Page 30 of The Trophy

That’s when someone skates past me so fast that I have to fight to keep my momentum and not crumble on the ice like a rag doll.

I almost double take when rather than seeing a USC D-man trying to catch up to me, the image my eyes send to my brain is that of a Cove Knights jersey.

“TOPHER!” I bellow. “Move!”

He’s already past me and doesn’t have the puck. If he doesn’t retreat to the neutral zone, we’re going to be offside.

“What the fuck?” I groan, looking behind me to get rid of the puck, since Topher is either deaf or too stupid to get his ass away from the offensive zone.

Cole and Jagger are covering the USC players offensive line while the D-men who had checked Luca against the boards are taking off toward me.

There’s only thing I can do if I want to avoid handing the puck to our opponents.

I nod to Luca as soon as he’s free. Rather than trying to get away from the defensemen who are chasing me, I spin around and head in their direction.

They have a moment of hesitation, surprised by my three-sixty and I shoot the puck between the skates of their team captain, right back to Luca.

Topher has finally moved away from the offensive zone after our entire bench was yelling at him.

That gives Luca time to get past him and, thanks to the defense being still on me, Prince is free to conclude his breakaway with one hell of a slap-shot that flies past the USC goalie and gives us our first goal.

We all skate in Luca’s direction to celebrate, even Topher.

“What the fuck was that?” I bite out, pulling on his jersey to get his attention.

“What are you talking about?” he shrugs me off, looking at me as if I was crazy.

“You put us offside. I was free and ready to shoot when you came out of fucking nowhere.”

He barks out a laugh. “Is that what happened? Or was I where I was supposed to be but you were too slow and put yourself in offside?”

I tighten my grip on my stick, fighting the urge to hit Topher’s smug face. “I was skating fast, you just came out of nowhere and sped past me. That was a rookie mistake a ten-year- old wouldn’t make.”

“Maybe you should work a little more on your cardio. That was the slowest breakaway I’ve ever seen. I think Sloth would be a better nickname than Fire, if you keep skating like that.”

Is this guy for real?

“I wasn’t slow, I?—”

He skates away just in the nick of time, before I lose the last shred of self-control and beat the crap out of him.

The rest of the game isn’t much different and by the third period we’re leading three-zero but it doesn’t feel good.

If you looked at us, we don’t play a bad game and our offensive line is effective while our defense makes sure that Cash sees very little action.

Then why does it feel like USC has one extra player on the ice?

The worst thing is that if Topher is trying to sabotage us, he’s being way smarter than last time.

He doesn’t do anything openly stupid or aggressive like in the last game in LA.

Our frat president simply gets in mine or Luca’s way making our job harder. But he isn’t an idiot and even I recognize that to anyone else, it could look like he’s skating faster and better than us when it’s just the opposite.

I usually hate it when I get benched, but when Coach changes lines a little more often like he said he would for third period, I’m actually relieved.

The final score is three-one, not a shutout, but what counts is to take the W on our first home game of the season.

My eyes follow Coach as we file out of the rink and into the tunnel headed back to the locker room.

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