Page 38 of Scoring Position

He pulled the book toward himself and showed her the cover. “Felicia in PR found out Nico and I play chess, and now she wants to do a video. I need tips. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Even I cannot fix your chess game in an hour.”

“Well, no,” Ryan admitted. “I don’t need to fix the whole game. I just need enough knowledge to keep from embarrassing myself. I don’t expect towin.” The other day Nico had been tired and accidentally hung his queen. Ryan had thought he might have a chance, but Nico mated him anyway six moves later.

Ryan didn’tliketo lose, but he could forgive himself since he was still learning. He just wanted to look semi competent. The bigger problem was Nico—Ryan might not like to lose, but hedidhave a thing for the calm competence with which Nico completely obliterated him every single game.

He really wished he didn’t find that attractive, but he was who he was.

Tara laughed. “Okay. Go log in to your chess account and I’ll talk you through the basics.Again.”

They filmed later that week after a practice that went well for once, by which Ryan meant nobody got scratched, Chenner didn’t look like he wanted to crawl into the showers and die, and Coach actually complimented Nico. If Ryan hadn’t tweaked a muscle in his back during a scrimmage, it would’ve been perfect by Fuel standards. At least there was Advil.

So he was in a good mood as he walked into one of the smaller conference rooms in one of the Fuel Pride Night T-shirts and basketball shorts, ready to get his ass kicked.

Nico was already sitting at the table with their chess set from home. Ryan took his seat across from him and let Felicia mike him up.

“All right,” she said once they’d confirmed the mics worked, “here’s how this is going to go. Obviously not all hockey fans are into chess, so we don’t want to make this too long. If you can relate the game to hockey, do it. If not, just, I don’t know. Whatever you do at home, I guess. But keep the chirping PG, please.”

“You know not what you ask.”

She rolled her eyes. “Believe me, I do. I’ll mostly be observing, but I might jump in to redirect you if you’re boring. No offense.”

“It’s fine. Nico is a boring guy.”

Now that Ryan knew his sense of humor, Nico’s glare felt halfhearted at best.

Filming started.

“I’ll let you be white,” Nico said magnanimously, spinning the board.

That gave him a slight advantage since white went first. “Gee, thanks.” Ryan played E4.

Nico matched with E5. “You need all the help you can get.”

“Not all of us learned this game in our infancy, you know. An infancy that was, like, eighteen years ago.” Shit, what had Tara said? Control the center of the board. He played queen to H5. That gave it a clear line to the middle of the boardandpinned that weak pawn on F7.

“I’m twenty-one.” Yeah, Ryan wasn’t likely to forget that, thanks. It wasn’t a huge age difference, just enough to make him feel like a dirty old man perving on a chess prodigy. Nico moved his knight to attack the queen. “What are you even doing moving your queen this early? You’re supposed to develop your pieces.”

“I am!” Ryan protested. “I like playing the queen! She’s, like, the captain of the chess board.” And right now she was about to get boarded. He took E5. “Check.”

Nico stared at him. His lips were twitching. Ryan could tell he wanted to smile. “The captain.” He blocked with his bishop. “The queen is Yorkie?”

Ugh. Ryan couldn’t take the bishop without losing his queen. He retreated to G3. “Yeah, you know… the king’s the goalie, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Nico echoed sarcastically, attacking Ryan’s queen again. It felt aggressive, in a sexy way.

Ryan tried to focus. “Right, because all the other pieces are trying to get to him or defend him. And the queen is the captain because she’s, like, defending the king, attacking the other king,andlooking after all the other pieces on the board.” He saw an opening and took it.Ha—Nico was going to lose his rook!

Nico defended the rook with the same damn bishop. “You should probably move a piece to look after the captain.”

Ryan retreated again. Even the trash talk was turning him on now. This video was a terrible idea.

Felicia prompted, “If Yorkie’s the captain, what piece are you?”

Well, if Nico was going to embarrass him during the game, at least Ryan could make it sound like he knew what he was talking about. “Good question. See, the pawns”—Nico moved one—“those are the rookies.”

Nico snorted.

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