He pushes me off, smiling ear to ear. “Go beat somebody up, would you?”
“With pleasure,” I say and find my position for the next face off staring Mrazek down once again.
When the puck drops, we come out with all of our might. Every one of my teammates on the ice is determined to keep this lead. We all want to put this game away. No one is letting up.
“Keep it clean, boys!” Coach yells at us from the bench. He’s right. Any of us getting sent into the sin bin right now would make us shorthanded. Which is exactly what our opponents want.
They keep trying to bait me, but I won’t take it. I keep the hits I can’t avoid clean, which seems to frustrate them even more. They’re starting to skate sloppily.
Connor notices it too and at the one-minute mark, he passes the puck to Franklin, who chips it into the top right-hand corner of the net. The horn blares again and we’re back to celebrating.
The fire that was fueling the Slovakian players has burned out. They’re done, and they know it. All that’s left is for us to run out the clock and keep the puck away from our own defensive zone.
As soon as the time runs out, Bouchard is hauling ass away from the net to join the rest of the team as we congratulate each other by the bench. I crash into him like we do back in Buffalo, then thump him three times on the back with my fist. He put in a lot of work tonight, blocking over thirty-eight shots on goal and only letting two slip through. But I know him well enough to know he’s beating himself up over it.
“Tough game,” I say to him.
“And it’s only going to get worse,” he says. He points at Connor, who’s being jostled around by everyone on the team. He’s finally getting some proper respect from the group. “He played his ass off tonight.”
“Yeah, he did,” I agree.
Bouchard hits me with his elbow. “So did you. And you only spent four minutes in the box. That’s a record for you.”
“Couldn’t risk leaving him unguarded.”
Bouchard shakes his head at me, but he’s grinning. “What are we going to do with your throne in Buffalo?”
“Polish it. We’ll be home in two weeks, ready to kick some ass on our home ice.”
“Uh huh,” Bouchard says, like he has his doubts.
I look at him and question his tone. “What?”
“I’m just wondering if you’ve given any thought to how you’re going to deal with playing against him again once we get back to the real world.”
My cheeks go cold. I have thought about this. At length, in the quiet moments I have alone with nothing but myself and my concerns for what’s to come next, for company. I try to imagine what it will be like to play against him again and I can’t do it. It makes my stomach clench. So instead I indulge in his presence, breathing him in, and try to think of every way around the inevitable I can.
We only have one more regular season game against the Broad Wings. But after that, we’re bound to see them in the playoffs. The Blizzards are the number one team in the east, andthey’re the number one team in the west. Us meeting in the Stanley Cup finals is an inevitability. I might get out of our regular season game. I could take some time to separate myself from him and the feelings I have, but I can’t do that in the playoffs. And truth be told, I’m too loyal to my team to leave them stuck with me as a neutralized player, left ineffective on the ice because I can’t play rough against my boyfriend.
All these years I’ve been worried about the league’s higher ups coming up with any reason they can to get rid of me, and here I could hand them the ultimate reason by falling for their golden boy. It’s ironic really. They hate me for my brutality and strength, and in the end, it would be my soft, caring side that would allow them to fuck me. At some point, I’m going to have to make a choice. It’s either Connor or my career.
Connor
“Are you alright?” I ask Gavin at our post-win impromptu party in Bouchard and Olsen’s dorm room. How we managed to cram the entire team in here is somewhat of a miracle. Coach Chris would murder us if he saw us right now. But we all needed to let loose after that win and Bouchard and Olsen offered their stockpile of smuggled liquor, along with a card game, in their room.
The festivities are starting to die down, and people have slowly been tapping out and filing into their rooms. But I’m not leaving until Gavin is ready. We have our own form of celebration to do.
He smiles at me, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’m good.” He lays a card down from his hand when it’s his turn to play. “Just getting tired.”
“We can go back to our room,” I suggest.
He nods his head, then plays another card.
I watch him in silence. The look in his eyes is like the Gavin I first met. Lonely and troubled by whatever it is that swirls in his mind. He’ll deny it, but I know he thinks too much. He has a myriad of reasons: his dead mother, his dad, proving himself assomething more than the Alaskan white trash he’s convinced everyone sees him as, protecting his team, keeping his secrets to himself all while trying to walk the tightrope of remaining in the league. The list goes on, and I’m sure it’s filled with things I don’t even know about yet.
But right now seems like an odd time for him to be disappearing inside his head. We’re at the Olympics, we just won our first game on our quest for gold, and he has me to be by his side throughout all of it.
My stomach drops. Maybe that last one is the problem. Maybe he’s second guessing this thing with me. He did say we shouldn’t do this. He tried to warn me it would be a bad idea, but I pushed anyway because I couldn’t resist the way he makes me feel. Safe, seen, and understood.
