Page 68 of Scoring Position

You better be playing in the next game or I’ll start calling people.

Keep your head down and play. Don’t make waves.

Don’t let Wright’s influence make you do anything else stupid.

Nico’s mouth tightened. He should have expected this line of attack. Because Nico expressing even veiled opinions about the Fuel coaching’s shortcomings, Nico being disagreeable, Nico standing up for himself—that must be someone else’s fault. Obviously Ryan was the negative influence—he had to be! It couldn’t possibly be that Nico was growing a backbone, finally starting to see that he couldn’t control other people, that he couldn’t control what happened to him. For the first time in years, the instinct to remind himself that he had value off the ice or that only he could control how he reacted to things felt almost natural, innate. And he wouldn’t be here without Ryan’s intervention.

But of course, that was a bad thing.

He was still fuming impotently at his phone, screen now dark, and angrily eating his reheated chicken, when Ryan stumbled into the kitchen.

“Woah. What’s with the face?”

“Face?” He lifted his eyebrows.

Ryan contorted his face into an exaggerated scowl, then winced. He rubbed his temple and swiped a water bottle from the fridge. “Face. Ella posting new pictures to your Insta?”

Nico scowled, though this one felt less tense. “No.”

Ryan pulled the half-empty bottle from his lips, and Nico took a moment to appreciate the visual of his wet mouth. It paired well with his bedhead. He looked adorably rumpled, approachable in a way that Nico figured he never did. There were so many better things that Nico could do with his afternoon than worry about his dad.

As if reading his mind, Ryan asked, “You want a distraction?”

Nico dropped his phone on the table. “You read my mind.”

WHEN ALL-STARBreak finally arrived, Ryan didn’t quite know if he was relieved to have some time away from Nico to get some perspective, or disappointed… but he did know he wasn’t going to miss Coach’s face. He dropped his bag beside the door of his parents’ Whistler cottage and spread his arms like he was hugging the whole foyer. “I’m here! Let’s party.”

“Boo!” Tara said, but she ran out of the den and launched herself into his arms, clad in a long-sleeve T-shirt with leggings and ski socks. Her braided hair was damp at the ends. Obviously they’d been on the slopes already. “Are you even allowed to party?”

“I’m not allowed toski.” Probably he could as long as no one found out, but it wasn’t worth it. “That doesn’t mean the hot tub is off-limits.” He paused when she didn’t let go. “Miss me?”

“Ugh, as if.” She finally pulled back. “Come on, Rob’s kicking Mom’s butt at Scrabble and she’s gonna blow. It’s hilarious.”

“Oh good, I got here just in time.”

Tara rolled her eyes, then hugged him again and dragged him into the kitchen.

Ryan had learned not to bring his work home with him. You could pretty much expect your season to end with some measure of disappointment. This year was a little harder to leave in Indianapolis than the ones he’d had in Montreal, but he was determined to have a good week with his family.

By the end of his first night in Whistler, he’d gotten a decent start. He chirped Rob when he inevitably blew a seventy-point lead to Ryan’s mom, ate copious amounts of non-nutritionist-approved lasagna, and actually managed a stalemate in chess against Tara. Sure, she was three or four drinks into the evening, but it still counted. She even applauded politely.

It felt good.

But it was hard not to notice that conversation kept turning to work—everyone’s but his. No one wanted to ask about the Fuel, for obvious reasons. Ryan’s mom was a cardiac surgeon, his dad was a psychiatrist, and his sister had a master’s in genetic counseling. His older brother had just finished his residency in internal medicine. Rob, Tara’s boyfriend, had a normal job as an accountant, but Ryan couldn’t imagine pretending to be interested inthat.

None of them could give much in the way of specifics for privacy reasons, but the way they talked and related to each other about work got him thinking.

Not the kind of thoughts he should entertain, though.

Ryan and Tara were lounging in the oversize den, sprawled all over each other because Ryan’s family had always been tactile, when the stupid notification popped up on his phone.

Ryan’s parents and his older brother had sloped off to bed an hour or so earlier, and Rob was stretched out on the other couch, snoring lightly while Ryan and Tara watched aCriminal Mindsmarathon with the volume low. He was only half paying attention, since he’d seen them all, and Instagram wanted him to go scroll through some new posts in his down time. Who was Ryan to decline?

He was lying on his back with his feet in Tara’s lap, so when he scrolled past the picture of Nico spiking the ball during pool volleyball, water streaming down his chiseled body and dragging his shorts down enough to be indecent, he dropped the phone on his face. It clattered to the floor.

Rob snorted and turned his head against the back of the couch, but Tara smelled blood. Before Ryan could move, she leaned over and snagged his phone off the carpet. “Oh my God, what porn did you see that made you spaz like—”

Ryan’s cheeks flamed.

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