Page 86 of First Puck

“Your emergency. You said you needed to come. It should be fine for now, right?”

I could hear myself, distant and angry at the same time. And I hated myself for the way his face fell.

“Wait, hang on.” Brad sat up, reaching for me. “Alex?”

I pulled myself away from him, one foot sinking into the carpet, quickly followed by the other.

He looked up at me as I stood, his brows furrowed, his lips parted.

My body rang with delicate desire, and I could have easily leaped back onto him. If I was ever going to confess how I felt, now was the best time.

But it was a repeat of last year. We messed around, Brad was acting casual, and I didn’t know if I could do it again when it was even better than the last time. Even when I told him why I was upset last summer, it still felt like he didn’t understand.

“Thanks for that,” I said flatly as I turned from him, grabbing a towel from my bed. “It was really great.” I tried to keep my voice level, even though I thought I was going to tip over from the way my legs were spasming.

I threw him a look over my shoulder. “I’m gonna take a shower and go to sleep. We can’t mess this game up tomorrow, especially you.”

Brad lifted himself up on his elbows, his brows furrowed in confusion.

This time I was the one shutting down on him, I was the one closing the door like he had the last time. Making sure he couldn’t step past and hurt me anymore.

“Oh, okay. Yeah, I guess,” he said quietly. But he didn’t try to stop me. He didn’t even watch me leave. He just pushed himself off the bed to sort himself, swiping my shirt off the floor and chucked it on as the bathroom door closed.

He didn’t even fight for me. He didn’t even make a fucking effort to get me to stay.

It just confirmed how he felt about all of it, and how little I really meant to him.

Brad

Iwas pretty sure I’d seriously fucked up.

It wasn’t that Alex wouldn’t look at me. He spoke to me like everything was normal when we woke up, we had a laugh at breakfast with the other guys, he passed to me during warm-ups. But it was like there was this invisible wall that slammed down between us, one I wasn’t getting through.

On one side was me and the rest of the guys on the team, and on the other side was Alex and Lance.

Because Lance was the first person Alex went to this morning at breakfast, and Lance was the one who walked with him to practice, and fucking Lance was the one who did his fucking helmet when we were suiting the fuck up.

The crowds were already filing in, the music was blasting, people were cheering, and the Bradford Bulldogs were warming up on the other side of the rink.

“First line, you’re up!”

“Yes, Coach!” we all called out, pushing ourselves up from the bench and getting in.

Lance stood at the front, Alex behind him, then Tommy, then me, with two other forwards behind us. Basically blocked out from Alex by Tommy’s skinny ass, and giving Lance full access to him. They called time, just three minutes before Alex, Tommy, and Lance slid out onto the ice and faced off.

The rest of us would wait until Coach swapped us out.

I did a quick scan of the rink once I’d grabbed a stick. The Bulldogs had lined up, the refs were taking their positions, but it was the scouts at the north and south ends of the rink I needed to focus on.

Andnotthe way Lance was all over Alex.

‘Faking it’ my ass. There was no fucking way they weren’t interested in each other when Lance smiled at him like that.

It wasn’t unusual for us to slap each other on the back, knock our helmets together, or hug before we went out on the ice. But Lance let go of the barrier, tipping forward to grab Alex in a full-on bear hug.

A hug that Alex and I were meant to do before every game.

I couldn’t see Alex’s expression, and he was too wrapped up in white and red to see if he relaxed into Lance like he did with me. But Alex’s arms went up around Lance’s shoulders as Lance murmured something to him.

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