Page 77 of Time to Shine

“He’s mic’d up,” Lee said. “So he’s giving a fucking TED Talk.”

“Cool it with the potty mouth, Captain,” Casey scolded. “I don’t want all my shit censored.”

He skated to the bench to high-five his teammates. Landon was at the end of the bench.

“Nice one,” Landon said as Casey slapped his outstretched goalie glove.

“You would have stopped that.”

“Sure.”

The score was now 3-1 for Calgary, which was excellent because they’d lost 5-1 against Vegas (probably Casey’s fault for planning the night out, which had led to a pretty rough afternoon practice the next day, which had led to an even rougher game the following night). Now they had three games in three cities in four days to get through.

He hadn’t spent much time with Landon since the club in Vegas. Not that Landon had seemed upset with him or anything, they’d just been separated a lot. Maybe some of it was on purpose, at least on Landon’s part, but Casey understood his need to be alone sometimes.

Casey had hoped that having sex with Claudia—which had been awesome, five stars—would clear his head a bit when it came to Landon. It hadn’t. His heart still bounced around in his chest whenever he looked at Landon, and he really hoped the microphone didn’t pick that up.

Landon got the start in Minnesota.

The decision had been made shortly before the game, so Landon hadn’t had a chance to lie awake all night worrying about it. As a result, he was cramming twenty-four hours’ worth of panic into the twenty minutes between warm-ups and the actual game.

Casey noticed. Of course he did. Landon was crouched in the tunnel, staring at nothing and trying to calm himself with deep breathing when Casey’s head tipped sideways into his field of vision.

“Hey, Stacks. I have good news and bad news.”

Landon exhaled. “Okay.”

Casey crouched in front of him. “Good news—this is gonna be the best game ever.”

“For who?”

“You. Me. Us. I can feel it.”

Landon took a moment to process how much he’d enjoyed Casey saying, “You. Me. Us.” Then he said, “What’s the bad news, then?”

Casey smiled. “Oh, the bad news is for Minnesota. They’re gonna lose.”

Landon actually laughed at that. A short burst of surprised amusement.

Casey laughed too, then stood up and gently bopped Landon on the top of his mask. “You should poke check someone again. That was sick.”

Landon stood too. “Anything else?”

Casey pretended to think about it. Or maybe he actually was. “Score a goal? That would be so rad.”

“No problem.”

“Have you ever scored a goal?”

“No.”

“Oh. It’s fun. You should try it.”

“Okay.”

Casey dropped his voice about an octave to match Landon’s. “Okay.”

A huge, ridiculous, and frankly unprecedented smile spread across Landon’s face. Then he laughed in a way that probably counted as giggling.

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