Page 17 of Price of Victory
The next repetition came faster than I was ready for. I was carrying the puck, focused more on Rhett’s approach than on the play itself, when he hit me again. This one was even harder than before, perfectly legal but loaded with enough force to send me careening toward the boards.
I slammed into the glass with a rattle that echoed through the rink, my shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. For a moment, everything went white around the edges, and I had to brace myself against the boards to keep from going down.
When my vision cleared, Rhett was skating past me toward the center of the ice, and he was close enough that I could see the satisfaction in his expression. Close enough to hear him if I said something.
So I did.
“You liked it,” I whispered, just loud enough for him to catch.
He stopped so suddenly that his skates threw up a spray of ice shavings. When he turned to look at me, his face was flushed with something that definitely wasn’t exertion.
“So did you,” he snarled back, and the words hit me like a punch to the solar plexus.
Because he was right. Completely, devastatingly right.
I had liked it. I’d liked the feeling of his body against mine, the controlled violence of the contact, the way he’d looked at me afterward like he was deciding whether to hit me again or do something else entirely. I’d liked the way it felt to be the focus of all that intensity, even when it was wrapped up in anger and frustration.
The realization shut me up completely because it meant I wasn’t nearly as in control of this situation as I’d thought. I’d teased the guy plenty until now, but I’d imagined that I wascapable of keeping myself under control. Rhett Morrison was getting under my skin in ways that had nothing to do with family business and everything to do with the way he moved, the way he looked at me, the way he made me feel like I was seventeen years old and completely out of my depth.
The rest of practice passed in a blur of drills and conditioning that I went through on autopilot. My body knew what to do, muscle memory taking over while my brain tried to process what had just happened. Every time I caught sight of Rhett across the ice, that sick twist of want and confusion tightened in my chest.
By the time Coach called us in, I was ready to get off the ice and figure out what the hell was happening to me. The locker room was already filling with steam from the showers, that familiar post-practice fog that turned everything hazy and intimate.
I was pulling off my helmet when I caught Rhett looking at me from across the room. It was just for a second, his eyes meeting mine with an intensity that made my pulse quicken, before he looked away and started unlacing his skates with more force than necessary.
But that second was enough. I’d seen something in his expression that matched what I was feeling, that mixture of want and confusion and anger that came from realizing you were attracted to someone you were supposed to hate.
The team was already starting to file out, guys heading home or to the dining hall or wherever they went to decompress after practice. But Rhett was taking his time, moving slower than usual as he packed up his gear.
I made my decision.
I waited until most of the guys had cleared out, then made my way over to where he was sitting on the bench. He looked up when I approached, wariness flickering across his features, but he didn’t tell me to go away.
“Can we talk?” I asked, keeping my voice low and nonthreatening.
He studied my face for a long moment, like he was trying to figure out if this was another game. “About what?”
“About what happened in the library. About what just happened on the ice.” I sat down on the bench across from him, close enough to talk quietly but far enough away that he wouldn’t feel cornered. “I didn’t mean to humiliate you. I just wanted…”
“What?” Rhett cut me off, his voice sharp. “You just wanted to prove you could make me lose control? You wanted to see how far you could push before I cracked?”
The accusation hit closer to home than I wanted to admit, but that wasn’t the whole truth. “I wanted to understand why you hate me so much.”
“You know why.”
“Do I? Because from where I’m sitting, it feels like there’s more to it than just business rivalry.”
Rhett’s hands stilled on his gear bag, and for a moment, the only sound in the locker room was the hiss of showers running in the background. When he looked at me again, his expression was guarded but not entirely hostile.
“You think everything’s a game,” he said finally. “You think you can charm your way through life, manipulate people into giving you what you want, and there won’t be any consequences.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But that’s not what this is about.”
“Isn’t it?”
I leaned forward, close enough to see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes, close enough to catch the scent of his soap and the lingering smell of ice rink cold. “If I were just playing games, do you think I’d be sitting here trying to apologize?”
“Are you? Apologizing?”
