“I know, I know,” I spoke around the food in my mouth. “I felt so guilty the whole time I was working on it. I made sure to keep the content as far away from Fox as possible while constructing it.”

  “My guess is, he’ll be over it once the game today is done,” Echo shrugged. “Fox is sensitive about his playing, so you struck a nerve, but he’s never been one to hold a grudge like that. And he’s never been able to stay mad at you. Not even that time you broke his favorite stick.”

  I smiled reflexively at the memory. Fox had been teaching me to play hockey, so he’d have someone who could take shots on him and help him practice. I’d requested a rest from the endless skating that came with having to shoot the puck at him repeatedly and asked that we swap positions. Relenting, he’d handed over his custom goalie stick for me to use before taking my stick and skating off to retrieve the puck. About fifteen minutes later, he’d tried a fancy spinning move to get the puck in, but our skates had gotten tangled and he’d fallen on top of me, with his stick breaking my fall.

  “I hope we can get back to where we were in our friendship,” I agreed. “But I don’t know that I can handle trying to be…more than that. I mean, I told him I loved him. And he hung up on me. Now it’ll be this thing between us. I’m that girl.”

  Echo refrained from commenting, filling her mouth with a piece of toast. I finished my Corn Flakes in silence before glancing at the clock.

  “I should head home and change,” I said. “Fox should’ve headed out for his pregame practice by now.”

  “Are you interested in going to the game?” Echo asked. “My parents are going with Dax and Asha, and us. They got some private box through the team. I’m sure they could get you in, too.”

  “I don’t think he’d want me there. I’ll watch at the station. The sports guys will have it on so they can write something up for tonight and note the video clips they have to request from the league.”

  “Going to the game in person could get you out of that work thing,” Echo pointed out.

  “No, they’d just postpone it. I think I’ve done enough postponing things because I’d be uncomfortable,” I muttered.

  “Well, if you want to crash here again tonight, just shoot me a text or give me a call. And I’ll leave a ticket, just in case you change your mind.”

  “Thanks, Echo.” I nodded appreciatively before turning my attention to Cole. “It was nice to meet you.” I headed for the living room and gathered my things before trudging to my car and driving over to my empty apartment. I had to get ready for work at the station and prepare myself to watch and pray that my conversation with Fox didn’t send him into a tailspin on the ice.

  17

  Fox

  Sasha’s words kept playing over and over in my mind. She loved me. What was I supposed to do with that? I kept myself locked in my room, considering heading out for the night and maybe avoiding coming home again. I didn’t want to have to worry about seeing her in the apartment and confronting her the minute she walked through the door. Confronting her with what, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t think of anything to say that I hadn’t already said—except that I forgave her, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. If she’d told me she loved me before…

  I flopped back on my bed to stare at the ceiling. I couldn’t deal with it right now. With what might have been between me and Sasha. That was the whole reason I hadn’t brought up a hypothetical relationship to see if she’d be receptive. I had wanted it, but knew she didn’t. It was what she’d said when she broke up with Ryan.

  And now there was just too much that I needed to focus on for myself. I was starting in net for my first home game in a little less than fifteen hours. I should be preparing for that.

  I pulled over my laptop and started going through video of the players from Philadelphia, the ones who would be taking their shots on me during the upcoming game. Sitting on my bed, I mimed the moves I would make to block various shots. I analyzed the players for tics that would show which direction they might come at me and where they’d try to sneak the puck through. I looked for passing patterns among the players on various lines. And in the back of my mind, I kept one ear trained on the apartment door and the first hint of it opening.

  When I finally couldn’t focus on the screen anymore and shut the laptop down, I ventured from my room to see if I’d missed her, but she was nowhere in the apartment. She had to be avoiding me, and I was too tired to think about whether that supported or undermined her declaration of her feelings. I locked everything up, turned the lights out, and went to bed.

  She might have been avoiding me in the waking world, but I found her in my dreams. I was back on the floor of the shower with her sitting there beside me. Only this time, we were both naked. The failure weighed heavy on me as she brought my head down to rest against her shoulder, stroking my wet hair back as the water sluiced over us both.

  I couldn’t understand exactly what she was saying, but it was gentle and soothing. She dipped her head to press a kiss to my brow, then my closed eyes, and finally my mouth.

  The spike of heat was instant, and I reached up to cup the back of her head, holding her lips and her tongue hostage to my own. Her hand dropped to my dick and stroked me gently before she broke away and straddled me. My cock slid easily inside her, and she rode me hard, her hands pressing down on my chest, and the water spraying me in the face.

  I couldn’t get the water out of my face. Couldn’t see her as she rose and fell above me. I sought the eye contact we usually had when we made love, but the water prevented that. I tried wiping my face to clear my mouth and nose as I started to choke on the water. But I could only manage long enough to cough and have it all fill again. I grabbed a tighter hold of her waist and pulled myself upright, sputtering as I rolled her onto her back so the water would strike my shoulder blades and I could leverage myself to thrust inside her and push us both to the brink of release. As I rose above her, however, she cried out with pleasure and dissolved beneath me.

