Page 131 of Rule 1: Never Accidentally Marry Your Teammate

I roll my eyes. “Good guess. You must have been paying attention when you watched movies or something.”

He blinks. “This isn’t like you.”

“I guess I’m under stress,” I mutter. “I should ask to be transferred.”

His face pales more. “That’s what you want?”

“If it means I don’t have to see you!” My voice comes out harsher than I intended, and Finn jumps.

“You don’t want to see me?” his voice shakes.

“It wouldn’t work,” I say miserably.

“You mean the two or three games we might play against each other would still be too much for you?” He draws back,and his eyes are wider than normal. I want to stare at them forever. Instead, I examine the gray-painted ground. So not the same thing.

“Because I see you everywhere,” I say mournfully. “When I close my eyes, you’re there. And God, even when I don’t close my eyes you’re here.”

“Is that so?” His lips curl into a smile, and irritation washes over me.

“You don’t need to seem so smug about it.”

Then, irritating man that he is, he starts to laugh.

“It’s not a laughing matter!” I pout.

“I’m just happy,” he says between laughs.

“I’m telling you that you broke my heart!” I exclaim. “And you’re happy!”

“Uh-huh.”

I stare at him. My jaw drops, and his cheeks grow a ruddier color than they were previously.

“That probably sounds bad.”

“Yeah.” Something hot prickles my eyes.

Oh, no.

I’m not going to cry in front of him. Absolutely not. I’ve already thrown up in front of him. I don’t need to add that to my list of humiliations. It’s not like there’s some list somewhere, all the ways for me to embarrass myself in front of Finn, that I need to hit.

“Let’s go back to the ice,” Finn says softly. “I promise everything will be okay.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to pretend nothing happened between us.”

“Then we won’tpretend that.”

He wraps an arm around my shoulder and tries to lead us forward, but I halt.

“We don’t need to attend, do we?”

“Well...” Finn swallows hard, and I try not to think about how Adam’s apples are way more attractive than they’re given credit for. “We do.”

“It’s not a hockey game. It’s just some stupid event.”

Finn winces.

Footsteps sound in the tunnel.