He turns to look at me, eyes wide. “What?”
I laugh and rub my face. “I’m going to be punished because of you,” I say, glaring at him. “I’ve been good the entire time we’ve been together and have avoided punishment. Now, because of you, I’m going to get one, and I’m… not happy about that.”
Trent blinks at me without comment. When he repeats, “What?” again, I laugh.
“Do you need help?” he asks, eyes narrowed.
“No, it’s entirely consensual.”
“Doesn’t sound like punishments are consensual,” he counters.
For the first time since I started seeing Dasan, I allow myself to talk about our relationship with someone, and it feels really good.
CHAPTER 23
DASAN
The whistle blows justas I’m skating with the puck to Washington’s defensive zone. My shoulders tense. This isn’t Matt, the ref who fucked with our last game against Washington, on the ice tonight. Still, I think my entire team is a little tense.
Not that it was their fault. Not at all. Washington was entirely innocent in the bullshit that went down a week and a half ago.
I stand straight and let myself glide along the ice as I wait for the call. The refs confer, then one skates in front of the camera to make his call.
“Number eighteen, Winnipeg. Tripping. Two minutes.”
I roll my eyes and head for the sin bin. Once seated, I squirt water into my mouth from the bottle there, my eyes flickering up to the time. There are three minutes left in the game, and while I mean to just look at the clock, I end up watching the replay.
My stick hits Washington number nine, and I turn to go after the puck. My stick remains with nine, and yep, there it is. Hits his skate.
Huh. Well, fine. He totally tripped over my stick. I didn’t intentionally trip him, but this is one of those moments when I should have been more aware of where my stick was. That’s on me. And a legitimate call.
I look at my team. Coach is watching me, so I try to give him an “oops” expression. He shakes his head, but I’m pretty sure he’s smiling as he turns away. I sit in my time-out as I watch the game. We’re going to lose this one. It’s 1-4 and incredibly unlikely that we’re going to catch up in the last three minutes.
We generally do pretty well against Washington, but I think the last game with them really fucked us up. We’re simply waiting for shit calls now, and I think it’s making us overly careful. Far too cautious.
The puck goes back and forth while I’m in the sin bin. When I’m released back onto the ice, I skate to the bench and take a seat, allowing Wiley to head to the ice instead. Coach’s hand rests on my shoulder. I hope that means he understands I didn’t mean to do that. That was definitely my bad for not paying enough attention.
No more goals are made on either side for the rest of the game. I’m glad that they didn’t beat us by more than three but frustrated that they beat us at all.
My team is quiet as we head to the locker room. This time, it’s because we know our loss is totally on our heads. We messed up tonight. We were so busy waiting for something stupid to be called on us that we didn’t play at our best performance.
There’s a lot to be said about our mental states.
Sighing, I strip out of my pads and stuff them in my bag. Naked, I pad down through the visitors’ locker room toward the showers and step under the spray of cold water. A shiver runs through me. It doesn’t take long for the water to heat since others are using hot water too.
With my eyes closed, I bow my head and let the water penetrate my hair until it’s soaking my scalp. Then I take a few minutes and let the halo braid out so my long hair falls around me like a soggy curtain.
“Dasan?”
I pick my head up to look at Felton’s shadow outside the curtain. “Yeah?”
“You okay?”
I frown. Why does everyone keep asking me that? It feels like I’m asked every hour, though maybe I’m just exaggerating the frequency. Maybe I feel defensive about the question because somethingisbothering me.
“Yeah, Fel. I’m fine. Are you?”
“Oh. Yeah, I’m good. Just a dumb luck game tonight.”
