Page 19

"As my date." Another pause. "I mean. As my fake date. Obviously."

"Obviously," I repeat, and I can hear her trying not to laugh. "I'd like that."

"Yeah?"

"Tell me when and where."

We stay on the phone. I don't know exactly how it happens — one minute we're talking about event logistics, and the next she's telling me about her first year on the team, how, despite growing up in Pittsburgh, she didn’t have friends apart from hockey.

“The Uprising has always felt more like family to me,” she says. “I really liked the team dinners.”

I’m on the couch again, with Puck curled against my thigh. Briar’s voice fills the room like she’s here.

She asks about Boston. I tell her about the Murphy Rink, about lacing my skates at five years old with my dad's hands over mine because I couldn't tie yet.

She tells me about college, the Olympic pipeline, and the years spent trying to prove that women's hockey deserved what men's hockey received without asking.

"My ex used to say I cared too much about it," she says, and her voice shifts. "About hockey. About all of it. He said I was too intense." I stay quiet. I've learned Briar says more when there's space. "He said a lot of things, actually." She exhales. "He said I took too long."

The words sit there. I frown at the ceiling. "Took too long to what?"

A beat of silence. Then: "To finish. In bed." And then she groans, like she really didn’t want to reveal that. “Oh my god, forget I said that. I’m sorry I⁠—”

“You can tell me anything, Briar.” My body is coiled. Muscles tensed to pounce. Someone said something to her about her body, and I want to hear the rest so I know who to murder.

Her voice is flat as she continues. Like she’s reading a report. “He said I was slow. That I needed too much. He’d try for a while and then just ... stop. And eventually I figured, okay, maybe that's just how I'm wired. Some women are like that. It's not his fault."

My brain is full of hot, black outrage. I’ve learned to channel it on the ice. I’ve never felt this way off the ice before. But hearing Briar describe her ex? I fully understand every stereotype Lisa accused me of embodying.

"Cameron?" Her voice is small. "Sorry, I don't know why I said that. That was weird."

My jaw aches. I realize I'm clenching my teeth. "It wasn't weird." My voice comes out rough. I clear my throat. "Briar."

"Yeah?"

I choose my words carefully because what I want to say involves violence, and I think what she needs to hear is something else entirely. "There is nothing slow about you. There's nothing wrong with how your body works." I pause. "That man didn't deserve to be in the same room as you."

Silence on the line. I hear her breathe. "It's not —" she starts.

"What you just described is a man who couldn’t be bothered to do right by you.” I stop myself. I grip the phone. Puck lifts his head, ears twitching as he senses shift in the room. "That makes him someone who didn't deserve what he had."

She doesn't say anything for a long time. Long enough that I wonder if I've said too much, pushed too hard, or overstepped the very clear boundaries of an arrangement that is supposed to be fake and uncomplicated, not whatever this is.

"Thank you," she says quietly. She sighs. “I should go. We have an early flight.”

I press my thumb and forefinger against my closed eyes and breathe. “You get your rest, Briar,” I tell her, horrified that anyone would tell this woman that wanting pleasure was an inconvenience.

"Goodnight, Cameron."

I hang up and sit in the dark with my cat, my rage, and a detailed fantasy of finding this man and extracting his teeth, one at a time.

There’s more to it, though. I think about Briar’s ass, about her grinding against me in that club.

I would never stop until she was screaming my name. If I had the opportunity to be with her that way? I’d make fucking sure she came so hard she forgot why she’d ever doubted she could.

Puck rests his head back down on my thigh.

"I know," I tell him. “I’m fucked.”