Page 28 of My Pucking Enemy
“Luca.” She stands from her chair across the table, circles the room, and points at the projector screen where Dillon Stanch’s face is blown up. “Listen to me. When have I steered you wrong? This guy—he thinks the two of you are natural rivals. He’s obsessed. I’d go as far as saying he’s got some sort of Luca McKenzie shrine back at his place.”
Why are my cheeks flaming? Wren is in her pacing mode, moving back and forth in front of the projector with a frenetic energy that makes me feel antsy.
“He does not.”
“I’mtellingyou, Luca, listen to me—act like you have no idea who he is. Or just casual, like ‘Oh, hey man!’ Like you didn’t expect him to be there. It’s going to drive himinsane.I’ve watched hundreds of hours of film on him—his play style is all about thinking. Analyzing. Trying to stay three steps ahead of people. But you flip that around on him by pushing it too far, making him over think.”
“I appreciate that something like this might work during a card game, Wren—”
She crosses the room, planting her hands on the arm rests of my chair, making them rock back slightly so I’m looking up at her.
In the split moment between her doing it and when she speaks, time is suspended. I stare at her, my eyes on hers at first, then breaking off and flitting over her face. The freckles, her nose—so slight, so small, compared to my own—the fringes of strawberry blonde hair over her forehead coming clean from her braids.
Hazel eyes mostly green, but ringed with gold and dark blue around the perimeter of the irises. Darker eyebrows than the light of her hair, painting her face in contrast and almost always drawn down in a frown or scowl.
Wren Beaumont isbeautiful,and having her this close makes my heart thud a little too hard, like it’s beating inside out. Skipping far too many beats.
She looks back and forth between my eyes seriously, like she’s going to hypnotize me. For some reason, I feel like it’s already working.
Wren would make an excellent vampire. People would bend over backwards to become a thrall. She has that sort of magnetism.
The seconds end, and time returns to normal, Wren saying, “Luca. Trust me on this. Stanch operates in a logical, methodicalmanner. One of his core beliefs, going into this game, is that you see him as an equal competitor.”
“And I do—”
“Shh—the media has been doing back flips to make the two of you seem like you’re going head-to-head. McKenzie and the Frost against Stanch and the Sharks. It’s working. He believes it. And what you have to do is kick that core belief right out from under him. It willshakehim, before the game even starts. You’ll knock him off his game.”
“Do you ever consider that what you’re doing might be psychological warfare?”
“If this was war, maybe,” she laughs, pushing up off my chair like it’s nothing, like my entire body hasn’t gone into panic mode with her that close for minutes on end.
It’s been a long time, that’s all. And she smells nice.
Wren goes on, “But this isn’t war. It’s hockey. Trust me—if you do what I say, you guys are taking home the win before Christmas break.”
“Fine,” I say, shaking my head and turning to the table quickly, flipping through my notes just for something to do with my hands. “But if we mentally break the guy, it’s going onyourconscious.”
***
Stanch reacts exactly how Wren says he would.
At first, he laughs, brushing it off when I barely even look at him during the captain’s meeting. Then he glances at the other players, and over to the reporters on the side of the rink, as though they might catch the interaction. Like they might already be writing juicy headlines about it.
When I glance at Wren, she gives me the world’s dorkiest thumbs-up.
We set up for the face-off, and when the puck drops, I forget about everything else.
I forget about Mandy and the divorce lawyer, about the incident with Wren the other day, about the fact that I’ll be coming home to an empty house at the end of the night. Even the conversation I had with Cal—about him taking a year off—falls to the back of my mind.
Instead, I focus on the feeling of the ice against my skates, calling out to Callum and Hawkins. Keeping my eye on the puck. I’m completely zoned in.
Stanch, however, is not.
He comes at us hard in the first period, his stick work aggressive and sloppy. He takes bad shots on the goal, he argues with his teammates, and he chirps at me.
About my stats, technique, anything he can think of.
Just like Wren said, I don’t bite. I don’t straight-up ignore them, but rather, look at him in surprise. Like I might if it was my own teammate talking shit to me—slightly startled that he’s there. Like I’ve forgotten completely about his presence.
