My edges had never felt this clean.
I carved a crossover around center ice, and my body did the thing it was supposed to do—weight transfer smooth, knee bend automatic, blade angle finding the ice like it had been waiting for me all morning. No static. No second-guessing. Pure motion.
I grinned so hard my cheeks ached.
Sent a tape-to-tape pass to Desrosiers. He caught it without looking, which meant I'd put it exactly where his stick already was. Shot on goal—top corner, the satisfying thwack of rubber on crossbar that saidalmost perfect, do it again.I did it again. This time it went in.
The rink hummed with pregame electricity. Stands were filling up. Early in the season—fresh chances, fresh everything.
Usually, my warm-ups came with noise—the endless internal sportscaster narrating my failures before they happened, including a checklist of things I'd probably screw up.
Today, the broadcast was off. Someone had found the mute button on my brain, and all that was left was the scrape ofblades, the cold bite of rink air, and the satisfying burn in my thighs as I pushed harder.
I knew why.
And I wasn't going to think about it, because if I thought about it, I'd concentrate on his mouth and his hands and the way he'd saidgoodnight, Pickle, and then I'd skate directly into the boards.
So I didn't think about it.
I skated.
"Piatkowski." Desrosiers materialized beside me, matching my stride. "You trying out for the Olympics? Dial it back."
"Can't dial back greatness, Des. It's a volume knob, not a light switch."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Greatness usually doesn't."
He peeled off, muttering something in French that was probably unflattering. I didn't care. My legs felt like they belonged to someone who knew what they were doing, and that person was currently wearing my body like a well-fitted suit.
Evan caught my eye from across the ice. He had his analyzing face on—the one that meant he was filing information for later.
I waved at him. He did not wave back.
Suspicious, his expression said.
I skated a figure eight just to prove I could.
And then Hog glided past.
He didn't stop. Didn't even slow down. Just drifted through my airspace, close enough that I caught the pine-scented soap smell of him.
He said, quietly, almost conversationally: "Someone got kissed."
My left skate caught my right ankle. I stumbled, flailed, and nearly ate ice in front of three hundred early-arriving fans and one very smug enforcer.
"What—I didn't—that's not—"
Hog was already ten feet away, skating backward now, watching me with the serene expression of a man who had never once in his life been surprised by anything.
"Warm-ups look good," he said. "Keep it up."
I stood there, heart hammering, face burning, brain running through every possible explanation for how Hog could possibly know about—
He was right.
He was completely, annoyingly right, and the worst part was I didn't even care. I could have been spiraling about discretion and professionalism and the fact that Adrian was literally here to film me being a person, and I'd gone and kissed him in a rental car like some kind of hockey-playing romance novel hero.
