Page 56 of Ice Cold, Red Hot
It had to be her. It was all her.
I didn’t deserve her, but I was going to fight for her anyway.
CHAPTER 26
CELESTE
“I don’t know if he even wants me to be here.” Nat was dragging me to the Firehawks game—the first of the NCAA championships—and she was not listening to me.
I hauled her to the side of the crowd outside the stadium. “Nat! You’re not hearing me. He wanted space. He says I’m a distraction. The last thing I want to do is distract him during the playoffs…”
She shook her head. “Whether either of you morons realizes it or not, he wants you there. So you’re going.”
“And you want to watch Griff,” I suggested.
“We’re friends. Always have been, always will be. Even though he’s annoying.”
“Right.” I wasn’t buying that at all. “You sure about this?”
“Come on. Griff got us good seats.” Nat pulled me back into the stream of people heading into the Coldwater arena. Even outside, the energy was vibrating around us. The national final was a big deal, and I was so glad Shepherdhad been cleared in time to play with his team. It was what mattered to him, after all.
The crowd was insane, and we had to say excuse me at least a thousand times to get to our seats, which were literally in the first row behind the team bench. If Shepherd didn’t want me here, I was going to be very hard to ignore. “Should we sit farther back?” I hissed in Nat’s ear.
“Hell, no,” she laughed.
When the team took the ice for warm ups, the crowd went berserk. My eyes were trained on one player only.
Shepherd. He stepped out like he owned the place, power and grace in every stroke of his skates. And then he looked at me—like he’d known exactly where I’d be sitting. He didn’t smile, but there was no surprise in his expression either. His dark eyes hit mine and held there as he skated past, and in that moment, I felt a jolt of connection.
“Damn,” Nat whispered, laughing at my side.
The crowd only got more riled up as the game got started, and the energy was contagious.
I didn’t know the right words for what I was watching. I didn’t know the names of the plays or the strategies. But I knew effort when I saw it. I knew heart and fight, and it was out there in every play we watched.
And Shepherd? Shepherd was everywhere.
Every time I found him on the ice, he was in motion—fast, fierce, unrelenting. He moved like nothing could slow him down. He chased the puck with a kind of desperation that made my heart ache. Not because he was losing—but because I could see how much he wanted it. How much of himself he was pouring into this game.
He didn’t score, but he set things up. He slipped pastdefenders, sent the puck where it needed to go, fought to make space for his teammates. And every time he came off the ice, he looked like he could barely stand, his chest heaving, sweat darkening his jersey.
And every time, he found my eyes, held them. And my heart raced like I was the one out there on the ice.
Every soul in the crowd was rooting for the Firehawks, or it felt that way, at least. Every score, every hit, it all felt personal.
But in the final minutes… it all slipped away.
The other team surged. I don’t know how they did it—one second it was chaos, bodies and sticks and speed all colliding—and the next, the puck was in the back of our net and there was a collective groan around the stadium.
The buzzer sounded. And it was over.
“They lost?” I said, not quite believing it was possible after the colossal effort I’d just witnessed.
“Yeah,” Nat confirmed, giving me a glum look.
My heart cracked as I watched our team slump in realization of their defeat. And then my eyes found Shepherd. He was standing in the midst of his teammates, breathing hard. He didn’t look crushed. Or angry.
And when his gaze found mine, my heart stopped in my chest.
