Page 86 of Wicked Ends
“Like I said… only the Ice Gods can keep up.”
The line moved very slowly up the stairs toward the glass doors at the top.
Sally huffed and craned her neck to see over it.
“Screw this. Follow me, I know another way in,” she said and grabbed my hand. “You wearing the jersey I gave you under that jacket?”
I nodded. She’d brought me a random Hellions jersey to wear for the game.
“Good, with all these students and staff from New York, we need to represent… and I hooked up with the assistant coach last year,and he totally ghosted me when he found out that I worked here, so you know… we have to win.”
“Okay, got it.”
A fire exit was propped open by a traffic cone around the back of the building. Sally pushed the door open and strode in, stripping off her coat.
I followed her example. “Are we allowed down here?”
We were on the lower level of the building, an area I’d never been to before. There were locker rooms and the coaches’ offices, as well as a gym and a few meeting rooms. We strode down the hall. The doorway of a changing room opened, and players in Hellions jerseys strode out.
Someone whistled loudly.
“Looking good, Kenna!”
“Hey, she’s wearing my number,” someone else called.
Kenna smiled, flipping her hair over her shoulder and shooting a cheeky grin in the general direction of the players still piling out of the changing room.
“Got a few fans there, I see,” I said to her.
She rolled her eyes. “Please, those guys flirt like they breathe.”
“Have you ever, you know… hooked up with anyone?”
She sighed. “I’ve passed the time with a few seniors over the years, when I was new, and didn’t know whatplayershockey players are. Dumb, right? Who’d have thought? But I’ve learned my lesson by now. Hockey players are for fun, not for Christmas.”
I was busy tying my jacket around my waist and smiling at Kenna’s comment, when I walked into a wall.
No. Not a wall.
A chest… an exceptionally broad one. I bounced back with a gasp and stared up.
Marcus stood in front of me, dressed in a hoodie and training pants. He had his stick in one hand and his huge sports bag in the other. The very same style of bag I’d stolen from The Clutch. Just the sight of that bag made me feel guilty, now that I’d met Cole and a couple of the Harbor Hounds.
“My, my, what is my pretty little music professor doing down here in the tunnel? Lost or looking for someone?”
“We’re here to see you kick Raptor ass, so you better make us proud,” Kenna said and then gasped, ducking behind me. “Shit, there’s the guy.”
“Go! I’ll cover you,” I told her.
She made a break for the stairs in front of us and disappeared upward as the opposing team appeared at the end of the hallway.
“I better go. Have a good game out there,” I told Marcus quickly. I took a step to go around him.
His hand shot out. “Not so fast.”
I opened my mouth to ask him what was wrong, but before I could get the words out, he tugged me into a small corridor to our left, with lockers lining one wall and a storeroom at the end.
“What?” I protested. My back hit the wall.
