Page 12 of The Longest Shot
Three years, and she still looks like she could stop traffic, or start a war, or make me do something spectacularly stupid, which, let's face it, is probably about to happen. Because how else can I deal with the silence that's fallen over the guys now that we're being watched by an expectant group of peers?
But I don't even look at any of the others. Not Mills with her tough-as-nails scowl, not the freshman—Sarah, I think—who's practically vibrating with nervous energy, not even Coach Walsh standing behind them with her arms crossed.
I just look ather.
She's got that athlete's body that makes other women look soft—shoulders carved from granite, a waist that curves in before those hips that used to fit perfectly against mine. Even in full gear, even from here, she's a goddamn weapon.
The kind of beautiful that makes you stupid.
All her lean muscle and controlled power, held in by form-fitting practice pants that show curves I remember tracing with my hands. Her flame-red hair that looks like it's on fire, pulledback so tight it pulls at her temples, emphasizing those sharp cheekbones that could cut glass.
She's all I've been able to think about for a few days, since she brushed me off in the hallway outside the all captains meeting. I haven't told a soul, because the guys would start heaping shit on me, but Morgan Riley has lived rent-free in my head for almost a week now.
And now, I'm staring like some lovesick freshman who's never seen a girl before. Real smooth, Fitzgerald. Champion goalie reduced to a slack-jawed idiot by one woman in hockey gear.
But she'snotstaring. She's looking at the ice—herice, according to the schedule—with those pale gray eyes that could freeze hell itself. Every line of her body is rigid, from her straight spine to her white-knuckled grip on her stick. But she's not moving, not yelling, and not storming onto the ice to claim what's theirs.
Just… waiting.
The patience and silence of it are somehow worse than anger, like watching someone load a gun one bullet at a time. My skin starts to crawl, ants marching under my pads in perfect formation, and I know every set of eyes in the rink except Morgan's are on me.
Waiting for movement, color, and volume.
"Yo, Rook!" Kellerman's voice shatters the quiet. "One more drill?"
The kid's trying to help, bless him. Throwing me a lifeline when he sees me drowning in all this unspoken tension. But he doesn't know what he's asking or about the history between Morgan and me that's bleeding all over this ice right now.
And just like that, it's decision time, in front of twenty guys who elected me captain because I keep things light, keep things fun, keep the party going no matter what. They're all grinning,waiting for me to be exactly who they expect, in front of twenty girls, new to Pine Barren, hoping to be peers.
The silence stretches.
It's the kind of quiet that makes my teeth ache, the kind that reminds me of Sunday dinners when Mom and Dad would sit at opposite ends of the table, flatware scraping against china while nobody said a goddamn word. The kind of silence that always ended with broken dishes or slammed doors.
I can feel Morgan's presence at the boards like a physical weight.
The responsible thing would be to call it and hand over the ice. But that would mean skating over there and looking her in those arctic eyes, which once had so much warmth in them when I spoke to her. I mean, Icouldtry to have an adult conversation in private, where I'd have to acknowledge what happened between us, where I'd tell her I regret what happened.
Where I'd have to admit that I think about that last night at the summer camp every fucking day. How I'd laughed when she asked "what's next?" Like it was the punchline to some joke only I was in on. How I'd watched her face shut down, watched her rebuild those walls brick by brick while I just kept talking, kept joking, kept being exactly the coward she'd started to believe I wasn't.
I decide to fix this my way and do the Rook thing. Make her react, make her do something apart from stand there judging my every failure. Because if I can just get her to crack—laugh, yell, even just roll those eyes—then we're having an interaction. Then it's not just her silent contempt and my pathetic need to fill every void with noise.
The plan forms instantly, fully formed and spectacularly stupid. Because that's my superpower, right? Taking a bad situation and making it exponentially worse through the magicof poor impulse control and a pathological fear of silence or sincerity.
"One more!" I shout, loud enough for everyone to hear, especially her. "But make it fucking memorable!"
I grab a puck and build speed toward center ice—not toward the net… toward her…—and my edges bite deep as I pivot at the last second, throwing my weight into it like I'm trying to stop a breakaway. The spray that comes off my skates is a magnificent arc of shaved ice that catches the overhead lights like diamonds.
Physics being what it is, that ice has to go somewhere.
It goes directly onto Morgan.
The spray hits her jacket like a thousand tiny middle fingers made of frozen water. It covers her helmet and definitely gets in her face. I see her flinch, just barely. My teammates explode in laughter behind me, but the sound feels distant, muffled, like I'm underwater and drowning in my stupidity.
"Sorry, Morgue," I say, the words loud and performative and immediately regrettable. "Didn't realize you were waiting for the championship ice!"
The nickname I just made up on the fly hangs in the air like a challenge, verbalizing exactly how she's looking at me and my team. But it's out now, and there's no putting it back in the bottle, although she doesn't react immediately, making me wonder if she heard it.
For one fraction of a second, something flickers in her eyes. Not anger. Not even annoyance. It's disappointment, the kind that comes from having your worst assumptions confirmed. The kind that says,I knew you were exactly this pathetic.
