Page 52 of Interference

“Well, yeah.” He shot me a toothy grin. “That’s the whole point.”

“Okay, I get that, but…” I tapped my arm in the same spot as his scar. “It hurts more when you crash, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” he admitted. “So I just try not to crash.”

“Uh-huh. And how does that work out for you?”

“Pretty good most of the time.”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Is that a hockey player thing? Or a you thing?”

Anthony chuckled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you play a high-speed sport that involves getting slammed into the wall every five seconds, and—”

“I beg your pardon.” He sniffed with mock indignance. “I sometimes slam them into the wall, thank you very much.”

“Uh-huh. Exactly my point. So you play a crazy ass sport, then during the off season, you go hurtling down a mountain on a bike and just go ‘meh’ when you rip your arm open.”

He pursed his lips, then shrugged. “Okay, yeah, that sounds like me.”

“Right. So is that just you? Or is it hockey players in general?”

He rocked his head back and forth. “Little from column A, little from column B.”

“That’s what I thought.” I laughed again. “I can’t really judge—half the reason I joined the Army was that I was an adrenaline junkie.” I paused. “Well, okay, that was probably the whole reason, technically.”

Anthony eyed me as we slowed to a stop beside some floor model tents. “Technically?”

“Let’s just say I spent more of high school doing stupid dangerous shit than I did studying, so by the time I needed to nail down a career path, my grades didn’t leave a lot of options.”

“Ah.” He nodded sharply. “Gotcha. I probably would’ve been in the same boat, but I had to keep my grades up to play hockey.”

“Parents’ rules?”

“And coaches’. Plus one of the pathways to the League is through college, and there was no guarantee I’d get any kind of scholarship. So I busted my ass even though I wasn’t that great at school.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t great at it either,” I said. “I mean, I could hold my own when I put in the effort, but there were definitely some subjects that were not my strong point.”

“Such as?”

I rolled my eyes. “Ugh. Fucking math.”

Anthony laughed and offered up his fist. “Same, my friend. Fuck math.”

Chuckling, I bumped my fist against his. “I think that’s what put me off some of the sciences, too. They sounded interesting, but…” I made a face. “Too much math.”

“Seriously,” he grumbled. “I stuck with biology all through high school. Chemistry and physics were way too…” He waved a hand. “Mathy.”

I snorted. “Agreed.” I looked over the tents arranged on the floor in front of us. “Okay. I guess this is a good place to start?”

“Sure.” Anthony smiled. “I’m following your lead.”

In the back of my mind, I’d expected this shopping trip to be an exercise in humiliation. Necessary, sure, but excruciating. Like I’d be walking around with my head hung, feeling a little lower every time we put something into the cart.

But to my surprise, shopping with Anthony was pretty damn enjoyable. Yeah, there was still that ball of lead in my stomach because being in my situation fucking sucked, and there was equal parts gratitude and humiliation over Anthony doing this for me. Mostly, though, we were just talking about whatever while we wandered the store.

As we looked at tents, he told me about a camping trip he took as a kid where his older brother was convinced there was a scorpion in their tent. They’d torn everything out of it, shaken out every pack, boot, and sleeping bag, and scoured every inch and seam, until they’d finally found it: the twig that, out of the corner of his brother’s eye, had looked like a scorpion.

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