My wolf preens anyway.
I push harder. Faster. Intercepting Samuel’s pass, I weave through the defense line, deking left, cutting right, then firing a wrist shot that sails past Eric’s glove and buries itself in the top corner.
“Damn, Wolfe.” Brody skates up alongside me, breathing hard. “What’s gotten into you today?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.” He follows my eyeline toward the glass. “Who’s that?”
“Nobody. Keep playing.”
Samuel swoops in from the other side, grinning beneath his helmet. “He’s been like this all morning. Every time he scores, he looks over there.”
“I don’t.”
“You do,” they say in unison.
I shove Samuel with my stick and skate away.
Coach blows the whistle for a line change, and I rotate to the bench, grabbing my water bottle. My eyes drift again, involuntarily, to the glass.
“Go, Dad!”
The shout is high and bright and unmistakable. I look over, water bottle halfway to my mouth, and the image hits me square in the chest.
Ethan is sitting on Miranda’s shoulders. His little hands grip her hair for balance, his face split in a grin so wide it swallows his cheeks. Miranda’s hands are wrapped around his ankles to keep him steady, and she’s tilting her head slightly to accommodate his weight. She looks like this is the most natural thing in theworld. Like she’s been carrying my son on her shoulders his whole life.
The force of it knocks the air out of me.
The picture of them together, framed against the bright lights of the arena, Miranda’s dark hair and Ethan’s wild curls, her steadiness and his joy. It looks like a family.
I don’t see Brody coming.
The hit catches me square in the shoulder and sends me spinning across the ice like a ragdoll. My helmet cracks against something solid, the boards maybe, and white light explodes across my vision.
Then nothing.
It can’t be more than thirty seconds. Maybe a minute. When my eyes open, faces swim above me. Samuel. Brody. Eric with his mask pushed up. And Miranda, who is kneeling on the ice next to me with Ethan pressed against her side, her fingers already probing the back of my skull.
“How many fingers?” she asks, holding up two.
“Eleven,” I mumble.
“He’s fine,” Samuel scoffs.
“He has a head injury,” Miranda snaps. She tilts my chin, examining the cut on my cheekbone. Her touch is clinical, but her pulse is fast. I can hear it. “And a laceration on his cheek.”
Brody skates closer, sneering. “Sorry, man. Didn’t think you’d actually keel over.”
“You hit like a twelve-year-old,” I mutter, sitting up despite Miranda’s hand pressing against my shoulder.
“Stay still.” Her voice brooks no argument.
“I’m fine.”
“You were unconscious.”
“For ten seconds.”
