Page 92 of Lords of Ruin: Owned

"Hockey tryouts are in ten. I need all skates off the ice." A gruff voice bellows from the stands.

Dylan doesn't look up. Instead, he sweeps his eyes to my lips and then back to my eyes as he speaks. "You got it, Coach Chris."

My nostrils twitch, and Dylan smirks at the slight rise he gets out of me before pushing me away, so I have to dig in my skates to stop. My bun loosens, and more strands fall in my face as I watch Dylan skate away and off the ice. My eyes flicker up to the scoreboard, the time beaming bright red at the top.

"Hockey tryouts are not for another two hours," I call up, looking at Coach Christopher Jackson, the best living player in NHL history and the new coach of the Northbrook Tigers, a team who made it to finals last year and bombed so hard the world had bet their ranking was a mistake. If Northbrook was going to play that badly, then no one should have let them in the darn arena; it was a disgrace. It was also the only thing that eclipsed the news of my head splitting and what everyone thinks is a career-ending injury.

Did I mention that Coach Jackson is also the only person in the world who can make my breath hitch and my body quake just by saying my name?

"He was in your face again." Coach says, leaning back in his bleacher seat right next to the left side of the arena. His long limbs stretch over three rows of benches as he watches me.

I turn to practice a trick I learned at six, a scratch spin. It's simple: start by grinding backward on an outside edge, then shift to a spinning position by pulling your free leg and arms inward to increase rotation speed while balancing on the ball of your skating foot. Easy, so when I have to hit the glass to brace myself from falling, I scream. "Shit!"

"Aye, watch your mouth, princess." Coach corrects, leaning forward in the stands.

He wears a gray thermal long-sleeve shirt, Timberland boots, and baby blue jeans. His thick black hair is smoothed back into a slick style, his beard is professionally trimmed, and he looks like the Greek sculptor Phidias sculpted every muscle on his body. If I didn't already know who he was, I'd think he was just a really hot senior and totally would give him my number.

"I'm not a princess," I growl, gliding along the rink’s wall.

"You just threw a tantrum like a spoiled little girl, soprincess." He quips; the sound of amusement rolls over his words, and it takes everything out of me not to growl again.

"I'm frustrated. I can't seem to..." Right in front of him, I pause with only the glass separating our gazes. He has the most amazing deep blue eyes I have ever seen. They look like a stormy ocean, and my core clinches at the thought of me caught in his fury or passion. I bet his opponents on the ice drop to their knees in mercy under his gaze.

"What?" His eyes narrow, and the storm eases through the eclipse of his black eyelashes. He sounds mad, but I can tell by the twitch in the corner of his lip that he is teasing me. "Get tight enough?"

"No, I'm not trying to do the Biellmann spin. I’m doing a scratch turn." I murmured. I haven't been able to be on the ice since the accident last winter, about three weeks after the Winter Showcase, where I first met Coach Jackson. The accident where Dylan dropped me and I crashed into the ice, my head cracked out, twelve stitches, a concussion. I was in my bed back inMinnesota with my mother for six months. She'd kill me if she knew I was back on the ice.

"You're scared of the ice,now?" He shrugs.

"I have never been scared of the ice."

"Okay." He nods, one of his plush pink lips poking out. "So go do your scratch turn."

I roll my eyes. "Oh fuck off."

"Excuse me?" The stern rasp in his voice heightens as he leans so close to the glass he is almost hanging off the seat.

"You just saw me fail, and you're demanding more of me?"

"If you're not afraid of the ice, do it again." He challenges.

I burn so hot my ears feel like they're on fire. Scoffing, I turn on my heels to skate to the other side of the rink.

"Don't skate away from me!" He growls, the creak of metal from the benches ringing through the arena.

"You're not my coach!" I bark back, my skates slicing against the ice, creating an off-beat rhythm from my huffing as I make a b-line to the lockers.

Who the hell does Coach Jackson think he is? I am not on his team of dumb hockey jocks knocking into each other on the ice. I am an Olympic-bound athlete. He's just a washed-up NHL player in fucking Maine, a coach for a D2 school, might I add, not even in the top twenty.

My anger burns away any bite of the cold from my falls. My skates clink against the concrete as I wind down to the locker rooms. My mind is still running wild.

"Coach is wrong, Josie," I whisper, my hands running over the raised scars along my forearms. "You were born to be on the ice. You aren't scared."

I yank at my laces, feeling the rough leather bite into my fingers as I wrestle with the skates. My hands are trembling, and my fingers are numb from the cold and fight. My muscles taunt with failure, another terrible practice where I feel further away from myself.

The skates won’t come off fast enough, making it worse and forcing something resentful to boil inside me. I yank harder, finally wrenching one of them free, and I can’t hold it in anymore. I hurl them across the room, the dull clatter of them hitting the lockers echoing in the space.

There is something satisfying about watching the skates clatter to the ground as if they mean nothing. I slam my other foot to the ground, yanking the second one free, and my breath comes in ragged, angry bursts.

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