“But you were too busy convincing yourself we were just bros who fucked to notice that I was in love with you.” I moved to the door and paused with my hand on the knob. “That you were in love with me, too.”
And then I left.
CHAPTER 25
TAYLOR
It wasthe final minute of the game, and we were up by one against San Francisco. Their goalie had just been pulled, and an extra attacker had hopped over the boards to the roar of the crowd.
Our center, Dylan Mercer, lined up at the dot and lost it clean back to their point. Bell collapsed low toward the hash marks to help, his stick cutting through the passing lane, while I planted myself at the top of the crease and Monroe shaded toward the shooter.
The shot fired through traffic, and I got a piece of it with my stick—just enough to knock it off line. It ricocheted off someone’s skate before whipping hard around the boards to my side.
I pivoted and tracked it off the wall. I could hear their center digging in behind me, his skates chewing up the ice, his stick tapping for the turnover.
The puck hit the boards a stride ahead of me. I cushioned it on my backhand and pulled it just far enough off the wall to create space?—
Sebastian’s voice from three nights ago intruded, uninvited.“I need space, Taylor.”
On the ice, I hesitated for only a fraction of a second, but it was long enough to cost me the advantage. Now, instead of snapping the puck high and safe off the glass, I floated it up the boards toward Bell, who was cheating toward the blue line, hoping to chip it out.
San Francisco’s bruising defenseman, Tom Carbone, pinched hard down the wall and batted the puck out of the air, keeping it in at the line.
The barn exploded.
It cycled high again, and a shot came from the top of the circle that slammed into Monroe’s shin pad and dropped straight into the slot.
Our goalie, Connor Hale, dropped into a butterfly, his pad flush to the ice.
I spun to find my guy, but he’d already slipped inside my hips, his stick free.
He jabbed at the puck.
Hale kicked his right pad out, trying to seal the post, but the rebound popped loose. He lunged forward, but couldn’t trap it clean. The puck trickled over the line, and the lamp lit up with seven seconds left on the clock.
Fuck.
The team was somberas we boarded the plane, no music blaring from someone’s speaker, no rookies chirping each other across the aisle, no Bonesy trying to get a rise out of Bell. Just the soft thud of carry-ons being shoved into the overhead compartment and the hiss of the air vents. You’d think we’d be used to losing by now, but it never got better.
Especially not when I was the reason.
I kept my head down as I moved down the aisle, my shoulders tight and my jaw set so hard my teeth ached, my bag heavy in my hand like it was trying to drag me down through the floor.
I reached an empty row and stopped, taking the seat nearest the window and figuring no one would want the aisle. Not because they were mad at me. I knew that, even if my brain was trying to twist tonight’s loss into something uglier. They were giving me space.
And there was that fucking word again.
Space from the man I loved. Space from the guys I played alongside.
I wanted to scream.
I stowed my bag and dropped into my seat, my knee bouncing uncontrollably.
A few rows up, I heard Monroe chuckling over something, but it was subdued, his usual energy dialed down ten notches.
A shadow fell across my field of vision, and I glanced up.
Wordlessly, Bonesy reached out and squeezed my shoulder as he passed. A way to say “you’ll get it next time.” He’d been there before—puck on the wall, clock bleeding out, his legs on fire.
