Page 9 of Ice Cold, Red Hot
Nat was wearing a very irritating smile, one that told me she was about to say something I wouldn’t like at all. “You only think that because you’ve never seen them play hockey.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “That’s because I don’t give two shits about hockey.”
Nat raised an eyebrow. “You can’t dislike something you know nothing about.”
She had a point. I disliked Shepherd very much because I knew way too much about him.
As we started walking again, she hooked her arm through mine. “So I guess I’m going to have to educate you,” she said.
I did not like where this was going. “Educate me?”
“Yep. First game of the season is tonight. You and me—we’re going.”
“No. I don’t have time to go to a hockey game.”
“Sure you do. It’ll be the most exciting sixty minutes of your life, trust me.”
Nat was not taking no for an answer, and that was how, a few hours later, I found myself sitting rinkside at the first—and hopefully only—hockey game I would ever attend.
Nat and I sat side by side, surrounded by other students who chattered and laughed as we waited for warm-ups to begin. She explained that each team would take the ice to warm up, and then the game would start. I had no idea why we’d had to come this early. I was about to voice my complaints about wasting time just to get good seats when the Coldwater Firehawks took the ice.
They were decked out in pads and gear that obscured most of their faces, but I would’ve known Shepherd anywhere. Even without the nameRenshawprinted boldly across the back of his blue-and-white jersey, I would’ve recognized him. By the way he held his broad shoulders. By the tilt of his square chin. By the swagger with which he moved.
On skates, Shepherd was somehow even more devastatingly handsome. I didn’t have to see his face to understand the way his body moved beneath the pads and the uniform.Gracefulanddeadly.Those were the words that came into my mind as I watched him fly around the ice.
Ice skating was something I’d done as a kid—once or twice. It had been a shaky-ankled, unsteady, silly thing to do. I might’ve gone around the rink a couple times andthen collapsed in a heap of giggles as I took off the uncomfortable skates and ate pizza with my friends.
But this? This was something completely different.
The men moving around the ice now did so with the targeted focus of a deadly missile. There was intent and purpose in every motion they made, and I found myself unable to look away as Shepherd warmed up with his team.
When the game began, Shepherd took center ice across the small circle from the captain of the other team, and I found that my heart was in my throat. Shepherd crouched low, stick hovering over the ice, his whole body tight with focus. Across from him, the other player did the same, their movements sharp and mirrored, both waiting for something?—
The puck dropped.
Everything exploded. It was too fast for me to process. One second, Shepherd flicked his stick, and the next, the puck was gone, swallowed up by the whirlwind of motion around him.
The game wasn’t like anything I’d expected. There was no slow build-up, no easing into it. It was relentless, constant, a battle fought in motion. Bodies crashed into the boards with the force of a speeding train. Sticks clashed. The sound of blades cutting into the ice was a sharp, rhythmic scrape that reverberated through my bones.
And Shepherd?
I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
Even when he didn’t have the puck, he was moving, circling, adjusting, watching. He skated like the ice belonged to him, his legs powerful, his movements effortless, his confidence undeniable. At some point, someonesent the puck toward him, and Shepherd caught it like it was second nature, like the thing was drawn to him. In an instant, he was gone, cutting through the other players like they were nothing, shifting direction so fast my brain could barely keep up.
I had no idea what he was trying to do, but it didn’t matter—I felt it.
The sheer force of him.
Then, without warning, he pulled his stick back and slammed the puck toward the goal. The shot was so fast, I almost missed it. The goalie lunged, barely getting a piece of it, and the puck deflected to the side, not going in the net.
Bodies crashed together in front of the net, sticks colliding, fighting for control, but then—somehow—of course—Shepherd was there again.
He shoved past someone, angled his stick just right, and nudged the puck toward a teammate.
A flick of the wrist. A flash of red light. A roar of sound.
I sucked in a breath.
