Page 3 of Side By Side

She hadn’t planned on switching to hockey, but after leaving the program and her shot at making the US Olympic Team, she’d not wanted to leave the ice completely, so when her dad had bought this place and started bringing in teams and events, she’d joined a team of all guys who didn’t give her a hard time about being a woman, and they put her in goal. It hadn’t been her first choice of position, but it turned out that putting her there was a smart move. She had to remain focused on that puck and the quick movement of all the players at all times, and it actually calmed her brain. Then, whenever a shot came in, she could harness all that extra energy she’d always had into making a stop, which she loved.

“Hey, Belle,” Teddy, their team captain, said as she skated over to him.

“Hey. What’s up?”

“Nothing much.”

“How’s the baby?” she asked.

“Still not sleeping through the night. It’s a miracle that my wife and I can move at all, so if I play like shit until she starts sleeping for more than two hours at a time, you know why.”

“Yeah? You’re actually helping your wife? Or are you making her take care of everything like you do on the ice when you make me clean up your messes?” she teased.

Teddy laughed and said, “You’ve met my wife. What do you think?”

“She’s got you on a short leash, huh?”

“Yup. But I love it. God, I love being a dad, too. I hate the no sleep part, but it’s like, I don’t even mind changing her dirty diapers because she smiles up at me or makes those little baby sounds. She’s got me wrapped around her little finger.”

“Good. That’s how it should be.” Belle patted him on the shoulder. “Ready?”

“Let’s try not to embarrass ourselves too much.”

“Speak for yourself.” She laughed and skated off toward the net someone had just put out for their practice.

Later that night, Belle iced her knee, which had gotten hit a little too hard for a simple practice, as she lay in bed with her laptop next to her. She snapped into her dad’s homemade beef jerky that she’d stolen from the concession stand and brought up the website. The competition wasn’t on TV, but it was streaming, so she brought the video up fullscreen just in time to see Chandler Wolfe and her partner fall on the ice. Belle didn’t mean to, but she laughed because Chandler had really hit it. Her ass had smacked into the ice as her partner, a guy named Walker Wilcox, of all things, twisted and fell down himself. He must have dropped her, and Belle had just missed it. Either way, she snapped into the jerky again and chewed as she settled back against her pillow and watched Chandler get up, give the crowd a fake smile, reach for her partner, who took her hand, and they began to damage-control the remainder of their routine. When they finished, both of them moved to sit, and the camera stayed on them as their scores were revealed.

“Karma’s a bitch, huh?”

Belle stared into Chandler’s blue eyes with their glittery eye shadow covering them and too much mascara, making her fake eyelashes look even more fake, and she thought back to that fourteen-year-old girl who had smiled at Belle before she had kissed her. Belle closed the computer then, not wanting to watch the competition anymore, and stared up at her ceiling as she thought back to how one kiss had led to her whole life changing.

CHAPTER 2

“What the hell was that?” Catalina asked.

“What was what, Catalina?”

“Don’t Catalina me like that. You know I hate it.”

“It’s not my fault Dad knocked Mom up with you on Catalina Island,” she teased her older sister.

Chandler then packed her skates in her bag before she looked up and around the room for her partner.

“Where’s Walker?” she asked.

“Getting checked out, like I told you.”

“Still?”

“Chandler, we might really have a problem here. His ankle started swelling right away. I don’t know how he skated at all after that fall.”

“He laces his skates up so tightly, his foot could detach from his leg, and he could still skate,” she joked.

“This isn’t funny.” Catalina sat down next to her on the bench. “If he’s fine, we’re still looking at you two not being selected because you shit the bed tonight.”

“Mom would’ve killed you if she heard you use that expression,” Chandler replied.

“You would already be the oldest person to skate in the Olympics for the US. You know that. I don’t have to tell you that. You’re twenty-six, Chandler – it’s now or never. Walker is your ticket to these Games. He’s the golden boy of US Figure Skating. And when he switched to pairs, you finally got your chance. If they pick you two, it’s only really because of him being figure skating royalty.”

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