Page 49 of Iced Out

I smirk and join him on the bed before plucking it from his grip. Rolling to my back beside him, I turn it over in my hand a few times. “No, it’s where it’s supposed to be.”

“What?” He laughs. “You’re being serious?”

I nod, still fiddling with the rubber, flicking it between my fingers like one of those fidget spinners a few times, wondering why I didn’t just lie and say it made it there by mistake. It’d save me from giving him more ammunition to use against me, should this whole thing between us end poorly.

Yet instead, I end up giving him the truth.

“It’s my version of socks,” I reply before placing the puck into his waiting hands.

“Socks?”

His eyes flash to my cheeks when I grin, popping my dimples. “You know, your crazy sock thing? The ones you wear every game under your uniform socks?”

A look of surprise flashes over his face for a moment. “You have a superstition too?”

“Seems so, doesn’t it?” When he says nothing, I roll to my side, propping myself on an elbow. “You think I would’ve brought up us sleeping together if I didn’t believe in superstitions too?”

“I figured you did, especially after the whole debacle with Justin freshman year. I just didn’t realize you had your own.”

The pinch between his brows is kind of cute, and it takes a good amount of self-control—an amount I didn’t know I possessed—to keep my thumb from smoothing it back out.

“Because no one knows,” I murmur. His eyes flick to me, and I continue, “Apart from you, I guess.”

His attention moves back to the puck in his hands before giving it back to me. I roll my body over his, trying to place it beneath my pillow again while his head’s still on it. My chest brushes his as I do, causing every nerve of my body to stand on end. Which is why I shift to move away again as soon as it’s back where it belongs.

Only Oakley’s hands catch my waist and hold me against him, locking me in place.

“So how does it work?”

Our proximity is too much for me to handle, and a lie catches in my throat, begging to fall from my tongue. If only to save myself from giving away a secret part of me in a moment far too intimate for enemies-with-benefits to share.

But the truth still slips free.

“I sleep with it under my pillow for the entire season. Every single night, no matter what. It goes with me on the road and it’s the first thing I unpack when we get to the hotel when you’re not looking. And it’s the first thing I pack again in the morning before you notice it’s there.”

“You take it for away games?”

I nod.

“So it’s going with us tomorrow night?”

I nod again.

“Okay,” he says slowly, clearly working through the information I’m throwing at him. “And what’s so special about it?”

“It’s the puck I scored my first goal with. All the way back when I was a kid and just discovering my love for hockey. Scoring that goal…I guess it cemented the love for me more. Putting it under my pillow turned into a superstition pretty quickly after that, thinking it was good luck. My team lost, or I had bad games, obviously. Plenty, over the course of my career so far. This season being the perfect example.”

His brows furrow. “So then…why keep using it if it doesn’t work?”

“There’s two actually,” I say slowly, measuring my words. “One, because it’s a habit at this point. I doubt I’d get much sleep knowing it’snotthere, you know?”

The corners of his lips lift. “And the other?”

I hesitate before more secrets spill, darker ones this time. But no matter how much I might want to, I’m helpless to stop them.

He’s carving out chunks of who I am and taking those tiny pieces for himself.

“I…know you overheard that shit with my dad earlier this season. After the first game I was back after the drug test shit.”

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