  I woke with a start and groaned at the fleeting sensations that had been so vivid in my dream. But I felt drained and used. I was too tired and not in the mood to analyze my dreams that deeply. I settled for being relieved that she hadn’t come home, that I didn’t have to face her yet, and I dreaded when both would be necessary.

  After the disturbing dream I’d had, I opted out of showering at the apartment and headed to the rink early to get in a bit of extra practice before the game. My brain wouldn’t let it go, though. I found himself checking my phone to see if I had any messages or missed calls from her, even as I told myself I wasn’t ready and didn’t want to hear from her. Stop being a pussy and focus.

  Coming off the ice to head down to the locker room for the pregame coaching session and associated rituals, my teammates and coaches were enthusiastic about my fast-approaching start.

  “Your family here for the game?” Henri asked in a hoarse voice as he popped a cough drop into his mouth and noisily cleared his throat and nose.

  “Uh…yeah, I think so,” I said with a shrug. I turned to my phone and realized that I had received several texts from Dax stating that he and our parents had been able to pick up the tickets that had been left for them with the front office without incident. Asha, Dax’s girlfriend, had apparently come as well, and was busy chatting with some old college friends of hers in the media booth. All the messages showed as having been read by me, but I honestly couldn’t remember reading a single one of them. “Yup, sounds like they’re settled in their box. What about you? Did you get any of your family over for your first home game?”

  Henri nodded but it dislodged something in his sinuses, and he turned to sneeze into a towel hanging in his locker. I took three steps away while Henri’s back was turned. If I got sick too, the team would be completely screwed in goal.

  “Well, uh, any advice?” I asked, as we got the call to line up for our introduction and official warmup skate in front of the fans before puck drop.

  Henri scrunched his face in thought before shrugging and responding, “Stop the puck.”

  “Thanks,” I gave a nervous laugh as I made my way to the end of the line. “That’s, uh, helpful.”

  That was the last clear thing I could make out as the noise of the crowd overwhelmed me, and I moved to the bench for the game’s opening ceremonies. Even the singing of the national anthem was fuzzy in my ears. I headed for the crease when the rest of my starting teammates climbed over the boards. After a few moments of roughing up the ice in the crease, I had it just the way I liked it and settled in, determined to focus on the game.

  And I did. I saw every move that happened in front of me and felt my body reacting. I was completely aware of where the puck was at every moment, ignoring the calls between the players on the ice and the pounding noise of the fans against the Plexiglas barrier behind him.

  But at the same time, I wasn’t actively thinking about the game, only reacting to it. Consciously, I was struggling to keep thoughts of Sasha and the story she’d done at bay. Snippets of her voiceover came back to me when the puck was down at the other end of the rink. We see and hear so much in the media about those who have defied the odds and made it to the big leagues… But what about those who have the odds deliberately stacked in their favor? There are plenty of them, as well. All of those players working undeniably hard to earn and keep their prominent positions. And then there are those whose names we never learn. Those whose talents and efforts come to naught.

  I was never mentioned by name in her piece, undeniably by Sasha’s design. But what her motivations were for keeping me out of it…

  “Great period, man.” One of the defensemen slapped my padded shoulder. I realized I hadn’t even heard the buzzer. I followed Jones off the ice. Had it really been a full twenty minutes of play? I hadn’t let a single shot in. I knew that much, but I wasn’t sure how many shots had come at me to begin with. The puck had spent a while down at the other end of the ice, of that, I was certain. There were two or three specific saves I remembered, and one sore spot on my thigh where a puck had hit a bit higher than my goalie pads extended. Not so hard a hit as to cause serious damage, just an annoying twinge that would bruise later.

  Coach Tremblay was pleased, but didn’t make a big deal of how I’d done in the first period. We were up one to nothing, and he wanted to widen that gap in the next twenty minutes so he focused most of his attention on the forwards, drawing a few approaching formations for them on his dry-erase clipboard. The intermission was over all too quickly, and we were headed back out to the ice. Coach Tremblay gave me a knock on my helmet and a low, “Keep it up, Coulter.”

  The second period passed in much the same manner as the first. My thoughts continued to slip toward Sasha. Was she watching the game? She’d been so excited over the way I’d played in my first game with the team, but would she even talk to me after this one? Would she kick me out of the apartment?

  If her story got picked up when she didn’t even consider it finished, that had to mean the station would offer her a job when her internship was up and she had graduated. She wouldn’t need my help to pay the rent after that. Not to mention her modeling job for Echo—the campaign, or whatever it was called—hadn’t officially launched, but Echo was excited about it. Sasha would be too important for me, even if I was a Coulter.

  The other team’s offense was definitely down at my end of the ice more during the second period. They weren’t spending as much time passing between themselves to set up the perfect shot. No, they were just trying to pummel me, hoping I’d let something slip through. There was a looseness, strength, and speed I was able to channel in a way I hadn’t managed to coordinate effectively in the past. It was as though I almost wasn’t there; as though I were watching idly from the sidelines as someone else played goalie. I knew what I had to do for my team, but it didn’t intimidate me the way I so often let it in the past. Besides, nothing would be as humiliating as what I’d felt watching Sasha’s story about ‘those who have every advantage, including talent, but who cannot overcome themselves’ as she’d put it, and knowing that she’d been thinking specifically of me when she wrote those words.

