Page 61 of Unsteady

“Friends with benefits. That’s what you’re suggesting.”

I nod.

“I don’t really…” he trails off, seeming to be engaged in some sort of mental battle. “Nevermind—I’m not missing my chance. Yes.”

“Really?” I smile brightly.

He mimics it. “If that’s what you want, Gray, then yes.”

He kisses my forehead on his way out, with a quiet, “Call me,” pressed against my skin.

NINETEEN

RHYS

“You good, Cap?”

It’s a hard question to answer, but Freddy looks worried—hell, the entire locker room looks apprehensive. I want to say no, but the tension is thick already and I know as captain, I should be defusing it, not adding to it.

Today is our last practice before our first exhibition game, away against a small school in Vermont, whose coach is close with ours—which I anticipate being part of the reason the game is so early in our pre-season.

It is also our first practice with our new defenseman.

News spread quickly, thanks mostly to Freddy and Holden’s big mouths, which made it that much easier for me to play ignorant and drown myself in Sadie.

Nothing further has happened yet, only quick make-outs in my car, hands pressing to cloth or skin, both of us desperate for relief. Some days, we just skate. Some days we never made it to the locker room, intense and rasping into each other’s skin in the wide trunk of her Jeep over the blanket she told me was for “drive-in movie emergencies.”

When I told her that I’d never heard of such a thing, and never been to a drive-in movie, she looked so deeply hurt and I laughed louder than I had in months, a smile stretching my skin until my cheeks hurt.

Then, after class that night, she’d met me outside of her dorm and demanded we takehercar. She drove, which she often asks to do and I wonder if it’s because she remembered how I blurted out my new anxiety over driving that one day.

We rolled into a drive-in theater, to my surprise, backing in and opening up her trunk again to lay there. I bought two hamburgers and a plethora of most likely expired candy from a teenager at the single concession booth, then laughed and talked and barely looked at the distorted flickering screen of the double feature, soaking every piece of her up like water to grass after a drought.

She told me at the end that it wasn’t a date.

But I didn’t care; itfeltlike one. And we hadn’t even kissed once.

It’s easy to pretend when it’s just us, that maybe she is completely mine. My girlfriend. That I could convince her into my arms again and again, somehow smuggle my jersey onto her body, bribe her to cheer for me and stand in the cold bleacher seats because she wants to show everyone I am hers.

And I want to be hers, almost more than I want her to be mine.

“You sure you don’t want to say something before?” Freddy asks, probing after my lack of an answer.

Bennett shrugs, shucking his leg pad on. “Why? Everyone knows he’s coming. Everyone here has Rhys’ back.”

“Damn straight.” Holden nods.

I shake my head. “He’ll be your partner, Dougherty. No reason for us not to take every advantage we have this year.”

We are going to the Frozen Four. We are winning it—one player isn’t going to change that.

The door opens, slamming closed behind the hulking figure of Toren Kane.

He doesn’t glance at anyone, eyes down as he struts to his assigned cubby beside Holden, tossing his gear bag on the floor and begins to change.

Besides last spring through my helmet cage, I’ve only seen him through photos on Elite Prospects, and the same high school composite plastered across the internet during the height of his scandal years before.

Hockey players, in general, tend to be on the taller side—most at least six feet or over. Height and size are just as much an advantage as speed and skill can be.

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