Page 29 of Anatomy of a Player

“Sure thing,” I said, guiding her back toward the other side of the room. “But we need to talk about this ‘boy’ stuff. I’ll accept Hockey Man, Dude, Stud…Hockey God.”

“Pfft.Dream on, HockeyBoy.” The humor in her expression faded as she looked around. The place had cleared out quite a bit, leaving the area empty enough to see most everyone left at the party. Her eyebrows drew together, and then she pulled out her phone. Her face dropped at whatever was on the screen.

“What’s wrong?”

She pressed her phone to her chest. “Kristen texted me, but I didn’t hear it, and apparently after try two, she left me.” She shook her head. “How do I always manage to forget her definition of wingwoman and mine are inordinately different?”

“Inordinately? Good to see that alcohol has no effect on your vocabulary.”

“It’s grandiloquence or nothing for this chick.”

“Will you settle for Hennessy?”

She blinked slowly, her confusion clear.

“I think that you are inordinately drunk,” I said.

“I’m not. Impaired enough to be unable to drive, though, even if I had a car.” She lifted her phone and began typing with her thumbs. She kept growling and backspacing, which I thought proved my drunk theory. “Fingers crossed I don’t have to wait too long for a cab. There’s a reason why the place I called last time has a one-point-eight star rating. It took forever to pick me up, and it was pouring rain. And like that time, of course I don’t have a coat. But maybe this other place will be better.”

I put my hand on her wrist. “Don’t bother with the cab. I’ll take you home.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“Yes, I have. Lots of Coke. I’m really awake from the caffeine, so I’ll be super alert for the drive.”

“But I saw you getting beer from the keg,” she said, gesturing in the general direction of the drink table, “and earlier when you…when we talked about treating me as an equal in the locker room, you said you were drunk.”

“No,yousaid I was drunk, because you’re apparently bad at taking compliments. I let it go because I didn’t think you’d believe me, and I choose my battles, especially where you’re involved. Everything I filled from the tap was for other people. I’m perfectly sober. See…”

I went ramrod straight, put my finger on the tip of my nose, and began reciting the alphabet backward.

She narrowed her eyes on me. “Seems like you have a lot of experience in doing that.”

I flashed her an over-the-top grin. “Here I am, choosing not to fight this battle. Now come on.” I put my hand on her back, but when she tensed, I didn’t push. “You trust me, right?”

She shook her head, but a smile broke free, making me think about her lips again. “Not as far as I could throw you, and I think my attempt to spin you made it clear how far that is.”

I laughed. “Fair enough. But I can get you home for free, and you won’t have to wait forever for a cab to show up. The people determined to close the place down are only going to get more drunk. Then they’ll be hitting on you, and I’ll have to defend your honor, and I’m already exhausted from the game.”

Her muscles relaxed. “Fine. I’d hate for you to have to defend my honor from all these guys too busy with puck bunnies to look at me twice.”

I guided her toward the door, wanting to tell her I’d been looking at her all night. If it were a line, I’d throw it out there, no thinking twice about it. But I held it back…because it was a little too true.

The streetlights filtered in through the windshield, the red from the stoplight sending a blur of color across Whitney’s features. The girl was still a walking contradiction, one I was determined to figure out.

“Why didn’t you cover hockey last year?” I asked. “Were you focused on stupid football instead?”

I got an eyebrow raise that chided me to be nice about football. Not that anything was wrong about the sport in general, but hockey was better. It’d explain why she’d used “quarter,” instead of “period,” though. Almost.

“No. Getting onto the staff of the paper is difficult—it’s really competitive. That’s why I just started. This year, I mean.”

My instincts told me there was still something off. I had no doubt the positions at the paper were hard to come by, but she hardly struck me as the first choice pick to cover hockey. Not because she was female, but because she didn’t talk sports the way most reporters I’d met, male or female. She was unlike anyone I’d met, actually, and since it meant having her next to me in my truck right now, I didn’t care so much why she was the one covering sports.

“I’ll admit hockey is faster-paced than football. By the end of the year, Imighteven declare it my favorite sport. Maybe.” She gave me a sideways glance and happiness pinged through my chest. The girl was quickly figuring out the way to win me over, which was unfair since I was still a long way from figuring her out. “How’d you get into it anyway? Are you one of those kids who had a hockey stick put in their hands as soon as they could walk?”

Rough street games were how I’d first fallen in love with the sport, games where I’d ended up with bloody noses and scraped knees. But it was okay to hit back on the court, and it was a relief to find a way to release the aggression after years of holding it in. That answer tended to scare people—girls especially—so I kept it more kosher. “There was a group of neighborhood kids who played street hockey not too far from my house. A few of the guys belonged to a league that played on the ice, too—Dane was one of them. His dad was the coach, actually. Once I started getting good, they asked me join the team. That was when it went from a hobby to an addiction.”

Those were the days, when we were just a group of poor kids wiping the ice with preppy guys in name brand gear—I’d hated the season I’d had to play on a teamwithinstead ofagainstthat type, even if my home life had been more stable for that nine months than it had been for the rest of my life combined.

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