Page 77 of Zero Pucks

“You are, and that’s my fault. I didn’t mean it the way you took it,” he said. He ran the tips of his fingers up and down my arms. “If we ever get married for real, I want it to be better than that. I want it to be real. I want to remember making you my husband.”

He couldn’t have meant that. This was a fling. He must have just been talking a stream of consciousness. “You deserve to have something real.”

He tightened his grip and kissed my earlobe. “I mean, it’s not like either one of us will ever forget that story, right? Even if we burn the evidence?”

In spite of the ache in my chest, I laughed. “No. That one isn’t going away. That’ll be one of those stories that I will tell on my deathbed.”

He snorted and kissed me again. “I do have something to tell you though.”

I braced myself. Here it was. It had to be the moment he told me I was getting too attached. This was feeling too serious for him.

“Bodie’s kind of in a mood, so if he’s a dick to you, let me know. But…try not to snap at him? Ford and I realized he’s going through something, and we’re trying not to make it worse.”

Not what I was expecting him to say, and it took me a second to recover. “Oh. I would never. You know that, right? I would never make him feel bad if I could help it.”

He sighed and rubbed his nose along my jawline. “I do. I don’t know you well, but I know that. I just didn’t want you to take it personally. We sort of had it out after the meeting today, right before you picked me up. It was…rough.”

“Is that why you were down?”

He shrugged. “I guess. There’s been a lot of change happening in my life, and I’ve never adjusted well to that. This job thing is—well, it’s great. Being able to coach a legit professional team? I’ll get to travel and be part of something I thought I’d lost years ago.”

“From the accident?”

He bowed his head and groaned. “Uh, well. No. That’s something else you should know about me. I haven’t always made the best decisions, and, well…one year, I made some really bad ones. Dragged Bodie down with me. Got us thrown out of the Paralympics.”

“Oh.”

He sat up a little straighter. “Oh? You know that’s kind of a big deal, right? You have to really fuck up to do that.”

I twisted my head to the side to look at him, and he brushed a few shaggy locks off my forehead. “I knew that already. I spoke with a lawyer before I came here, and he did some research on you.”

Tucker’s eyes widened. “Is that so?”

“It’s…standard?” I offered.

His lips twitched. “I see. Do I get to run a background check too?”

“There’s not much to find. I’m kind of a low-key loser, but have at it.”

His face went irritated again, and I knew it was because he hated when I called myself that. He didn’t correct me this time, just snagged my chin in a pinched hold and kissed me. “You’re great.”

“Thank you.” I was okay. I wasn’t great. But I’d take it. I wasn’t about to tell him how to feel. “And yeah, I read about what happened.”

It had started with pranks and escalated when Boden and Tucker had picked a fight with security at the Olympic Village, and a woman who was a member of the skiing committee ended up taking an elbow to the face. It was just hours before their first game, and they were sent home and banned.

“Bodie was in a bad place back then,” Tucker said softly, almost at a whisper. “You know about his granddad, right? And his dad?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know any real details about any of them. Except for Tucker, of course, and the fact that Ford worked at a supermarket.

“He comes from a family of hockey legends. Or, well, two of them. And legend is kind of a stretch, but his granddad and dad both have a couple of Stanley Cup rings. They had this idea that they were going to have this grand hockey legacy passed down from father to son. Then Boden was born early with the cord around his neck, and that ended up being that.”

“Cerebral…palsy,” I said, trying to remember.

Tucker kissed me for the right answer. “His dad blamed his mom, and they got divorced. She went back to the States and took Boden with her, assuming that his dad wouldn’t want him back since he couldn’t be the hockey god they’d planned to raise him as. His dad is…an interesting guy,” Tucker added, wrinkling his nose.

I could only begin to imagine.

“He retired young after a skate shattered his ankle. He didn’t win any solo awards, but he won the cup twice.”

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