“Do you wantme to go?”
“No. But I won’t make you stay if you don’t want to be here.”
“What about your brothers? Will they be okay with me still being here in the morning?”
“They’ll be fine. They’re the only ones who can know, though,” Reid says, and I prop my head up on my hand to look down at him.
“Who else would we tell? I totally agreed with you before. When we’re at work, we’re at work, but the second we leave that rink, you’d better believe I am going to be all up in the awesomeness of you.”
“Oh, I’m counting on it.”
Chapter twenty-two
Reid
IfLuka’sstillworriedabout my brothers, he doesn’t need to be. Those two boys are way too self-involved to notice Luka has been here every day this week. Or they noticed and didn’t want to be weird and say anything.
I also thought it would be weird at training, like it was the first day after we’d hooked up, but Luka has been like a star rookie at every session. He listens, puts in one hundred and ten percent every day, and hasn’t tried to convince me to try his trick play thing even once.
“Nice work, team, let’s bring that same intensity to the game tomorrow,” Coach Dennings says, leaving the rink after another great session. I head in for an ice bath, passing Topher on the way.
“How’s the nose?” Topher asks.
“Not bad, actually. I’ve been breathing fine, so I guess I heal quickly.”
“Or it wasn’t as bad as we first thought.”
“Hey, I’m going to stick with my superhuman healing abilities, thanks.”
“As long as you’re good, that’s all that matters.”
“Yeah, I’m good,” I say and leave him to get into my ice bath before my muscles start to scream. When I get there, White’s already in one, so I slowly lower myself into the bath beside him.
“How . . . have . . . you . . . been?” I ask through shallow gasps as my body descends into the freezing chill of the tub.
“I’m pretty relaxed, actually,” he says, that calm, dopey look on his face that happens when he’s moved into the best part of this process. Where everything slows, and relaxation is a given.
“You know what . . . I mean.”
“I can’t complain. I guess I could, but who would listen anyway?” he says, and it doesn’t sound like he’s messing around.
“I’m listening,” I reply and he shrugs.
“You don’t want to hear about my problems,” he says, and I’m starting to get a little worried. White and I came up together, both of us signing to the Foxes in the same year, and he was one of the people I could lean on when my parents died. He would meet me at the gym for workouts, at the rink for early or really fucking late skates . . . he was always there.
“You know I’m not just your captain, I’m your friend, and if something’s bothering you, I want to help if I can.”
“That’s the thing, no one can help. It’s too late for that.”
“Okay, now you’re starting to scare me.”
“Sam is pregnant,” he says all of a sudden, and if I wasn’t already in an ice bath, I would totally have loved the feeling of the cold rush that swept over me. I was thinking maybe a life-threatening illness, or a major sports injury.
“Wow, that’s . . .”
“Scary, terrifying, totally reckless.”
“I was going to say exciting, but okay, those adjectives work too. So I take it this wasn’t planned?”
