Page 30 of Slew Foot (Scoring Chances #3)
But they were barely twenty minutes into it when Mickey noticed Rafe’s knee was jogging up and down. He bumped it with his own and Rafe quieted for a while before picking it up again.
After half an hour of nonstop jittering, Mickey’d had enough.
“Stop it,” he hissed, clamping his hand on Rafe’s thigh.
Rafe immediately went still, the tension in his body softening. “Sorry. I’m …”
Mickey glanced over when he didn’t finish. He looked miserable, the corners of his big brown eyes and full mouth drooping. What on earth was Rafe so upset about?
And then it hit Mickey in a blinding flash of realization.
“Are you nervous about playing against your old team?” Mickey guessed.
Rafe nodded, his shoulders slumping. “Yeah. And about seeing Logan again.”
“Ohh.” Mickey hadn’t even thought about that. “Yes, that would be hard.”
Or, he imagined it would. He’d never experienced it.
“Are you planning to talk to him?” Mickey asked quietly.
Rafe looked horrified by the idea. “No. Why ?”
Mickey shrugged. “I know you started off as friends.”
Rafe made a face. “Yeah, I can’t …”
“Why did you break up anyway?”
“We had a big fight.” Rafe dragged a hand over his eyes.
“It was stupid. Or it started off stupid. We were talking about holiday plans, or whatever. But then it blew up and he was like ‘I can’t fucking do this anymore, Rafe’ and I thought he meant the argument.
But apparently, he meant, like our whole relationship. ”
Mickey winced.
“Uhh yeah. I feel stupid now.”
“No,” Mickey protested. “You shouldn’t feel stupid. He should have been clearer about it.”
“Yeah, well …” Rafe’s shoulders slumped again. “He went all distant and shit and we had a bunch of travel and back-to-back games in that stretch and then it was the holidays and I …”
Mickey winced when Rafe got to the part about showing up at Logan’s house and finding him there with his new girlfriend.
“Fuck him,” Mickey said vehemently.
“I mean, he’s not a bad guy,” Rafe said with a shrug. “He … we were on totally different pages about stuff or whatever. I dunno. It just … it sucked. It hurt a lot, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.”
Again, Mickey had never experienced it, but he could certainly imagine. He wouldn’t like playing against his exes either.
Then again, he’d never dated another hockey player.
And it didn’t look like that was about to change any time soon.
Rafe’s stomach was in knots as he prepped for the game against his old team.
It felt strange to be in the visitors’ locker room instead of the one on the other side of the arena.
Rafe was a jittery mess, everything inside him feeling all jangly and weird and he couldn’t stop moving . Couldn’t stop wondering what it would feel like to play in this arena but as an opponent, not part of the home team.
He went through his usual pre-game routine but he was almost immediately out when they played two-touch.
The guys chirped him and he tried to joke back, tried to act like everything was normal.
But it wasn’t normal. His old teammates. Logan. They were all here. They were here and?—
Mickey touched his elbow. “C’mere,” he said firmly.
He dragged Rafe—who felt confused but curious about what Mickey was planning—down the hall.
Mickey pulled open a door marked “storage” and they both blinked at the sight of Jesse in a comfortable cross-legged pose sitting in front of a framed picture of someone in goalie gear, maybe? With fake candles set up in a semi-circle around the frame.
Noah Boucher, maybe? Rafe wondered as he squinted at the picture. He and Mickey glanced at each other, then backed silently out of the room.
Mickey shut the door behind them and looked at Rafe again. “Goalie stuff?” he said, sounding like he wasn’t sure if that was true or not.
“Goalie stuff,” Rafe agreed.
Because he didn’t understand what he’d seen but he was also very sure he didn’t want to understand it either.
And it was actually a good distraction because he was so busy trying not to think about whatever Jesse was up to that he wasn’t even thinking about Logan and the rest of the Minnesota Acorns when Mickey finally found a room to pull him into.
This time, it was empty except for some cleaning supplies and a stack of wet floor signs Rafe almost tripped over.
“What are we doing here?” Rafe asked, tucking his hands in the pockets of his shorts.
Mickey stepped closer and grabbed his shoulders. “Look at me, Rafe.”
Rafe did, swallowing thickly as he looked Mickey in the eye. “What?”
“I know tonight is going to be hard,” Mickey said, and his voice was so soft and gentle it made Rafe want to walk a step or two forward until he was in Mickey’s arms and could stand there, feeling Mickey’s heartbeat against his own.
Or, maybe against his ribs, because Mickey was, like, half a foot shorter than him. But Rafe wanted to feel Mickey’s heartbeat and smell his warm, familiar scent and know he had nothing to worry about.
Not on Mickey’s watch.
Instead, Rafe nodded and stayed where he was.
“Seeing your teammates and your ex. Playing against them. I can’t do anything about that,” Mickey continued. “As much as I wish I could. But you’re a Harrier now, Rafe. You are. You’re ours now.”
And Rafe did lurch forward then, closing his arms around Mickey and feeling the puff of air against his neck when Mickey let out a surprised oof .
“Thank you,” he whispered.
And maybe he wasn’t Mickey’s— and whose fault is that but my own? he thought as he brushed his lips against Mickey’s hair—but he did belong to this team.
His time here in Minnesota was over except at away games like this one.
And Rafe had to give this game his all because the Harriers might be a mess coming off the past few weeks of illness but they were his and they were struggling, and it was his job to help lift them up. Give them a chance to prove how good they could be.
Gavin talked a lot about what they were growing there in Boston. What the team could be. What they could do together.
And the last thing Rafe wanted was to do something to hurt his team or his new city.
Minnesota was his past.
But Boston … Boston was his life now.
And maybe, if he was very lucky, his future.