A sharp knock at the front door cuts through our scent-induced haze, and we all jerk toward the sound.
“Hello?” a male voice calls through the wood. “This is the rescue team!”
Chapter twenty
Liam
The puck slams into the boards so hard the vibration climbs straight up my stick.
“Again,” Silas growls, already looping back through the neutral zone.
I collect the rebound and send it back to him. We barely warmed up, we just threw our gear on and hit the ice, thinking we could out-skate what just happened.
But we obviously can’t.
Silas winds up and unloads. The shot sails wide, smashing into the glass. The whole pane shudders.
“You’re off,” Felix calls from the blue line.
“Fuck off,” Silas snaps.
I chase the puck into the corner, my chest tight with something that has nothing to do with cardio.
I can't believe she just left the very second rescue arrived. No scene. No meltdown. Just a too-calm, “I need time,” and then she was gone.
I scoop the puck and fire it at Felix. It goes harder than it needs to. He still handles it.
“One-on-one,” he then says to Silas, eyes sharp. “Center ice. Liam, you’re in net.”
I push off toward the crease without arguing. We need to hit something, and it better be pucks and each other than walls.
Felix and Silas face off at center, and I can see the aggression in both their stances. This is going to hurt.
Felix wins the draw and comes at Silas hard. The check when they collide makes the boards rattle, both of them going into it with more force than any practice drill requires.
Felix breaks free with the puck and circles wide. “Scent matches,” he pants, breath puffing white. “And for what? So she can walk out like we were just—” he cuts around Silas, “—a nice smell she passed on the street?”
Silas strips the puck off him with a brutal poke-check and charges my way. “Or because it’s not real,” he throws back. "Maybe it's just, fuck, I don't know. Some weird side effect from her DuoBlocks."
His shot is a cannon. I snatch it with my glove, the impact stinging my palm even through the padding.
“That’s not how DuoBlocks work and you know it,” I say, tossing the puck to Felix.
Silas lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Yeah, well, maybe we don't know as much as we think we do."
Felix picks up the puck and we reset for another draw. This time Silas wins it, but Felix stays on him.
“The connection felt real before the scents,” Felix says, digging in on the forecheck. “Games, sledding, the stupid movie, the sauna… that was us. Not chemistry.”
“Or it was chemistry we just couldn’t smell yet,” Silas bites out. He tries to spin away but Felix shadows him. “She said it herself, maybe our bodies were picking up more than we thought.”
“I don’t buy that,” Felix throws back. He finally scoops the puck free and tears down the ice. His shot rings off the post.“You can't smell someone's your scent match unconsciously, you do it with yournose.”
I track the puck as it ricochets wide. Silas doesn’t immediately go after it. He’s pacing the neutral zone now, blade tapping an uneven rhythm on the ice.
“I don’t know what I buy,” he says at last, low and raw. "I just know she's gone, we're here, everything smells like jasmine and peach in the chalet, and I can't fuckingthink."
Yeah. That.
