“I broke her door.”
Mason stopped skating. “You what?”
“I don’t know,” I said, words bunching with the mess of shit in my brain. “I heard her screaming and it flipped something in me. I didn’t think. I just went in.”
The humor drained from his face, replaced by something sharper. He angled his body, blocking me from the rest of the ice.
“And?”
“And he swung at me.”
Mason’s mouth twitched. “You give it to him?”
I nodded.
“Good,” he said without hesitation. “Guy sounds like a real winner. But why do you look like you didn’t win the fight?”
I stared down at the ice, the grooves carved by a hundred skates, all that repetition wearing paths into something solid. “Because I don’t know what I would’ve done if he’d gotten to her first.”
Mason didn’t interrupt but I could tell he was listening closely.
“If he’d laid a hand on her,” I went on. “If I’d been a minute later.”
“Damn,” he said finally. “I thought you just wanted to tap some ass. But you really like this girl, huh?”
I snorted a weak laugh. “I think it’s way past that.”
“Cross!” Coach again. I couldn’t tell whether he was mad or not.
“Told you,” Mason grumbled, increasing the distance between us to separate himself from the delinquent.
I pushed off, skating over to the bench with an excuse already queued, but Coach didn’t let me get it out. He raised a hand, palm out, and waved the rest of the guys in closer. Sticks tapped ice as the circle tightened.
“I just got off the phone with management,” he said.
My stomach dropped. It was the perfect follow-up to the morning I’d been having.
Coach looked at me for a long beat, then his mouth split into a grin that threw me off balance more than any hit.
“You’re a nominee,” he said. “Rookie of the Year.”
His words floated around like some mythical incantation, not really settling with me.
Grayson punched my arm. “You look pretty shocked for someone who’s acted like this was his destiny since peewees.”
Laughter broke around us. Helmets knocked into mine. Someone rapped my shoulder with a glove.
“About time,” Mason said. “Try not to let it inflate that head any more than it already is.”
Rookie of the Year.
It finally sank in, heat rushing through me, pride colliding with everything else already packed inside my chest. I looked around at the guys, at the scuffed ice under us, at Coach still smiling like he’d been holding onto this news for fun.
“Where’s my phone?” I blurted.
Coach jerked his chin toward the tunnel. “Go. And the rest of you can call it too.”
The team’s cheers rose but I took off away from the celebration, cutting hard for the locker room, blades biting as I left the noise behind. The hallway narrowed, sound dropping away until it was just my breath and the thud of my heart.
