Page 21 of Goalies Don't Date Ice Princesses

“I know exactly how you feel,” Archer said, his voice barely above a whisper. “There are times when I question why I continue playing hockey. The early mornings, the exhausting practices, the sacrifices we have to make… sometimes it feels like it’s all too much. I mean… it’s why we’re here, isn’t it? We can’t sleep because of it.”

His words resonated deep within me, stirring up emotions that had long been suppressed. It was a relief to hear someone else acknowledge the doubts that haunted me in the darkest corners of my mind. It made me feel seen and validated, as if my struggles were not in vain or only my own, but something shared by others.

“It’s hard to admit this, but there are moments when I wonder if I should just give up figure skating,” I confessed, my voice trembling ever so slightly. “The pressure to be perfect, to win competitions, it’s suffocating sometimes. And when that joy starts to fade, it feels like a betrayal of everything I’ve worked for. And not just me, but my parents. I mean, they’ve given up so much for me to...” I shook my head. Maybe now wasn’t the time to get into this.

But Archer squeezed my hand gently, his eyes glimmering a little.

“You know, it was my dad who first introduced me to hockey,” Archer said, his voice filled with a fondness and nostalgia in a way I never imagined he would be capable of. “He used to take me to the rink every weekend, just the two of us. We would skate for hours, laughing and cheering each other on. It was our special time together… I had no idea how much I would miss it once he was gone.”

I stared at our hands silently, not wanting to push him too far by asking another question. How often did he talk about his dad? Adelynn hardly ever did. I could see it on her face when she was thinking of him, though, from the way her smile would drop and her gaze would seem unfocused, like she was reliving the memories she wished she could return to. Archer was harder to read. But I knew from the way Adelynn talked about her family that he didn’t like to talk about their dad much.

But… he’d brought him up. He started the conversation. Could that be a sign that he wanted to talk about him?

I’d never lost a loved one, so I couldn’t act like I knew what it felt like. Couldn’t say I’d been there. But if I had to guess… I thought it would be really hard if you wanted to talk about them when nobody around you did.

“Do you miss him?” I asked softly. “I mean… Adelynn told me about how your mom started dating someone new and… I bet that can bring up a lot for you.”

Until now, I thought Archer was just one of those people who didn’t show emotion on his face. That he was the kind of person who could keep up a guarded expression at all times. But then I saw the way his face fell as I asked the question, the pain that flooded his eyes, and suddenly, I wished I’d been right. Because I never wanted to see hurt like that on his face ever again.

Archer jumped to his feet, staring at a point behind me. He was going to leave. He was going to say that we shouldn’t bother waiting around for Zach, and possibly that we shouldn’t be doing these night skates anymore, wasn’t he? I’d pushed him too far by asking when I knew I shouldn’t have and this was the end of everything between us—even that was stupid of me to think, wasn’t it? As if there was something between us at all. How stupid was I?

“Hey guys!” I jumped at the voice that echoed from down the hall. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Zach jogging toward us, keys rattling in his hand. I scrambled to my feet and looked at Archer again. He wasn’t leaving. He wasn’t telling Zach that he didn’t need to be here or anything. Had I misjudged his reaction? Maybe he had only jumped up because he saw Zach coming.

But even if that was the only reason, it didn’t change everything. I shouldn’t have asked. I should have let him lead the conversation—let him decide what he wanted to share.

Zach ducked between us to unlock the padlock on the clear doors leading onto the ice in easy, practiced motions. I did my best to focus on what he was doing instead of staring at Archer, but I couldn’t help the way my eyes wandered over to him after a few seconds. He was leaning against the boards, staring at the rink through the glass, a haunted expression on his face. It was a look I knew all too well—the same one I saw on Adelynn’s face whenever somebody brought up the accident.

My heart twisted with guilt as I looked at him. From what I knew, none of the triplets ever talked about what happened to their dad. Even after rooming with Adelynn for years, I didn’t know the details. The most she’d told me was that his car had veered off the road—and even that had been a struggle for her to get out. I always got the sense that there was more to the story that I would probably never get the details of, and looking at Archer’s face now, for the first time, I wondered what exactly those details were. What was so bad that none of them could talk about it?

Zach swung the door open for us and I barely had time to blink before Archer was on the ice, racing to the other side. Zach glanced at me with a small grin.

“You have no idea how annoyed I am that I graduated the year before he could join the varsity team,” he said. He glanced at Archer and shook his head. “Would have killed to have him on my team. Never seen a goalie like him.”

“Were you the team captain?” I asked. Archer hadn’t told me anything about Zach, other than that he could get us into the rink at night and he wouldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t even know how they knew each other, but I assumed it had something to do with hockey. Zach’s comment now seemed to confirm it.

“Yeah, I was,” Zach said. He tapped the glass a couple of times. “It was a fun team. I miss it.”

He gave me a small wave and headed back down the hall, probably off to actually do his job. I turned my attention back to the rink, where Archer was mostly just skating in circles. He caught my eye and came over to the door with a wide smile on his face, all signs of our previous conversation completely gone.

“Come on, Ice Princess,” he said. “Are you going to leave me to skate by myself?”

Why did him wanting me to be on the ice with him make my heart warm so much? I didn’t waste any time in taking my skate guards off and gliding onto the ice as well.

“Body check!” Archer yelled, skating at me with a determined look on his face. I screeched, but managed to spin out from in front of him just before he reached me. I skated backwards away from him and held out an accusing finger.

“We agreed no physical contact!”

“Oh, come on, it won’t be that bad,” Archer said innocently. He skated towards me in easy, powerful strokes, looking way too eager.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “I do not want to explain to my coaches how I got a concussion overnight. They’ll kill me—and then you, just for good measure.”

Archer shook his head and tsk’ed. “It’s a rough world, figure skating.”

I let out a long sigh about my practice from the past few days. “Oh, trust me… you have no idea.”

* * *

When I walked into the change room the next afternoon, everybody was crowding around the bulletin board in the corner. It was a bit of a strange place for announcements, so the coaches hardly ever posted anything on it, so this was unusual.

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