We hit the ice.
Coach has a look in his eye that means we’re about to skate until our lungs beg. I welcome it. I need the ache to drown out the internet. We start with puck-protection drills along the wall. I lean into my edges, feel the bite and release, feel the familiar flow of body and blade. Kyle and I move as a hinge, sticks in lanes, voices low and constant. It’s clean, crisp, everything I love about playing with him—two brains agreeing on the same solution before the question is finished.
If the guys chirp, it’s gentle. One of the wingers sings, “Don’t break up on us, mom and dad,” and Kyle flips him off without malice. A rookie asks loudly if I’m going to hyphenate my last name, and the room cackles. Our goalie bangs his stick on the post and calls, “No kissing in my crease,” and I pretend to threaten him with a slap shot. It’s crude and stupid and perfect—this is how hockey sayswe like youwhen the world is wild: it makes a joke and then gets back to work.
Halfway through practice, media drifts into the stands, cameras like eyes. Team PR keeps them behind glass. Coach Ryland glares at them until they pretend the drills are more interesting than me and Kyle. It helps that Locke is on the adjacent sheet with the Wolves running a clinic of sharpness; cameras love a pretty captain.
We finish with a full-ice scrimmage. I’m at my best when I’m allowed to hunt mistakes, and the ice gives me a dozen. I pick a pass, read a bounce off the stanchion, lay my stick flat to ricochet a breakout straight up the gut. Kyle snaps a pass that looks like witchcraft. The kid on our second line dings the underside of the bar and whoops like a small god.
By the end, I’m drenched, muscles singing. I realize I haven’t thought about the photos for twenty minutes. I haven’t thought abouthimeither, which should feel like an accomplishment. Instead, it feels like holding my breath.
Back in the locker room, the teasing finds a higher gear, but the edges are still rounded. Someone whistles as Kyle and I strip our gear and says, “Save it for the suburbs, lovebirds.” The room laughs. The laughter is relief.
Kyle looks over at me through the curtain of his damp hair and smiles. It’s small. Private. Mine.
He waits until the room thins, then drifts closer, smelling like soap and ice. “Saturday,” he murmurs, like a secret. “I’ll text you the address.”
My stomach does a small, stupid flip. “Okay.”
He hesitates, reading my face. “Can I—?” he asks, and tips his head toward the hallway. I nod. We step just outside the locker-room door, away from the cameras and the echoes and the stink of sweat. The corridor is cold, the draft lifting the hair on my arms.
His hand slides to the back of my neck, warm and careful. He kisses me.
It’s soft. Sweet. The opposite of trouble. For a second, I let it be what it is: a good man giving me something gentle. I breathe him in; I let the moment fill my mouth and my chest, then dissolve.
When we pull apart, he’s smiling, beaming really, like he just got the answer he wanted on a test he studied for too hard. He presses his forehead to mine for a heartbeat and then he steps back, hands in pockets, boyish and proud. “See you later,” he says, and the words carry an entire conversation:You okay? I’m here. We’re fine. We’ll keep it small until it isn’t.
“Later,” I echo.
The door swings and the world swallows us back up. Guys whistle and clap like we won something.
Our captain shakes his head and says, “Rule’s the same as always: you break it in the locker room, you clean it up.” The room groans, laughs. The rule is ancient, half joke, half law. It means:Do what you want, but don’t make it our business.
I dress quickly, pulling on a hoodie with the Titans crest. My phone chimes with a text from PR:Media handled. If you get ambushed, ‘no comment’ is fine. We’ll cover.I send a thumbs-up.
As I shoulder my bag, I flip the phone over and the screen lights with a notification I don’t expect to knot me in half:
Magnus Flint:Don’t go out with Thorn again.
The message arrived two hours ago, but I didn’t see it. It sits there, blue and bare and possessive, like a hand on my wrist. For a second, the hallway tilts. Not because I’m frightened, not because I’m angry, but because something in me flowers open like a match struck in the dark.
He’s jealous.
It’s ridiculous how thrilling that is. A wrong kind of thrilling. I shouldn’t want this. I should want quiet, stability, safety. Ishould want the soft kiss in the empty hallway and the Saturday night movie and Kyle’s steady hands. Idowant all of that.
But I also want the man who sent this text to grind his teeth because he can’t stand the thought of my mouth being soft for anyone else.
“Everything good?” Kyle asks, reappearing at my side, slinging his backpack over one shoulder.
“Yeah,” I say, pocketing the phone. “Just PR.”
He nods, unconvinced but gracious. We walk out together. The cameras catch us on the periphery and decide that a captain talking to a rookie on the other sheet is more photogenic. For once, luck feels like a wind at my back.
Outside, the sky is a high white sheet. The air smells like new snow, even though the forecast says clear. Kyle’s truck is parked crooked, as always. He fumbles his keys. “Text me if you want to change Saturday,” he says. “Or if you want me to send a grocery list, and you can pick a meal. Or if you want me to shut up.”
“You can pick,” I say, on a laugh. “Surprise me.”
He laughs, and the sound is warm enough to carry me all the way home.
