Page 35 of Fractured Ice

“As it should be,” Sienna says, smiling.

They head toward the bus together, her hand in his. I watch them go and feel the way I always feel when I watch them, which is something between genuine happiness for my best friend and a very specific kind of envy that I've stopped trying to pretend isn't there. Jace wanted her, went after her, and they figured it out, and here I am showing up forty minutes early to an athletic center parking lot.

I turn back to Sienna.

"Hey," I say.

"Hey." She shifts her camera case to the other hand. "You're early."

"I'm always early."

"You're never early."

"Today I am." I fall into step beside her. "Did you get your room assignment?"

"I did. The journalism department put me on the fourth floor with Rory, since she’s working on a PR campaign for the school."

"The team's on the second."

"I know."

"You should come hang out with us after the game. The guys always do something, watch movies, order food, whatever. You'd get good material."

She considers it, which is more than I expected. "Maybe."

"Yeah?"

"I said maybe, Ethan."

"That's a yes." I'm smiling and I know I'm smiling too much and I can't stop it. "That's basically a yes."

"It's a maybe." But there's something at the corner of her mouth that almost qualifies as reciprocal, and I'm about to press my luck a little further when Mason and Tyler materialize from the direction of the parking lot.

I see them coming and I have about three seconds to understand what's about to happen and absolutely no ability to prevent it.

"Walker," Mason announces, at a volume suited for the outdoors and not for standing ten feet away. "Road trip, baby. You know what that means." He claps his hands together. "Girls at the arena. Hotel rooms. Housekeeping finding things in the trash that haunt their dreams."

"Mason—"

"Dude, remember Portland?" Tyler says, to Mason, as if Sienna and I aren't standing right here. "Walker had that girl in his room until checkout."

"She missed her flight," Mason confirms, nodding reverently.

"I need you both to stop talking," I say.

They’re trying to paint me up as some big dog, because the jersey chasers like this kind of shit, but they don’t realize that they’re just making my life a million times harder.

"Oh, is this the journalist?" Mason looks at Sienna with a grin. "I’ll tell you what, you’ve got the perfect subject here. He’s a king, on and off the ice. You should talk to some of the guys on the road, honestly. Ethan's got a reputation at every arena we visit. The girls just line up outside his room. It's actually insane to watch."

"Mason. Stop."

"Minimum one per night," Tyler says, like he's reporting a statistic. "Sometimes two. There was that one time in⁠—"

"Tyler."

"The twins," Mason says.

I close my eyes briefly.