Page 37 of Playmaker

“Yeah. Yeah, good idea.” I took another step back myself, pretending I didn’t feel an almost magnetic force drawing me back in. “I’ll, uh… See you at breakfast.”

Fuck me, that smile.

Thank God, she turned to go, and I managed to do the same. In my room, I deadbolted the door and then leaned against it, closing my eyes.

Yeah, I’d see her at breakfast tomorrow. And on the bus. And on the plane. And at the next hotel. And at practice. And…

I wiped a hand over my face and pushed out a breath.

I am so screwed.

Chapter 15

Lila

As we geared up for our next home game, Sabrina was edgy and nervous in ways I hadn’t seen her before a game. Not even a critical one at the Olympics.

The way she kept chewing her lip? How twitchy she was, especially when the press came in? It made the hair on my neck stand up. Something was off.

I finished putting on my gear, then clomped over to her stall. “Hey. You okay?”

For a second, she looked like she was going to insist she was fine. Only for a second, though.

Deflating a little, she said, “Marci caught wind that my dad bought out an entire section in the lower bowl. Aside from the seats held by season ticket holders, anyway, so…mostof the section.”

I arched an eyebrow. “And that’s a… bad thing?” Given that her dad was the one involved—yeah, that checked out. Even if I couldn’t put the pieces together abouthowit was bad, something must’ve been sending up a red flag for Sabrina.

“On paper, it doesn’t sound like a bad thing.” She turned to me, her eyes full of worry. “But I know my dad. Somehow…” She shook her head.

“Shit,” I whispered. “What do you think he’s going to do?”

“No idea. I just hope it’s something I can ignore while I’m playing.”

“I hope so, too.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t look too promising as we skated out for warmups. One glace around the arena, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which section Doran McAvoy had bought out.

During warmups, the crowd was usually pretty thin anyway; a lot of people came to the glass, but others were still filtering in after getting beers and snacks. Most people would come to their seats in the ten or fifteen minutes ahead of the anthem.

But there were always people scattered throughout the arena. Always atleasta few dozen trickling into each section throughout warmups.

Section 114, however, was almost deserted.

There were three couples in their seats, but the rest of the section was empty. Sections 113 and 115 both had twenty or thirty people so far with more wandering in, but 114 had… six.

And of course, that section was at the end of the arena where we warmed up. And the end we’d be attacking twice. Right in Sabrina’s line of sight when she needed to concentrate the most.

I skated up to her. “It’s 114, isn’t it?”

She nodded grimly. “Yeah. And I have a feeling there isn’t going to be anyone else in those seats.”

Sure enough, when we returned for the anthems, only those six fans were in those seats. The arena was packed apart from that undeniably empty section.

Christ. What was his deal? What was he trying to do? Just mess with her head? Start rumors? Give people a reason tosnap a photo and spread it all over the internet saying “Look at this abysmal crowd at a WHPL game”? Because that last thing—people had definitely done that. They’d take photos between periods when a lot of fans left to get beer or use the restroom, or when the gates had just opened and people had barely started coming into the arena. Then they’d create this narrative that no one came to our games, so it was a waste of time.

Of course, the arenas would just post the ticket sales and crowd size for each game, and fans posted their own photos of the dense crowds, but it was still enough for haters to talk shit.

As for all of us on the ice, we were conditioned to pay as little attention as possible to the crowd. They could be distracting, so we had to ignore them as much as we could. That was hard sometimes; it was why the Wave was so damned annoying, because that much movement beyond that glass was bound to catch our eyes.

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