10. Cameron
Chapter Ten
CAMERON
Static energy filled the cold air of the rink. Chatter and cheers, as well as boos, ricocheted against the icy surface and the metal roof. The arena was filled with spectators, all of the avid fans of one team or the other.
The long awaited game that would open this season was finally on.
Though our training only felt like real practice over the last week or so, optimism had filled the locker room and the entire team was skating out with complete determination to take the win tonight.
“Alright, guys,” Riley had told us before we had left the locker room.
He had only briefly glanced at me, as though prolonged eye contact would cause us to shed our clothes and reveal to everyone how exactly we had been smoothing out our differences.
“I can feel the victory.” The team had clacked their sticks against the floor and hooted.
“This season, we have the best team so far and you all know it. We’ve done our drills.
We’ve had our scrimmages. It’s time to show those Blizzard wusses what it means to be an Arctic Titan.
” The cheers had intensified. Riley, glowing with pride, continued.
“If we win this one, we’ll win the rest of the season, boys. ”
And while there had been no way to predict anything even close to that, the optimism had spread through the Titans. Now, we were still feeling electric as we readied for the game to begin.
Around me, it was all unfolding in a familiar way, but my attention drifted away from the ceremonies and to the guy I called my captain.
His helmet covered his sun-kissed hair, but I could see it before my eyes if I only tried.
I could feel its silkiness between my fingers and smell the lavender of his shampoo.
So when Jonah Hamilton, the Breakers’ captain, hard checked Riley close to the end of the first period, my vision narrowed and I discovered myself filled with rage.
Riley was fine, but I observed a moment where Jonah grabbed Riley’s jersey and said something that made Riley pause for a moment too long.
While he quickly returned to his senses, I filed the moment in my memory to discuss it later.
I was busy, right now, chasing after the puck.
Caden and Beckett, who seemed to be rolling their eyes at one another whenever their feet were on solid ground, played well as a team.
The puck was sliding between them while I covered them from the enemy attacks, and Beckett scored the single point for our team in the first period, evening us out with the Breakers.
The intermission came as a relief. The strain of the first period of the first competitive match was durable, but the feeling that Riley had been unjustly threatened made my brain slow down just enough to give the enemy a slight advantage.
I skated across the rink to catch up with Riley, but Jonah reached him first, grinning like a cocky fool after he threw an arm over Riley’s shoulders. “Ever thought of studying hard and doing something you’re actually good at, Ry?”
Whiteness of my own anger blinded me and I reached Riley’s other side.
I pretended I needed to speak to him as a teammate, so I slapped his right shoulder and carelessly pushed Jonah’s arm away.
“Need a word, Cap,” I said. Riley was red after Jonah’s remark and I pulled him to a side. “The fuck was that all about?”
“It’s just Hamilton. He’s like that.” But Riley’s voice was tight with hurt.
A growl rose from my throat.
“Leave it, Cam,” Riley said. “He’s an idiot.”
“We’ll see about that,” I muttered, but Riley spun to face me.
“I mean it,” he said, his blue gaze intense, like he was looking into my very soul. “He’s an asshole, but I can put up with him.”
I shrugged. “Sure. Fine. He’s all yours.
” But a desperate need to put that jerk in his place was welling inside of me.
It was good to be off ice for the next fifteen minutes and get my head together.
We hydrated and listened to Coach Murray lay out the plans for the second period.
Riley absent-mindedly rubbed his shoulder, which had slammed against the boards when Jonah had checked him and I felt myself reaching a decision that was completely based on feelings and not even a little on reason.
The problem with me was that I carried rage deep inside myself.
In California, I had excelled because I had been, as Coach had put it, surrounded with mediocre players.
That rage had nowhere to go except in aggressive, meaningless hookups.
But even before Santa Barbara, I had been a quietly angry person.
I had carried this anger in me since I could remember.
Anger at my parents and the flying fucking saucers that would smash against the walls.
Anger at the smell of booze filling the house at noon.
Anger at feeling like Riley was doing me favors when he let me in to hide from the Sunday shouting matches in my own house.
Years had helped me hide it better, but it had never truly gone away.
And Jonah Hamilton painted a big, red target on himself when he told Riley to do something other than hockey. I could take a hard check on ice. We had all signed up for getting physical and leaving the rink with bruises. But to prod Riley where it hurt the most… Not on my fucking watch.
The second period was a bloodthirsty battle all over the rink.
Few got through without bruising and I found myself in the thick of it.
We scraped the icy surface with our blades and chipped our sticks.
We struggled and skirmished. Nobody would leave the rink without feeling like they had meandered uselessly during this period.
For twenty minutes, sweat poured over our bodies, then cooled down with the freezing temperatures.
Jonah evaded me, though I was coy about seeking him out.
Riley was gliding through the center, heeding Coach Murray’s advice, and matching each point the Breakers scored with one of our own.
In this period, a true sense of kinship emerged among our entire team.
It was something I hadn’t truly felt since high school.
In California, it had been hard to develop a bond with the team where nobody had their heart really set on hockey. Not like these guys, at least.
When Riley and I charged, breaking through the enemy defenses, followed by Caden, Beckett, and Sebastian, all of whom supported us without a question, I finally found it.
That which I had been looking for all these years.
It came from a short glance Riley and I exchanged.
A quick grin and a rising sense of adventure.
I felt like I finally belonged somewhere.
For a moment. A semester. A year. My place was here.
