Page 69 of As You Ice It

I grab the jersey and immediately tug it over my head. It’s a little too big, but I like the way it hangs down over my hips. It would probably look really good with leggings under it. Or a shorter skirt and boots.

“How does it look?” I ask, turning so he can see the back. When I glance over my shoulder at him, his smile is pure male pride.

“Like it belongs on you,” he says. “A perfect fit.”

And it’s funny because after my concerns about today and how it might be to see Camden in his element and have the full hockey experience, so far, it feels as fitting as wearing Camden’s jersey.

CHAPTER15

Naomi

I hadno idea there were so many whistles in hockey. Or at least, for so many boring things. I would maybe have expected whistles for players punching each other in the face but have to admit I’m a little disappointed.

I mean, I wouldn’t feel good about Camden fighting. Probably. I shouldn’t feel good about it—both for the sake of his face and also for the example it might set for Liam. But hockey fights are different than street fights. This is what I’m telling myself. I’d be able to say this with more confidence if I actually got to see a fight.

Camden isn’t on the ice right now, which makes it a good time for questions, which Liam and Bailey, sitting on my other side, have happily answered through most of the first period. The other WAGs—I’m with Parker and want to come up with a new name—are up in a special family area, and we’ll go up there during intermission.

But I suspect the three of us will end up back down here, closer to the action. Even if there’s free food.

I wasn’t sure how it would be at a loud event like this with someone as quiet as Bailey. She seems to actually thrive in the noise and chaos, and I find that I like her even more than I did the first time we met.

She has an inherent sweetness to her, which, on someone else, might be an annoying characteristic. With Bailey, it’s not.

She isn’t cloyingly sweet or fake sweet. Just genuinely kind.

Then again, when some guy on the other team knocked Eli down earlier, she did yell some things that might have gotten her arrested if she were yelling those words anywhere but a hockey game.

While the guys were out doing warm-ups, Bailey told me a little about her relationship with Eli. She fell for him totally not knowing who he was and not knowing the first thing about hockey. I asked how it works with the travel and schedule and Eli being semi-famous.

“At times, really hard,” she told me, biting into the chocolate bar Eli slipped me in the locker room and asked me to deliver. “But also, completely worth it. You find a way to make the hard things tolerable, the not-so-great parts manageable, and the rough patches navigable. Because the person you love makes all those difficult things forgettable.”

Simple words, spoken with a raw honesty that squeezed between my ribs and lodged right in my heart like an arrow.

“Now what?” I groan, as the refs blow the whistles again, just when two Appies were chasing a puck down toward the other team’s goal.

“That’s an icing call,” Liam explains as the play stops for like the fourth time in as many minutes. “Did you see how the ref has his arm up? That tells you it’s icing.”

“What evenisicing?”

Liam patiently explains the rule, which keeps defensive players from just whacking the puck out of their zone and all the way to the other end of the ice over and over. Apparently, one of the Appies just did that to clear the puck. Though there’s no score on the board yet, it’s been very back and forth.

“But whycan’tthey just hit it all the way down? And they did that over and over again just a minute ago without any whistles.”

“That was during a power play,” Liam explains. “If you’re down a man and on the penalty kill, you can ice it all you want.”

Bailey leans closer so I can hear her soft voice over the din in the sold-out arena. “They put the rule in place to stop teams from doing it over and over to protect a lead. It would be really annoying to watch.”

I guess I can see that. What Ican’tsee most of the time is the puck. It moves so fast that by the time I locate it, I lose it again. Liam told me to watch the players’ bodies rather than looking directly for the puck, but I still get lost.

Except when Camden is on the ice. And because he’s on what Liam explained is the top defensive pairing, he’s out there a lot. Then, I don’t really give a rip where the puck is—Camden has my full focus. His job involves a lot of knocking guys into the boards and trying to get pucks out of the defensive zone—without icing.

Once I got over thinking he was going to get hurt every time he slammed into someone, I started to enjoy watching him.

It was one thing to see Cam on ice with Liam during the class, where slow and steady is the name of the game.

Tonight, I’ve seen Camden’s explosive power and speed that has honestly left me awed. Like, this quiet man, this secretly funny man, this patient man—he’s holding allthisinside him all the time?

All the buzz about hockey romances—okay, fine. I get it now.

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