Page 15 of Body Check

I tilt my head in his direction, my hands hanging loosely between my knees. “Josh?”

Beside me, Duke mutters “here we go” under his breath.

“Yeah, Cap?” the rookie left-wing asks blithely.

“Do me a favor and meet me an hour before practice tomorrow, will you?” The vets on the team all trade glances, and I don’t even bother to stand and get a good look at the kid. They all know I’m about to make his life hell tomorrow.

I like to think of it as a rite of passage to learning hownotto be a dick.

And if he’s curled over a trash can after our one-on-one workout, heaving out his guts, because he’s had a miraculous understanding that playing for The Show means more than just putting on the uniform, then I’ll have done my job right.

Respect. Ambition. Teamwork.

Playing for the Blades means doing it all—and it’s the latter part of the trifecta that had me caving in to Sports 24/7 two weeks ago.

The rookie utters out an obliviously eager, “Fuck yeah, I’ll meet you, Cap!” and then even Coach is shaking his head like he can’t believe he drafted a naïve idiot like Josh Kammer.

Hopefully the kid’s a lot smarter when it comes to doing his job on the ice.

I look to Holly, a little surprised to find that her eyes are locked on me. Despite the twenty feet or so separating us, I don’t mistake the way she mouths, “Thank you.”

Familiar words I’ve confessed to no one but myself bubble up in my chest, each clawing their way up my throat in an attempt to pull free. In the end, I swallow over them all, shoving them down deep where they belong, and give her a curt nod that reveals nothing as to how I truly feel about her. About our broken vows.

She’d been right, what she said the other day.

We aren’t married. We aren’t together.

Having her back is where the line gets drawn, starting now.

“All right, you assholes,” says Coach, puffing out his chest in that way he only does when we’ve got company in the house, “how did all of you feel aboutGetting Puckedtoday?” When some of the guys begin to complain, he fingers the lanyard around his neck and sucks a whistle between his lips, blowing loudly. “That was a rhetorical question! I don’t give a damn if your panties are all in a twist”—his head pivots in my direction, eyes narrowed and accusing—“but I’ve got great news for you.”

“They’re getting us blow jobs?”

There’s a smack on the head, and then our star center, Marshall Hunt, grunts out, “Use your brain, Kammer, or I’ll make sure the only blow job you get for the rest of your life comes from a flushlight.”

Coach Hall keeps talking like the interruption didn’t even happen. “I know that some of you have reservations aboutGetting Puckedand I get it. We’re a team. We keep shit between us . . . our personal lives, the way we operate, failures and successes.” Coach steps forward, and I see some of the guys shift their legs so that he has ample space to pace back and forth, as he’s known to do. “In case you’ve been unconscious for the last two months, this is the year we take the Cup. This is the year we dominate every game and every pass and every save. I want it documented. I want other teams to worry. I want us towin.”

Unable to stop myself, I look to Holly again.

This time, she doesn’t glance in my direction.

Not when Coach ushers her forward.

Not when her fingers fist the chain of her purse strap where it hangs between her breasts.

Not when her Southern drawl rings loud and clear in the locker room: “I want all of those things, too, Coach. I’m already dreaming of taking pictures of y’all with the Cup.”

That earns her a roar of applause and even Kammer the Idiot hollers, “Fuck yeah, Mrs. Carter. Fuck yeah!”

She’s not Mrs. Carter, not anymore, but she smiles kindly at him anyway because that’s the sort of person she is. “I want more than that, though. I know y’all—I know your families and your wives and your kids and, hell, Henri, I even know your mother and she doesn’t even live in the States!”

Henri Bordeaux, our resident French-Canadian from Montreal, waves at her enthusiastically.

Holly waves back, the tension visibly lessening in her frame.

As for me, I can’t tear my gaze away from her, in part because I have a gut feeling that I know where she’s going with this and I have no idea what sort of game she’s playing.

The other part of me . . . Well, I’ve always loved watching her command a room. Always.

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