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Everything will be great.

• • •

We win. Thank god.

It’s a hard game—low scoring on both sides because we’re so evenly matched. Kane gets in another fight with the same guy from last game, which only seems to irk Holden, who goes after him the next play. Still, everyone mostly plays a clean game.

It’s all thanks to Rhys that we end the game 2–1, securing our spot in the Frozen Four tournament.

After the game, we head to a bar Rhys found online—one that we could get to easily in an Uber while avoiding enemy territory. It’s a country-style bar, all wooden with neon signs and something twangy playing on the speakers.

Freddy opts not to go, to stay at the hotel and call his girlfriend. It’s different, a break in his usual away-game celebratory routine, but I couldn’t be happier for him.

“Jesus Christ,” Rhys mutters, ducking his head, a groan pouring from his mouth.

My eyes shoot wide with concern. “What? Are you okay?”

“No. My girlfriend is trying to kill me.”

Brow furrowed, I look up, seeing Sadie pushing her way through the crowd with a twisted-up smirk. She’s dressed in jeans and a very cropped shirt that shows off the solid plane of her stomach . . . and makes me slightly worried that if she lifts her hands, she’ll flash the whole bar. The kicker is that I recognize the shirt—Koteskiy is printed across the back in big bold letters, but it has to be from when we were kids and cut most likely by the girl wearing it.

Laughing, I shake my head at my best friend. “And you’re not happy about this because . . . ? Are you two in some competition?”

“Back to my usual build-up routine for Frozen Four.”

Meaning he won’t have sex with her. I almost snort out my beer.

“You’ve been playing fine, Rhys. Why punish yourself now?”

“Hey, regional champions,” Sadie greets, refusing to slide into the booth with her boyfriend. “Hotshot,” she whispers, hand doing something I don’t want to know.

I nod to her, and flit my eyes away from the display when I spot who is right behind her.

The love of my goddamn life. Paloma Blake, dressed in an oversized jersey with my number and name on the back, baggy jeans, blond hair pulled back into a slicked ponytail. She smiles softly, relaxed as she approaches my side and slides into the booth with me.

“Hi.”

“Hey, P.”

I press a soft kiss to her temple as she curls her hands around my biceps and cuddles into me.

“Good game today,” she offers.

“Yeah?” I grin. “Thanks for cheering me on.”

She rolls her eyes before leaning in toward my ear. “Maybe you can read me poetry in bed when you get back. So I can see you really perform.”

I’m hard as a goddamn rock—from her words, from the feel of her breath against my skin, from her.

“Anything for you, P. ‘I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens,’” I whisper, before pulling her clasped hands to my mouth, kissing her fingertips and adding, “‘Not even the rain has such small hands.’”

She shakes her head with a fake frown, skin flushed. “You forgot the line about my eyes.”

“I’d rather talk about your hair.”

“Yeah?”

I nod. “Let me touch your hair. Wrap it around my fingers, tightening the farther from my grasp you wander. Let me inside you. Let me sew my soul to yours like some great patchwork quilt across a sandless beach—just you and me. And the water between us.”