Page 101 of The Pucking Player

“Stop torturing yourself and look at this.” Jenna shoves her phone in my face. “Your profile’s getting hits already. Ooh, this one’s cute! He’s a resident at Mount Sinai.”

“I don’t need a dating profile.” I groan, flopping onto my back. “I need to focus on med school. And this trip. And?—”

“And forgetting about Liam?” Jenna raises an eyebrow. “That’s exactly why you need this profile. And this.” She holds up the black bikini that barely qualifies as clothing.

Desperate to deflect, I grab my laptop. “When are you going to stop torturing yourself and accept Harvard already?”

“But now that I miraculously got off the waitlist at Stanford,” she pouts, abandoning her meticulous packing system to flop beside me, “we could be together. Living that California dream.”

“Where’s Marc going?”

“Cornell. So maybe I should still pick Harvard?”

I shrug. “Maybe. What does your gut tell you?”

On screen, they’re showing highlights from Liam’s latest practice. He looks exhausted but focused, that intensity that first drew me in radiating through the footage.

Stop it, Sophie.

“Fine,” I say, maybe a bit too loudly. “Show me this dating profile you’ve created for my sexual awakening in Miami.”

“That’s the spirit!” Jenna bounces up, grabbing herphone. “Now I may have taken some creative liberties with your bio.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing bad! Just spiced it up a little. Instead of ‘pre-med student seeking intellectual stimulation,’ I went with ‘future doctor seeking anatomy lessons.’”

“You did not!”

“Kidding! But your face...” She dissolves into giggles. “Though that would probably get more matches than ‘must love color-coded study guides.’”

“I’m deleting this app,” I announce, reaching for her phone.

“No, you’re not.” She holds it out of reach. “You’re going to Miami, wearing this tiny excuse for a bikini, and having the spring break you deserve. And if you happen to meet someone who makes you forget all about?—”

The ESPN anchor cuts in. “Sources say Coach Novak has implemented an intensified training regimen...”

I let Jenna’s chatter wash over me, grateful for the distraction. In less than forty-eight hours, we’ll be on a beach, surrounded by sun and sand, sipping on a cocktail.

“BREAKING NEWS!” The ESPN anchor’s voice jolts through our Miami planning haze. “We’re interrupting our regular coverage with a major development in the New York Defenders PEDs scandal...”

Jenna fumbles for the remote, cranking up the volume.

“Sources confirm the arrest of Alexei Volkov,” the anchor’s voice trembles with barely contained excitement, “one of the most notorious figures in organized crime. For our viewers just tuning in, the FBI and NYPD have been building a case against Volkov for years.”

“But here’s where it gets incredible, John,” the second anchor cuts in. “In what can only be described as an act ofextraordinary courage, Defenders captain Liam O’Connor and defenseman Dmitri Sokolov volunteered to wear wires into Volkov’s club. A move that could have—and I cannot stress this enough—cost them their lives.”

“That’s right, Sarah. We’re learning that this breakthrough came courtesy of an unexpected source: Andrei Volkov, the suspect’s own son and, apparently, a lifelong Defenders fan. Sources say the younger Volkov had been secretly gathering evidence against his father’s operation for months.”

“A father-son rivalry that might have saved the sport, John. The FBI confirms they’ve been trying to infiltrate Volkov’s organization, with multiple informants disappearing without a trace. The fact that O’Connor and Sokolov walked out of there alive is nothing short of miraculous.”

My phone explodes with notifications. The family chat lights up:

[Mom]: Are you watching this coverage? I can’t believe it.

[Jessica]: Holy shit this is huge.

[Adam]: The balls to wear a wire into THAT place...

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