And while Jonah remained out of my reach for the entire second period, it was in the final five minutes of the last period that he triggered my full wrath.
Breakers were leading with a single point, like most of the game, and Riley was scrambling to organize our offense while increasingly under attack.
Just now, in the heat of the battle, I was filled with unwavering loyalty to our captain, and the team felt as much.
No discord or rift existed among the Titans when we focused on swaying the course of the game.
I skated shoulder to shoulder with Riley when Hamilton went on the defensive and crossed Riley’s path.
I didn’t know what he wanted to do.
My tunnel vision only allowed me to be aware of Riley’s hurt feelings and the trigger of his life-long anxiety. When Hamilton yelled, “Just stop embarrassing yourself, asshole,” the beast in me was unleashed.
I changed course in an instant, crossing paths in front of Riley and slamming Hamilton against the boards.
It gave the Titans a good chance to slide through the Breakers’ defenses and score the point that evened us out, but it also gave me a chance to press my forearm against Hamilton’s collarbones and stare into his eyes.
“Don’t you fucking dare speak to him like that again.
Don’t even fucking look at him. Do you hear me?
” I shoved the guy once, hard, against the boards and then pushed him away.
When Jonah snarled at me, I slowed down and faced him.
“What the fuck is your problem?” he demanded.
“You are.” The bark left my throat as my anger stalled the game.
“You’ll fucking pay for this,” Hamilton said and skated away.
I turned to meet Riley’s gaze. He was looking at me questioningly, although around us mess and mayhem were intensifying.
I sneered and shook my head. “Only I get to call you ‘asshole.’” My gaze remained locked to his.
Riley gave it a moment, the corners of his lips ticking up ever so slightly, and nodded. His airy voice came as if he was in awe. Or too exhausted to fight me. “Okay.”
After that, we parted to the opposite sides of the rink, employing every trick we could think of to score the leading point before the end of the period. It would make for a clean victory that would open the season and set our spirits high for the rest of this year.
It would also look great on our record. I knew how quickly a year could pass. In no time, scouts would be swarming the rinks and looking for talented players like me. Or Riley, for that matter.
It didn’t need to be a competition between us. Not if playing together for the win opened more doors to a brighter future.
But, as that thought crossed my mind, another followed.
In eight months, we would be looking for our individual futures.
There was no guarantee our paths would cross again any time soon.
Worse still, the likelihood of us going in different directions was almost a given.
How else would this story end? How else, if not with me and Riley going to different sides of the country, never standing a chance against geography?
The thought of this undefined, unnamed, and unexplained thing we had ending flooded me so much that I was almost numb to the rapturous cheers that filled the rink when Riley scored the winning point, with the help of his loyal assistant captain and the guy who held this team together while Riley and I took pleasure in hating each other this past month.
But seeing the glowing pride on Riley’s face when he removed his helmet and was surrounded by most of our team that hailed him the winner, made my heart pound faster and louder. It grew in my chest and such warmth filled it that I needed to look away or the jig would be up.
I would congratulate him in a way he understood best. Later. Unlike all of them, practically lifting Riley to their shoulders, I knew what our captain really wanted. I knew what filled him with joy.
I had been doing it every other night for a week and I had no plans of slowing down. In fact, all I could see myself doing was luring Riley back to my room and throwing him a celebration party he couldn’t resist.
As we left the rink, I spotted the wary stare of Jonah Hamilton, sulking over their defeat and glaring at me like I was enemy number one.
It was fine by me. If I occupied the top spot, he’d be too distracted to meddle with Riley’s sense of worth.
And that was a victory of its own. He was skating away from his team and nearing me, so I slowed down.
“What do you want?” I growled at the fuckface.
He pretty much skated into me, stopping at the exact moment our bodies touched. “I want you to remember this face, asshole. ‘Cause you’ll be seeing a lot of it.”
I grabbed his jersey with all the strength I had and pulled him closer, our helmets nearly slamming into one another. “Not around Riley Brooks, I won’t.”
Jonah snorted with a truckload of contempt. “We’ll see about that.” The look of mischief in his eyes told me to watch out for the fucker.
I pushed him away, nearly tipping him out of balance. He rubbed the spot on his chest where my hand applied the most pressure, then turned away from me, muttering profanities.
While tonight we partied as a team, I treated Riley to his private party the next day.
Two days later, he returned, frustrated by his history professor, and took the fight to me until I shut him up the only way I could.
Days were passing swifter than I could keep track of them and Riley kept returning to me much like the way I had been coming to him, all those years earlier.
Nothing else changed. We never spoke of what this meant or where it was leading us.
When the quiet knock came to my door just before midnight every few days, it never startled me.
It was always the moment when my mind blanked and I allowed myself to dive into the hours of pleasure without considering the consequences.
Just for a little while, nothing else mattered. Especially not when we kept winning. And even when we lost a match, we would give the opponents hell.
Though I knew good things couldn’t last — like peace in my childhood household or the thrills of sharing Sundays with Riley during our senior year of high school — I was adamant about never questioning this one good thing.
We enjoyed those moments which we could steal away.
Outside those little bubbles of an alternate reality, Riley and I behaved much like any other pair of teammates.
And if there was a disagreement, we both let it go, filing it as something to resolve the next time he visited.
We did little resolving when we were alone, though. Much like our reluctance to talk about the meaning of these encounters, we rarely talked about the issues we ran into. There was only me, Riley, and the heat that burned brighter with each encounter.
And for a few weeks of this fall, it truly felt like a truce.