Page 15 of Goalies Don't Date Ice Princesses

She shrugged, not looking up from her book. “I saw him at our usual family Saturday night dinner.”

“But not since then?” I asked. Heck, evenIhad talked to him more recently than that. Adelynn looked up, her eyebrows knitting together like she was thinking hard.

“I guess we texted a bit last night,” she said. “But only for a few minutes. Why?”

“Oh, uh…” How did I explain this without sounding like I was totally stalking him or something? I cleared my throat. “You know… he sits behind me in geography and he wasn’t there today. I was just wondering if he was sick or something.”

“Oh.” Adelynn looked mildly surprised. If he was sick, I guess she didn’t know about it. “I don’t think he’s sick. He probably would have mentioned it… But he might just be skipping class.” She shrugged. “I haven’t gone to school with him since the sixth grade, so I’m not really sure how often he actually bothers to attend class.”

Even though I knew they weren’t close and I should have been used to the blasé way she spoke about her disjointed relationship with her siblings, I was always a little taken aback when she said stuff like that without a care in the world. I thought if I was a triplet, I would try to keep up with my siblings more than that, even if they did go to a different school. Adelynn always said triplets weren’t necessarily closer to each other than any other siblings, but I always felt she was just saying that to make herself feel better about how things were between them. After all, she was still willing to help them at the drop of a hat in a way I thought most people weren’t about their siblings. Maybe even in a way that wasn’t particularly healthy. How many times had she pretended to be Avianna when her sister couldn’t make it somewhere? She even pretended to be Avianna on a date last month when Avianna decided she didn’t like the guy anymore, and Adelynn acted like that was just completely normal when I was sure it wasn’t.

Adelynn’s answer was obviously no help, other than suggesting that he probably was actually avoiding me, since she didn’t think he was sick. Or, he was skipping class for another reason and it just happened to coincide with the day after something happened between us, and I was just being egotistical. I guess that was an option, too.

I was curious, though, so I arrived at figure skating practice early that afternoon and waited in the hallway to watch all the hockey guys leave for their next club since they were on the rink right before us. A few of them gave me some weird looks, but I ignored it and kept an eye out for Archer. When it seemed like the number of guys left in the change room was dwindling, I stopped a grade ten boy as he walked out.

“Is Archer Rainn in there?” I asked. The boy looked petrified to be talking to me, which was hilarious given that he was a full foot taller than me.

“No,” he said. “He wasn’t at practice today.”

As I got on the ice for my own practice, I kept looking back at the bleachers like I was expecting him to come. But, as I should have expected, they stayed empty the whole time. And I hated the way that made my heart feel empty, too.

* * *

It didn’t occur to me until I was on the ramp to the ice that night that maybe coming tonight wasn’t such a great idea. Archer had clearly been avoiding me all day, right? Why else would he have been notably absent from the rink today?

Well, it wasn’t like he just skipped watching the figure skating practice. He also skipped his hockey practice, which was a much bigger thing and had nothing to do with me, right? Missing hockey was something that could come with some very real consequences for him. And if he’d really wanted to avoid me, he could have just left practice early to avoid having to pass me in the hallways. He didn’t have to skip it altogether. So, whatever it was probably meant he wouldn’t be here. That would be better, wouldn’t it? I would just have the place to myself, like I originally intended when I started coming here. So why was there a gnawing feeling of disappointment in my chest at that thought? Why did I feel like the rink would be empty without him?

“About time.” The voice surprised me out of my thoughts. I blinked a few times and moved my way up the rest of the way until I could see the rink in front of me in its entirety. Archer was standing in the middle with his hands on his hips and a grim look on his face. “I thought I was going to have to send out a search party for you.”

I rolled my eyes as I opened the door to the ice and skated on easily. Of course, he was already here and acting like I was the ridiculous one for taking so long after he hadn’t been at school all day. Not to mention that I didn’t come to the rink every night, and he knew it.

I glided over to him, coming to a lazy stop a few feet away. He was dressed in Westwood sweatpants tonight with a black long-sleeve workout top to go with it, barely concealing his huge muscles. He looked me over appraisingly in a similar way I was doing to him, as if he cared at all about my outfit. I tugged on the hem of my light blue shirt self-consciously. I’d really just grabbed the first two things in my drawer since I was stumbling around in the dark. My closet was organized between uniforms, casual outside clothes, and skating clothes to make it easy to find whatever I needed at a moment’s notice like this. Previously, I hadn’t cared if the outfits looked good or matched in any way because I knew I wasn’t going to see anybody during my night skates. Clearly, that wasn’t the case anymore.

“I like the leggings,” he said. I glanced down at them with a frown. They weren’t a very nice pair of leggings, but they weren’t terrible either, so I didn’t understand what the veiled insult there was. Because there was no way he was just complimenting me for the heck of it—it had to be a jab of some sort, but I couldn’t figure out what exactly it was. They didn’t have any obvious holes or stains or anything.

“I got dressed in the dark,” I said. It seemed like the safest answer. Like I was going along with whatever joke he was pulling on me. “I didn’t want to wake Adelynn.”

“A freight train couldn’t wake Adelynn,” he said drily. I laughed.

“True as that may be, I still feel like I should try to be a respectful roommate.”

“Well, you’re much nicer than my roommate, then,” Archer said. He stretched his arms up, resting his hands behind his head. I followed the motion with my eyes, unconsciously focusing on the flex in his arms that was just visible under the sleeve of his shirt. When I dragged my gaze away to look at his face again, he was smirking, like he knew exactly what I was doing. I blushed and looked away again.

“Where were you today?” I asked.

“Today?”

“You weren’t at your hockey practice.”

There was a long pause. Then I heard the sound of skates cutting through the ice as he came closer to me. I gulped.

“And how do you know that exactly, Ice Princess?”

“Ice Princess?”

His eyes studied my face. “You told me not to call you Twirl Girl.”

“I’m not sure I like that any more than Twirl Girl,” I said, crossing my arms across my chest.

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