Page 59 of Puck You Very Much
While the national anthem played, the lyrics floated in one ear and out the other because I felt so preoccupied by thinking of ways to keep Jakob safe. For now, the only guarantee I could make was to not take a cheap shot at him or any other Larkin Lion.
But I could make no promises regarding my teammates.
Anthem finished, I approached center ice for the puck drop. I stared Levi Dunn right in the face and realized how handsome he was. God, it reminded me of appreciating Jax’s body more whenI took the time to study it. Rumor had it that Levi Dunn had a boyfriend, somehow that bucked stereotypes even more than Jakob and me. I struck down that thought as soon as it crossed my mind because we had a game to win.
I kept telling myself that anyway.
Back to business.
Staring deep into Levi’s eyes, I wanted to psych him out during the face off. Sometimes those moments took forever. This faceoff was the longest of my whole life.
Finally, the ref dropped the puck, and I snatched it up, then used my speed to race away from Levi. I slipped the puck to Jax Echlin who carried it past the blue line into Lions territory. Then he passed the puck back to me. I wound up, slapped the puck, and launched it toward the net. Ryan Detenbeck stopped the shot with ease but that didn’t stop our home crowd from erupting in boos like it’d been a seriously close shave.
Jakob took over at the next face off against Jax Echlin. My boyfriend (Did I really just call him that?) swept up the puck and darted for the opposite end of the rink at lightning speed. We all chased him, and I had to at least pretend to hunt him down hungrily for the sake of my teammates. Oh hell, I was competing and wanted to win, so I caught up with Jakob and checked him into the board—but notthathard.
I only struck him hard enough to jar the puck loose and not inflict harm. With the puck in my possession, I advanced a few feet, but Jakob didn’t follow. It wasn’t because he lacked the speed to keep up with me either. Jax Echlin hammered him from behind, causing him to hit the boards again and collapse onto the ice.
I gasped, struggling to hide my shock.
Before I could yell, “What the fuck are you doing?”, the ref blew the whistle and announced a two-minute roughing penaltyon Jax. The home crowd booed the decision, despite the ref having clearly made the right call.
Jakob rose to his feet slowly, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs. And I just stood there and watched. Yep, that’s right. Jax nearly took my boyfriend’s head off and I did absolutely nothing about it. But what would the Riptides have said if I’d gone to help him? Maybe they would suggest I could give him a hug and kiss while I was at it. Given my team’s current agenda, I doubted they would be so kind.
It had begun. The war, I mean. You could say that a war had always existed between Remington and Larkin, but that wasn’t true. There’s a difference between a fierce rivalry and all-out war, which I learned that night. Jax’s ridiculous hit on Jakob represented the first shot fired.
On the next play, Levi scooped up the puck and headed straight into our territory. He wound up, slapped the puck, and fired it straight into the net. The crowd booed his goal even worse than the completely warranted Jax Echlin penalty. I felt totally confident that Levi would’ve flashed a double-barrel middle finger at the crowd if not for his hockey gloves.
Anyway, the score was zero-one, and I saw no reason to panic… about winning, I mean. Still early in the first period, we had a shit load of hockey left to play. I worried about my team’s extracurricular activities more than anything.
On the bench, Clay Morris leaned over and asked, “What gives, Hirst? You just gonna sit there with your thumb up your butt?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Dude, you had at least one really good chance to take Jakob Martin out and earn some serious bucks, and you left it all on the table.”
“I didn’t leave anything on the table. And I didn’t let Jakob Martin off the hook. I checked him into the boards, didn’t I?”
“That little love tap?”
“I wouldn’t call it a love tap, Morris. I hit him hard enough to make him cough up the puck.”
I picked up a bottle and squirted water into my mouth, wanting to ignore my teammate while wrestling with the overwhelming urge to defend myself.
“You saw what happened to Jax for the shot he took, didn’t you?” I asked.
“He got two minutes in the penalty box. Big fucking deal. It’s just collateral damage.”
“Collateral damage? Levi Dunn shot right down the ice and scored the moment we were short a man. I don’t know what you’ve been smoking.”
That shut my teammate up and, of course, I knew that the precious silence would be short-lived. Before we hit the ice again, he said, “Go out there and take Jakob’s head off, will you?”
Coach Mack’sCut off the head and the body will diemantra echoed in my head, and I couldn’t force it out.
Thirty seconds remained in Jax’s penalty when the puck dropped again. We quickly found ourselves a scrum behind the Riptides net, where I tried desperately to steal the puck from Jakob. I definitely wasn’t standing there with my thumb up my ass. I invested all the energy and might in my body because I put winning at the forefront.
You know, winning the right way?
I loosened the puck from the scrum and fired it down the ice. We all chased after it, only I focused more of my attention on Jax Echlin being freed from the penalty box.
