Page 24 of Released from the Sin Bin

“Don’t go easy on me.” She slaps my stick with her own.

“I wasn’t.” I shake my head, embarrassed that she just whipped my ass. Willa is an amazing hockey player, but I should’ve been able to hold my own better than that. “I’m not good on defense.”

“Let’s switch.” She goes on defense and stops me from getting past her each time, giving me more tips to improve.

I make it past her once. I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve run through, switching places until we’re slacking off and doing tricks with the pucks and sticks.

Her stick comes high and I grab it under my arm.

“Holding!” she screams with a high-pitched squeal and tries to get it free.

“High sticking. You deserved it.”

She laughs as she tries to kick the puck away with the blade of her skate. Still holding her stick, I spin us around and shoot the puck behind me to score.

“Goal!” I shout and slide onto the ice in a canoe celly. Planting my ass on the ice with my legs out in front of me and using the stick as my paddle. I don’t make it far in my jeans.

“Cheater.” Willa sticks her tongue out and laughs at me, trying to row myself across the ice on my ass to celebrate my goal.

I’m sweating in my fleece from the workout. Willa skates off to the side and hops over the boards, done with our game too.

“How’d you get a key to this place?” She puts the skates on the counter as I return the gear to the rental area.

“I stole it.” I shrug.

“Carter,” she gasps. “Seriously, how much trouble can we get in?”

“Did we get caught?” I laugh at her. We’re getting ready to leave, and now she’s worried? “Relax. Even if someone catches us, they can’t do anything. I can get away with fucking murder around here.”

“You can.” She glares at me. “Not me.”

“You can too, by association.” I lean over the counter to get closer to her. “Do you think I’d let them do shit when I’m the one that took you here?” They’ll be pissed about the fresh marks on the ice, but it’s nothing they can’t easily clean up.

“So, what?” She stands with her hands on her hips, huffing out a breath to blow a wavy strand of hair away from her face while I close up the rink. “Do you take all the lucky ladies out here to show off your skills before fucking them in the park?”

“Is that a special fantasy for you?” I grin at her over my shoulder. “To be fucked in a dark and empty park.”

She flips me off.

“Considering you just wiped the ice with my ass. I think it was you that did all the fucking,” I say, gaining an eye roll from her. “But no, consider yourself the only lucky one.” I hold the door open for her to leave before I lock up behind us.

After climbing in my truck, I give her a serious answer. “I come here to clear my head, and blow off steam. You looked like you could use the same.”

She nods and looks away.

“Before I got a key, I used to break in a lot. Rick, the owner, is a friend of my chief at the fire department. I stole the key from him a long time ago, but I think he knows I have it. If I get caught in the park this late, it’ll become apparent that I’m up to no good, and I don’t feel like dealing with that shit.” If my dad found out, it’d be another thing he can use against me.

Willa is silent as we drive back through the park and onto the highway back to campus.

“I tried talking to Vic about our future,” she utters quietly that I have to lower the music to hear her. “I asked him what his plans were after graduation and it turned into a huge fight.”

“Why do you think he got so upset?”

Her head snaps from the window to look at me. There’s a brief awkward silence and I’m not expecting her to answer when she does.

“There are a few reasons I can think of, but I just wanted to prove everyone wrong. And he proved them all right.” Her head goes back as she lets out a long breath. “He’s cheating on me. He does it all the time, and I keep giving him passes. I keep pretending I don’t know.”

Anything I can think to say isn’t something she’d like to hear. I want to shake her and convince her she deserves better. But that hasn’t worked for anyone else, and it won’t work for me to do it either. I’m the last person she’d take advice from.

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