.

The play died against the boards. Clean. Efficient. Completely off-script.

"Better," Coach called out.

As we skated back to reset, Jake bumped my shoulder with his glove. "Nice read."

In the next drill, I lined up to execute a simple defensive play. Textbook positioning. The kind of quiet, effective work that never made highlight reels but won games in the margins.

I turned to follow a loose puck, already thinking about a breakout pass, when something exploded across my glove hand. The pain hit like a lightning bolt. Bone-deep. The kind of pain that traveled up your arm and lodged behind your teeth.

I dropped to one knee, my stick clattering to the ice. The glove felt wrong on my hand; it was too tight suddenly, like something was swelling beneath the leather.

"Fuck."

Through the haze of pain, I registered motion in my peripheral vision. Someone was yelling. No—someone was screaming.

"What the fuck was that? Are you kidding me right now?"

It was Jake's voice. Sharp. Angrier than I'd ever heard it.

I looked up to see him chest-to-chest with Murphy, the opposing forward who'd caught me with a slash. Murphy outweighed Jake by twenty pounds easy, but Jake was in his face, every muscle in his body coiled like a spring.

"Get the fuck off him," Jake snarled. He shoved against Murphy's chest.

Murphy tried to skate away, hands up in mock surrender. "Relax, pretty boy. It was a hockey play."

"Hockey play my ass." Jake skated up into his face. "You want to take runs at people? Try me."

"Riley, that's enough!" Coach's voice boomed from the bench.

Jake glared at Murphy like he wanted to tear him apart piece by piece, and the pure, protective fury made something tingle inside me.

I pulled off my glove with shaking fingers and immediately wished I hadn't. Blood ran across my palm where the blade had caught the gap between glove segments. Not deep enough for stitches, but enough to stain the ice beneath my hand.

"Shit," I muttered, pressing my bare palm against my practice jersey.

Jake left Murphy and joined me. "Let me see."

"It's fine."

"It's not fine." Jake knelt on the ice next to me. "Damn, Evan. He got you good."

I stared down at my hand, watching blood seep between my fingers. The injury didn't shake me, but Jake's reaction did. Anyone watching would have thought someone attacked his family.

Nobody had ever defended me like that.

Not in juniors, when teammates let casual slurs slide by without comment. Not in foster care, when bigger kids took my things and I learned that speaking up only made me a more visible target. Not anywhere, really.

I'd learned to fight my own battles because no one else would fight them for me.

Jake had been ready to drop gloves with a massive bruiser over a stick to my hand.

"Can you move your fingers?" Jake asked.

I flexed them experimentally. They worked, mostly. "Yeah."

"Good." He stood and offered me his hand. "Come on. Let's get you looked at."

I took his hand without thinking, and he pulled me to my feet with surprising gentleness.

Then reality crashed back.

I was bleeding on the ice. Half the team was staring. Jake Riley had just gone to war for me.

And the worst part? The absolute worst part?

I liked it.