Page 145 of Branded
Yup.
Boomed.
Because Smitty might be a gentle giant, but he had one volume, and that volume was loud.
I bit back a sigh, turned, and went back to my shot, wailing on the puck, hearing the tink of the goalpost.
Fucking hell.
I’d been aiming for the upper left corner.
No goalie. No pressure. Not even a shooter-tutor.
Just me and my fucked-up head.
Well, and Smitty, who miraculously didn’t comment on the fucked-up shot.
“Heads up,” he called instead, whipping a puck at me. I took the opportunity and one-timed it, this time thankfully hitting the corner I aimed for.
“Again,” Smitty called before that puck hit the ice, winging another my way.
I shot, hit that same corner again, just for good measure.
“Bottom corner now,” he said, shagging down a puck and firing it at me.
I shot.
I hit that corner.
And then it was on, Smitty and I playing our casual game of Hockey Horse, moving around the zone, hitting the various spots, trying for various shots—or I was, anyway, considering that Smitty had apparently made it his job to be my puck bitch. Pretty soon my lungs were screaming, my arms were tired, and I was struggling to hit the shots.
Which meant it was no surprise that Smitty called, “Last one, top third of the net on the left.
My favorite place to shoot.
Often open if a goalie had gone down to make a save, and if it wasn’t, typically it beaned them right in the helmet.
So if not a goal, then a smack to the goalie.
Win-win, especially with how I’d been feeling the last year.
I swung, followed through, hit that top third of the net.
“Nice,” Smitty muttered, skating up beside me, smacking me on the shoulder with that typical Smitty strength, one that nearly had my skate blades jammed down through the ice and into the sand beneath.
I braced, knowing my friend and teammate was a nosy fuck, knowing that he’d want to know why I was out here this morning.
And I didn’t want to talk about it, about last night or Beth’s rounded belly and how it felt to feel the babies inside move, what it had done to my own heart, how it had ripped my shields clear away and I’d felt it, yearned for it. I didn’t want to talk about the worry gnawing at the back of my mind, that she wasn’t drinking enough or eating enough or that she was dizzy and alone or that she’d fallen back asleep and was having fucking nightmares that had her yelling and begging someone not to touch her.
Her.
Not Beth.
But another her.
And that killed me.
Because I wanted to know.
