Page 40 of Cherry Picking

I groan, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Mind your own damn business, Kessler.”

He makes a playful grab for my pocket, and I roll toward the window. Now the whole back of the plane is tuned in. There is nothing this team loves more than a man refusing to offer up a name.

I might be chronically single, but half this roster is anchored to someone back home.

Hartwell’s been with Lily since they were kids and still does the nightly FaceTime ritual without fail. Duval got engaged last summer and has since become the most insufferable romantic in the league. Even Öberg and Ekman have been a package deal since juniors.

They claim it’s just friendship, but they’ve shared a room for three seasons, and nobody in the front office made them sign the request.

Augie insists he’s “emotionally available,” which usually just means he won’t stay with a woman for more than six weeks. The rookies are still too terrified to have pulses yet. And for the most part, I’ve stayed out of the rotation.

The last time I let a woman in, the exit was messy enough that I never found the energy to try again.

“Is this the girl who’s helping your dad?” Hartwell asks from the next row.

I frown. “How do you know about that?”

“Our fathers talk,” Hartwell says, unbothered. “They met at a prospect camp once, and now they apparently trade intel on our personal lives.”

I drop my head back against the seat. “There is literally nothing to know.”

I’m not just giving the party line. There really is nothing to report about me and Evie. I like the distraction of her, and I need to talk to her because she’s currently the only thing keeping my father steady.

But there isn’t space for anything more. My life is split between two time zones, my contract expires in April, and I’m still half drowning in the silence of my brother’s death. I’m already carrying too much.

“You’re blushing,” Fozzy notes, sounding awed. “I thought you were carved out of granite and spite, Maxwell.”

“Leave it,” I say, and something in my voice must hit home because Augie sits back and shuts the table down with a single look.

He waits until the noise shifts—Hartwell accusing Duval of hiding an ace in his hoodie—and then he speaks low, dealing a fresh hand.

“It’s good, though,” he says from the corner of his mouth. “Whatever it is. It’s good to see you back in your own skin for a minute.”

I look at my cards, the static at the back of my skull finally quieting. “It’s nothing.”

Augie studies me for a split second, then shrugs and tosses a chip at Fozzy instead.

“Alright,” he announces. “Fozzy owes me twenty bucks.”

“On what grounds!”

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I don’t check it while they’re watching. But I want to, and that’s the tell.

When I’m not talking to Evie, I find myself wondering what she’d say next—whether some bizarre thing I saw at the rink would make her laugh. I don’t know if this is friendship or the front edge of a problem, but I know I haven’t tried very hard to find the exit.

The Motors Arena is a packed red fortress of a building that has held a grudge against the Kings since long before I was ever drafted.

Detroit comes out chippy, and the opening frame is mostly a collection of shoving matches after the whistle. Sticks are up in the corners, their bench is yapping at ours over the glass, and it’s scoreless through twenty.

It feels more like a bar fight than a professional hockey game.

By the second period, it’s a war. I love that part, at least at the start. The game gets fast and mean, and I finally stop thinking entirely. Augie levels a guy so hard the glass shudders, and for a second, the whole building forgets whose barn it is.

Detroit gets the first one eight minutes in, a deflection off a shin pad that Duval never had a chance at. Then, midway through the period, I chip a puck past their defenseman and find an extra gear, getting there first. I feed Fozzy back door for the tap-in that ties it, and our bench comes up as one.

Out here, I’m not a man with a dead brother and a nightstand full of insurance forms. I’m fast, and I’m useful, part of a machine that moves when I move. This is the performance I’d pay them for, if the math worked the other way around.

We keep pushing after the tying goal. It’s the best I’ve felt in weeks—the reads are coming easy, and the puck sits flat on my tape every time I ask for it. I nearly bury a second on a two-on-one, but their goalie flashes a desperate glove and robs me clean.