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“No,” I barked. “I wanna finish the game.”

“Hunter—” he scolded me like I was a child. “It’s stupid to keep playing. You wanna be out for the rest of the season?”

“We need one goal,” I said, getting up.

“Don’t risk it, Riggs,” Gomez said, skating up to me, glancing at me before looking away.

The trainer looked at both of us in shock at his civil display.

“I’m fine,” I snapped, a little more forcefully, not liking that he was being nice.

Gomez rolled his eyes. “Fine, fuck yourself over, we probably need fresh meat on the ice.” He skated away.

The trainer shook his head. “For a moment I thought you guys had worked on your shit. He’s right, Riggs, you’re going to fuck yourself over, just let me look at it on the bench at least.”

I grumbled a yes, skated to the bench, and saw the guy who hit me sitting in the sin bin, but Webber had also landed himself in it too. I shook my head, but Webber held up his hand and I had to hand it to him for sticking up for me.

The trainer moved my arm in a series of motions to make sure I had good motion and no pain. Gritting my teeth I acted like everything was fine. It was painful, but I could handle it. We had eight minutes to go, and I could feel the win. On the next line change, I raced out just as Webber got out.

Gomez was fighting for the puck, and managed to hit it out to Webber who was in the perfect position. He raced down the ice running into two opposing players, hitting it to me, but another player blocked me. Gomez skated in grabbing the puck, deked to the left and slapshot it to the right.

The buzzer sounded and Gomez punched his fist in the air. He was starting to play like the player I had heard so much about. We skated to him to congratulate him, but I kept mine subdued because the last thing we needed was someone catching wind of us being nice to each other and reading into it.

“Congrats, kid,” I said, patting his helmet.

“Thanks,” he said, taken aback.

“You still need work on that slapshot,” I said.

“Jackass,” he muttered, shaking his head, going to the team and handing out high fives.

There was another reason I didn’t want to be nice to Gomez, our banter was the best, and I wasn’t ready to give it up just yet, even if it also made me horny as hell. I was a glutton for punishment.

We had won another game and we celebrated as we skated off the ice. Valencia was snapping pictures of us and giving us high fives, oddly when she got to me, she blushed.

“Good game, Riggs,” she said, a little shyly.

Did she know, too?

“Thanks,” I said, walking away quickly, seeing the smile fall from her face as she frowned.

Was she expecting me to say something?Fuck.

I rushed to the locker room to shower before I ran into Gomez. Getting out of hockey gear was a pain in the ass and with my shoulder hurting it was even worse.

“Hunter, I need to check that shoulder,” the team doc said as he passed by the lockers.

I huffed, not wanting to, but I knew I would regret it.

“Don’t skip out on it, man,” Cap said next to me.

“I know, I’m ready to crash,” I said, feeling my age.

“Yeah, well better be safe than sorry,” he said, taking his jersey off.

“Yea,” I said, removing my pads.

“You and Gomez seem to be doing better,” he said, removing his socks.

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