Page 12 of Ice Cold Hearts

“Go put your pads on,” he orders.

“But it’s not that time of the month, Cap,” I protest.

His mouth twitches. For Alexei, that’s practically an ear-to-ear grin.

“Go, or you’ll be doing speed drills while the rest of us have a scrimmage,” he says, waving me off.

Definitely less brusque than usual. Did he take a painkiller for his back or something?

I retrieve my gear from where I stashed it on the bench and throw it on along with my mesh jersey. I lost the coin toss, so my half of the team got stuck with the bleach splotched ones (that was the last time we used that laundry service). I give Alexei a jerk of the head to let him know I’m ready.

He gives a long blast on the whistle around his neck, and the team separates into four bunches—blue mesh offense, blue mesh defense, bleach splotched red offense, and bleach splotched red defense.

Alexei and I meet in the middle of the rink.

“Listen up,” he shouts. “Coach is at his daughter’s school awards ceremony, so it’s just us today. That’s no excuse to slack off, men. We practice how we play, and how do we play?”

“We play hard!” the team responds as a unit.

“You’ve been divided based on footage from the last three games. Our goal for this scrimmage is to shore up our weak areas before the game this Friday. Oliver” —he gestures to me— “will go over the defensive plays for each team. I’ll be handling the offensive plays. Every opportunity we get, we run them. All the drills this week were leading up to this. This is our last chance to work on this before we face the Blizzards, so let’s make it count.”

At his nod, I break off and head to the blue defense while he heads to the red offense.

“This is the last bit of help you’re getting from me,” I say when we huddle up. “After this, red is mopping the floor with you.”

They humor me with some half-hearted grumbles.

“You will be running forechecking every chance you get. Work together, slow down the offense’s charge. Figgis, work on trusting that peripheral vision. Every time you turn your whole head, you’re giving someone a chance to blow by you on the other side. Nelson, your left foot gives you away. You always point it where you’re going to go, and if we noticed, so have the other teams. Watch out for that. Questions?”

When no one speaks up, I skate over to my defense and huddle them up.

“Our weak spot is a zoned defense. Game footage shows you all swapping zones like kindergartners swap viruses. Not today. Stick to your zones,” I say.

I assign each player their zone and give them an opportunity to ask questions. Again, there aren’t any.

I whistle the pre-agreed tone to let Alexei know we’re ready. Instead of blowing his whistle, he skates over.

“Problems?” he asks.

“No.”

“Why did you whistle, then?” Alexei demands.

I raise my brows. “That was my ready signal. We talked about this last night.”

“Right. Very good.” He nods then skates away.

Yeah, something is definitely going on with him.

I don’t dwell on it for long. My team has a scrimmage to win.

Arguably, the goal is the best place to be on the rink. I can see just about everything from there. I watch as they zoom back and forth across the ice, hear the muffled thumps as people get checked and the crack of a stick hitting the puck. I haven’t had much to do yet. The drills this week have really paid off. My guys are nailing the zone defense.

Farther up the ice, Ian is giving Alexei a run for his money. This has to be the third time he’s stolen the puck from him. While Ian is doing his best peacock impression as he zooms around the ring, Alexei seems unruffled.

Even though Alexei’s half of the team won, it was by the skin of their teeth. He’d made more mistakes than usual. By the time we got home, I was more determined than ever to get to the bottom of things.

While Alexei’s at the door paying for the pizza, Ian flicks an ice cube at me across the table to get my attention.

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