  I wished I didn’t care what she thought of me, but the memory of the raw desire in her eyes told me otherwise. Those green orbs mesmerized me as they changed from hazel to something almost emerald, depending on the light. I wanted her to look at me like that again. But I didn’t know if maybe I’d imagined all of that. Maybe I’d only ever seen what I wanted to see as far as Sasha was concerned.

  I threw myself to the ice in an uncomfortable split, my glove hand reaching desperately behind my leg to cover the puck just as it reached the blue line. Suddenly, I was bowled over by one of my teammates and one of the other team’s forwards as they collided and landed on top of me and my stick arm.

  I heard something snap and a lot of whistles blowing as the refs came over to untangle the mess of players and sort out the necessary penalties. I heard one of the other team’s players shouting about how the puck had crossed the line and I had drawn it back over before it registered and the buzzer could sound the goal. But when the ref looked to my gloved hand, I raised it and the puck was sitting on the right side of the line. No goal. When the other team’s coach pushed for a review, I used the intervening minutes to stretch myself out and skate to the bench for a replacement stick. I was lucky it was my stick and not my arm that had snapped when the two tangled players came down on me.

  The challenge went in the Brawlers’ favor. No goal.

  The second period came to an end a few minutes later, with the Brawlers up three to nothing.

  “You sure this is your first game on home ice?” one of the guys joked with me as we made their way down the tunnel for the second intermission.

  “Local network wants to do an interview with you during the break,” Martin whispered with an elbow nudge. But before I could even consider panicking, Martin laughed. “Don’t worry. The coaches don’t want you getting distracted in the middle of the game like that. They’ll save you for the post-game press conference. It’ll be one of the assistant coaches this time. Tremblay wants us pushing our advantage in the third. Here’s hoping that lost challenge keeps them down instead of riling them up again.”

  My instructions for the third period consisted of, “keep doing what you’ve been doing.” And I did, closing the game with a shutout, the Brawlers winning five to nothing. At the end of the game, the arena’s announcers called me out to take a special bow as they congratulated me on finishing my second NHL start, my first at-home start, and my first shutout game. The fans screamed and applauded as my stats for the game were read aloud, including thirty-six blocked shots on goal.

  Holy fuck. I’d done far better than I’d ever imagined. I’d mostly hoped to keep from embarrassing myself in net. Maybe pull off enough blocked shots to help the team win. But a shutout… As I headed back off the ice to go down the tunnel to the locker room, I spotted my parents, grandparents, Echo, Cole, Dax, and Asha in a private box waving and cheering.

  Flashes from cameras and shouts from fans followed as I left the ice. Voices echoed through the concrete halls leading out from the locker room, and I heard my name tossing about in the mix. Coach Tremblay stopped me just inside the locker-room door to shake my hand.

  “You did great out there, Coulter. Head office is already working on formalizing an offer for you for that second spot. Keep a watch out for a call from your agent. Oh, and uh, it might come up at the press conference. Shower quick. They’re going to want to talk to you.”

  Standing in the stream of hot water, my mind returned once more to Sasha. I felt numb. I should be excited about the contract I was going to be offered and feeling more secure. I wasn’t going to be going back down in the farm system any time soon. And what’s more, I hadn’t just been decent in my first home game, I’d dominated the net. The only person I wanted to call was Sasha. She was the only person I could trust to be properly excited by the news. But the lingering disappointment in her left me feeling cold with a pit in my stomach. I failed at convincing myself it was just nerves for the press conference, instead, giving myself actual nerves. Would any of them ask questions about Sasha’s piece? It had been circulating for more than a full day now, and there was certainly evidence to point to me as the source of inspiration.

  I turned off the water and shook my head to clear it, then ran my hands through my hair to squeeze out the extra water. Maybe I was being too harsh on her. She hadn’t mentioned me by name, and it would take some digging for someone to find our connection to one another if they didn’t know to look for it.

  Throwing my clothes on, I winced. I was sore from some of those saves. The bruise on my thigh was blooming nicely, too. I was also exhausted. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. I didn’t want to keep forcing myself to be mad at Sasha for what she’d done. Or hadn’t done. It was still a disorganized mess. And she had apologized. I’d done something incredibly stupid myself, and she appeared to have forgiven me. Fuck, if those photos had made their way out into the public, it could have been a hundred times worse for her career than anyone finding out I’d inspired her story would be for mine. She had only said some of the things she said because she was terrified, and with good reason.

  She would never do anything to consciously hurt me…except she had done that story…but she’d apologized for not telling me. Didn’t that show she was concerned about how I felt? Or was she simply trying to make herself feel better after the fact?

  The real question was, could I believe her?

  “Hurry up, Coulter.” Someone I didn’t recognize was urging me toward the door to the pressroom. She wore a loose-fitting pantsuit and held a clipboard, so she was probably someone associated with the team’s PR group. She stopped me for a minute to give me a quick inspection and tucked in the tag at the back of my shirt. Then she nodded and nudged me out into the room where the press was seated with their cameras pointed at me, waiting.