Chapter 26 - Aleksey #3
I drove my shoulder into his chest and followed through until he slammed against the glass hard enough to rattle the stanchion.
He shoved off the boards, caught his balance, and spun around, his stick clattering to the ice. Then he ripped off his gloves, one after the other, and tossed them down at my skates.
“Let’s go, Zotov!” The guy raised his bare fists, gloves already scattered on the ice. “Or are you too scared to throw?”
My old answer to anyone throwing that question at me was coiled tight in my arms.
Drop the gloves. Swing first.
But Karter was back on his skates. His jersey twisted up around his pads, and he watched me from across the ice without a signal. He didn’t give me a head shake or a wave-off. He just stood there, breathing hard, waiting.
I gritted my teeth, rolled my shoulders, then shoved both hands into the air and backed up. A laugh cracked out of me, raw and ugly, aimed straight at the guy’s reddening face.
“Not tonight,” I sneered. “I’ve got a championship to win.”
Enraged by my laughter, he lunged right at me. Two refs swarmed in before he closed half the distance, grabbing his jersey and hauling him toward the penalty box as he kept yelling in my direction.
The third ref skated over to me, arm up, and signaled the penalty: two minutes for roughing.
I didn’t argue. A minor penalty and a bruised shoulder beat the hell out of an ejection.
The box door clanged shut behind me. Inside, the noise of the crowd muffled down to a dull roar.
Two minutes stretched out like ten. Through the glass, I watched our guys kill the clock and push back every rush. Perez blocked a slapshot with his shin pad and limped through the next shift without coming off. Four men against five, and they held the line as if the score was already final.
Then Karter dug the puck out of the corner.
Two defenders collapsed on him, sticks hacking at his gloves, but he slid a backhand pass through their skates straight to Elliot, who’d snuck down from the blue line.
Elliot didn’t hesitate. He caught the pass on his forehand, pulled the puck around the goalie’s outstretched pad, and tucked it inside the post. Shorthanded.
The captain put us ahead while I sat in the box.
The red light flared, and the horn screamed through the arena.
I slammed both palms against the glass. The whole thing rattled. On the ice, the guys mobbed Elliot against the boards, gloves and sticks flying. Perez hobbled into the pile, grabbed Karter by the back of his jersey, and hauled him into the crush.
Elliot’s goal. The golden boy who’d told me an hour ago that he hated my guts, just put us into the final.
The buzzer sounded for real a minute later, and the box door swung open on our 2-1 win.
I peeled myself off the bench and skated back onto the ice, getting shoulder-checked by half the team line on my way to the net. And then Perez grabbed the back of my helmet and shook it.
His grin said everything.
On the bus, nobody cracked a beer or blasted music. Instead, Coach Corby stood at the front with a clipboard and read out roommate assignments in a voice that left zero room for negotiation.
The rules were clear: Lights out in thirty. No exceptions. And anyone caught in the hall after curfew could enjoy the final from the parking lot.
The sophomore they’d stuck me in a hotel room was snoring away before I’d even pulled off my shirt.
Thirty minutes later, I lay restlessly on top of the thin hotel blanket and stared at a water stain on the ceiling. I could hear the team’s coaching assistants pacing the corridor outside. Their footsteps patrolled past every ten minutes, making sure nobody broke Coach’s curfew.
Getting to Karter meant getting my timing right. Especially when getting caught meant we would end up watching the final game from the bench.
Still, every muscle from my calves to my shoulders hummed from the game. Ten more minutes passed. Then twenty.
I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and pulled up Karter’s contact: Stairwell. Now.
Karter’s reply came just twenty seconds later: Give me two minutes.
Timing a room exit would be simple enough. Wait for the footsteps in the hall to fade. Count to five and then crack open the door.
The hallway carpet was thin and stained, but my sneakers made no sound as I slipped out and kept close to the wall.
The stairwell door was heavy steel, cold against my palm. I pushed through and let it swing shut behind me. A single caged bulb threw a pool of dull yellow onto the landing. And the ventilation system droned through the cinderblock, low and steady, at the same frequency as an old refrigerator.
Glancing around, I checked that there were no coaches or teammates hanging around.
After a few minutes, the handle on the floor above clicked. I held my breath as I heard a door groan open, then ease shut with a soft thud. Careful footsteps then started down the concrete stairs.
I released my breath the moment I saw Karter—wearing a faded t-shirt and gray sweatpants—round the corner of the stairwell. Stepping into the light, he scanned the landing, spotted me, and then descended the last few steps without a word.
“Hey—” Karter started.
Before he could get another word out, I grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him off the bottom step. The landing was barely wide enough for both of us, but I pressed him against the wall and kissed him hard.
His hands locked behind my neck, and a low sound caught in his throat as he kissed me back like the whole game had been a warmup for this.
It was reckless and stupid. And with Coach and the rest of the team one floor up, I had Karter pinned against a wall and didn’t want to stop.
When I finally pulled back, I kept my forehead pressed against his, our breathing cutting through the drone of the vent.
“You play rough, Zotov,” Karter breathed. The way he said those words made me press my body flush against his.
“And you damn well like it.”
“Did I say that?” He tilted his head, mouth twitching. “Well, don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late.” I kept him pinned against the wall, one hand still twisted in his shirt. The fabric was soft, worn thin at the collar. “You took a pretty solid hit out there. How’s the shoulder?”
“It’s fine.” Karter rolled it once, testing. “Mostly fine.”
“Mostly?”
“Yeah,” he said with a firm nod. “Besides, you hit the guy clean.”
“Damn right I did,” I answered.
Karter pressed me back half a step and then pushed off the wall just enough to look at me properly. “And you didn’t drop your gloves. He was right in your face, screaming, and you just stood there and laughed at him.”
“I told you I wouldn’t fight.” I traced the edge of his collarbone through his shirt. “And now we’ve got a championship to win this weekend.”
“So you actually listened to me for once.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
A real grin broke across his face. “We’re going to win this thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. The whole thing.” He smoothed his palm over my shoulder, down to my elbow, like he was checking I was still solid. “And then we get everything. No more hiding in stairwells. No more looking over our shoulders or keeping apart in public. Just us.”
The way he said it with so much certainty, it was as though he’d already seen the final buzzer and the scoreboard.
It was the best thing I’d heard all day. Not in the way that knocked the wind out of me, but in the way that made everything I’d been bracing against feel unnecessary.
I’d spent years waiting for the next hit. The next phone call. The next disaster that proved I didn’t belong. But when Karter said ‘everything’, I believed him.
Sliding both hands to his waist, I let my thumbs press into the dip above his hips.
The stairwell draft drifted through the landing, cold air slipping under the fire door, but I didn’t feel it.
Didn’t feel anything except the worn cotton of his shirt and the solid weight of him still breathing hard from our kiss.