Page 53 of Zero Pucks

I was nervous at first about asking him questions, but he was able to pick up on what I was trying to say with very little description. That was great, because I was not a very verbose man. And he was patient with my stammer. He kept everything layman so I didn’t have to google technical terms, and when I had a moment with Tucker at the glass, Jonah laughed and told me it was official.

“You’re a WAG.”

I didn’t mind the term, though I was starting to wonder if people were getting ahead of themselves. This whole thing with Tucker was—I hesitated to call it a mistake, but it certainly hadn’t been planned. It wasn’t like we were boyfriends. Or lovers.

We’d kissed and groped in the bathroom, and Tucker had promised more, but there were no strings.

I wasn’t going to do that to him.

I still had a mountain of bullshit to tie up back home before I could even begin to decide what my life was going to look like.

But the fact remained, Tucker and I weren’t a real thing. We were two ships passing in the night who turned around and passed by each other again. But we weren’t destined.

Right?

No. That was ridiculous.

“Come on,” Jonah said after the echoes of the final buzzer had long since quieted. He was squeezing my arm with his left hand, holding his cane with his right. “I can take you to see the guys.”

I felt a small fizz of nervousness rush through me. The game had been tense, and Boden had apparently been thrown out. Jonah said it wasn’t uncommon. The rules for violence with sled hockey were a little stricter since they were carrying other sharp things besides a set of skates.

So having a player ejected wasn’t totally unexpected. Though I could tell from the strange tone in his voice that Boden throwing his helmet and his stick at his coach was definitely not normal. It was obvious Jonah wanted to go see his friend, and frankly, I was excited to be in touching distance of Tucker again, even if I needed to keep my hands to myself in front of all his teammates.

“Lead the way,” I told Jonah.

He grinned. “Let’s go halvesies. I’ll lead you to the locker room, and you can lead me through the crowd so I don’t give someone an anal probe with my cane.”

I choked a little. “Uh…”

“Joking,” he said with a grin that said maybe he wasn’t entirely joking. He tapped the cane tip on the ground. It made a sort of clinking sound on the hard floors. “Come on. We’ll take the secret entrance.”

I wasn’t sure that was a good idea since I was a total stranger, but he convinced me to follow the path along the rink wall and then duck behind the doorway that the other team had used to enter the ice. There was a small corridor behind it that kind of reminded me of the skating rink I’d gone to as a kid.

And at the very end was a set of blue doors that looked heavy.

“Anyone standing at the doors?” he asked.

I shook my head, and he remained silent until I remembered I had to actually speak aloud. “Sorry, crap.”

He elbowed me and grinned. “You’ll get a pass for a while. I’m assuming you did a thing with your head.”

“I shook it. No one’s standing there.”

“Sweet. Come on. If I don’t find out what the fuck is wrong with Bodie in the next ten seconds, I’m literally going to implode, and you’ll be stuck with a pile of goo. The guys will not forgive you if I turn into goo.”

He tugged me along and felt along the side for a small panel, then cocked his hip against it. It beeped, and the doors clicked open.

“What the…do you have a microchip in your skin or something?”

He frowned, then laughed. “No. It’s a card reader. I work here, and my badge is in my pocket.”

“Oh!” I knew that. He was a coach with Tucker. “With the kids.”

“Mm. Hoping that I can convince Tucker to be our full-time coach so I can steal his job.” My steps faltered, and he tugged on me, laughing. “I’m joking. Okay, well, I’m not. But it’s because he’s amazing at what he does, and he’s being wasted on these little snot-rockets on skates.”

I had no idea what to say to that, so I kept my mouth shut as Jonah’s cane tapped gently against the right side of the wall. He obviously knew where he was going because without even checking the braille tags on the door signs, he came to a stop and jerked his chin toward the left.

“He’ll be in there. Now, I should go get him unless you want to see a giant locker room full of dick. In which case, after you.”

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