Page 66 of Ice Bet

“Aasher!”

Her sweet, melodic voice cut through the roaring crowd. Coach was still shouting at the ref, and Green U’s coach was attempting to calm his players, but all I heard was her. I was on my knees, forcing breath through my rigid lungs, when I saw her wide eyes from the stands.

“Get up,” she demanded.

The two tiny words were magic. I climbed to level skates and gasped for air, ignoring pain I felt from forcing air into my lungs. Everything moved in slow motion as I kept a hold of her stare through the glass. “Look down.”

What?

I looked down at the ice. The blue line was visible, but only because her body wasn’t writhing over it like the other night when I had her at my mercy. I slowly brought my attention back to her, and she winked.

Thank you, Duster.

I nodded and shook out my shoulders before skating over to Ford. Half the team was holding him back, one of them being Sully.Oh look, he’s finally showing up for our team.

“Hey, chill.” I rested my gloved hand on the back of his head. “Let’s score on them again, and maybe next time, they will worry about winning the game instead of fucking us up on the ice.”

“Fuckingyouup,” Sully corrected.

We all skated to center ice, waiting for Coach to stop shouting at the ref. The game was almost over, but there was plenty of time to score again.

“What the hell did you do to your ex?”

I glared at Sully, and I couldn’t help but swing my eyes to Riley one more time. She was no longer looking at me. Instead, she was staring at her dad with a frown.

The whistle blew, and the moment I looked back at Sully, I knew I was going to regret whatever decided to come out of my mouth. I’d blame it on Savannah for being on my mind and the insults from Van, but later, when I was alone, I would admit that it was because I cared about Riley.

“No more than you and some of our teammates have planned for Riley.”

Sully did a double take, but we quickly got back in the game, and this time, not a single Green U player touched me. I didn’t let them. Instead, when Theo passed me the puck, I took it straight to their goalie, and if he were to step a hair to the left, it would have cut him with the speed.

22

RILEY

“What a freaking game.”

I followed Sutton, Taytum, and Taytum’s friend, Claire, down the hallway bustling with every other person in the stands. I typically stayed in the box with Coach’s Davis’ daughters, coloring in a Barbie coloring book, until the stands cleared, but with Aasher putting me on the spot in front of everyone last night, I opted to sit in the stands—just like he demanded.

To make it clear, though, I didn’t do it for him.

I did it for me.

“They were totally targeting Aasher.” We followed Sutton into the bathroom.

“They definitely were.” I fixed my Bexley U shirt and adjusted it over my torso, staying off to the side while Sutton and Taytum used the bathroom. Claire was staring at her phone screen, grinning. I watched a few girls fix their hair in the mirror, but it did nothing to distract the irrational anger I had behind my nonchalant attitude.

I wanted to rush onto the ice and grab those players and bust their heads in for purposefully attacking Aasher. Questions circulated around the stands as everyone sat back and watched him take every insult, jab, and cross-check. It got to the point that I almost marched down to where my father was to tell him to do something.

I didn’t, of course, because what would everyone think if I did that?

“Is Aasher the one that kept getting taken down?”

My lip popped out from behind my teeth, and I stared at the girl reapplying her pink lipstick in the mirror. She puckered her lips, and I held back an eye roll when I read the back of her shirt. It saidPuck Bunnyover the number three.

“Obviously.” Sutton didn’t even look at her as she washed her hands.

I, however, couldn’t seem to look away. She threw her lipstick back into her purse and leaned against the sink, seemingly not caring that other people needed to use it. “Do you girls know him? You go to BU, right?”

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