Page 42 of Anatomy of a Player

She looked at me, eyebrows ticking together.

I gave her an innocent shrug. “Sorry. It’s hard for one little seat to contain all this.”

She glanced a few aisles down, where the rest of my teammates sat, then leaned in. “I shouldn’t have let you sit here. You should be with the rest of your team.”

“Beck’s just a few seats away.”

“You know what I mean. I don’t want the rest of the hockey team to get the wrong idea about us.”

“What’s the wrong idea?”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “You know. That something’s going on between you and me.”

“Between you and I?” I asked, arching my eyebrows.

“It’s ‘me.’”

“Pretty sure it’s I,” I said, even though I had no idea. It was fun to get her riled up, though. I wanted to tease her back to where we’d been earlier today. Or last night—I’d take either.

Dane glanced back, and the idiot grinned and gave me the nod. Clearly I was going to have to murder him later.

Of course Whitney noticed it. “See what I mean?”

“That? That was because Mike Grabonski scored, and we’re too far apart to fist bump.”

“He did? Oh, I’ll write that down.” She wrote his name and then frowned. “Which team is he on?” Before I could answer, she swiped a hand through the air. “Not that it really matters. It’s just for charity—since this isn’t even a school event, I’ll probably focus more on the fundraising aspect.”

The girl had so many evasive maneuvers, I was starting to think she was a trained spy. But I let it slide for now, planning on circling back around to it later. “Back to this you andIbusiness,” I said, grinning extra wide when she huffed out a breath. “What do you mean there’s nothing going on? Because last night—”

She clamped a hand over my mouth. “Will you stop? We can discuss this later.”

“Hey, you’re the one all over me in public,” I muttered through her hand.

She jerked away and turned in her chair. I poked her shoulder and she crossed her arms and twisted away even more. I poked her again, in the side this time, and while she tried to fight it, a smile broke free.

“You’re so obnoxious,” she hissed through her teeth.

“You like it,” I said back, not bothering to whisper.

“That’s the problem,” she said, her voice so quiet I almost wondered if I’d imagined it. I was about to press further, but then the crowd erupted as the final minute of the game played out, a last-second score sending them even more into a frenzy.

They announced how much money they’d raised and invited the raffle winners down to the ice. When I turned to see if Whitney wanted to covertly meet somewhere for dinner, she was no longer next to me. Two empty seats remained between Beck and me.

“Where’d the girls go?” I asked.

“They said something about getting out of here before the crowds got too crazy—I’m not sure why it was suddenly such a big deal, but Whitney insisted she needed to get away before it was too hard to move.”

Sure enough, the aisles were already filled with people scrambling to leave the arena. I spotted Lyla and Whitney at the top and had the oddest urge to leap across chairs and rails to get to Whitney.

But then I’d look desperate. Plus, Coach had repeatedly reminded us that we needed to stick around to help take everything down.

So instead I watched her go, hoping she’d glance back so I could wave, or do…I don’t know. Something.

But she didn’t. Leaving me to wonder if I was starting to lose my mind over Reporter Girl.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Whitney

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