Page 52 of Zero Pucks

Shit. I hadn’t been paying attention. I’d been keeping close to the wall so I could find wherever Amedeo had been put. This game might not have been important to me, but it was important to my team, and they were my family.

“What do we do?”

Ford sighed. “This feels like mutiny, but we need to keep him away from the puck. And then we’re having a long goddamn talk later if we?—”

He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. There was a shout, and then Boden was entangled with someone. It took me a second to catch the number and name on the back of the jersey. Eighteen—Mars. He and Marser were going at it?

They were rivals on the ice, but in real life, they were friends. All of these guys were our friends. They were some of the few people in our tiny little slice of the East Coast who understood us.

We fought on the ice because that was hockey, but right then, Boden was going after him like his life depended on it.

Oh fuck, and now there was blood. Boden spat a mouthful onto the ice as they were separated. Even from where I was, I could see the wild, feral look on his face as the ref pointed toward the sin bin.

“Shit,” Ford breathed.

And then it got worse. The door swung open, and Hugo slid onto the ice. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to hear what he had to say to Boden, so I dug my picks into the ice and started forward, but Ford grabbed me and held me back, shaking his head.

“Don’t.”

It only took a second for me to see why. Boden grabbed his mask and ripped his helmet off, throwing it at Hugo. It missed. But his stick didn’t. He whipped it like it was a goddamn boomerang, and it bounced off Hugo’s shin.

There was no saving him now. I couldn’t read Hugo’s face from this far, but I could see him fold his arms over his chest as Boden was ejected from the game.

“Is this seriously what he wanted?” I asked, leaning toward Ford.

He took a breath and shrugged. “Fuck if I know.”

Hugo’s body was tense, and then he turned, and suddenly, he was skating toward us. Christ on a fucking cracker.

“I didn’t do it,” I said the moment he skidded to a halt.

He frowned at me. “I’m sorry?”

“Nothing,” Ford said quickly. “Ignore him.”

Hugo grunted. “Will I have a problem with either of you?”

Ford pressed his glove over his A and shook his head. “We’ve got this.”

Nodding stiffly, Hugo bent over just slightly toward me. “Enough fraternizing with the guests. Get your ass back in the game.”

Well, shit. It wasn’t like I could argue. Maybe I wasn’t as bad as Boden tonight, but my head wasn’t in the game. It wasn’t deliberate. I was kind of, sort of, thinking with my dick. But I didn’t want Amedeo to see this. Our marriage might not have been technically real, but I wanted him to know that he hadn’t picked a complete loser for a husband.

Boden would probably never forgive me for doing what we needed to do in order to get a win, but for the first time since I’d met him, I knew he was wrong.

And if he hated me for that, so be it.

CHAPTERTWELVE

AMEDEO

By the timethe game ended, I was still incredibly intimidated by Tucker’s friend, and I still knew next to nothing about hockey. And it wasn’t that Jonah was unkind—though he was a lot more focused on me at the game than he had been at lunch.

He was just…a lot.

He had a personality brimming with sunshine and foul language, which wasn’t something I was used to. He was very touchy, which I thought might have something to do with his blindness, but it also might just be the fact that he felt like everything in the world was for his taking.

But I liked him.

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