Chapter 2
two
. . .
The next morning, I arrive at the arena fifteen minutes early, armed with a large coffee and righteous indignation.
If Tomcat thinks he can waltz onto my ice again, he’s about to learn that Ivy Dane doesn’t back down from a fight.
Oh, no, today, I intend to lock the door behind me.
Tommy-Tomcat will have to call building maintenance to get in.
I execute my plan, a pure thrill accompanying me to the rinkside area where I drop my bag and exhale.
Swish—swish, swish—swish.
The stroke of skates against the ice is longer this morning, and the rowdy Tomcat is already here.
Not only did he beat me here, but he’s set up an elaborate obstacle course of orange cones that spans from end to end, and he’s weaving through them with the puck right on the tape like he’s training for the NHL playoffs. Which, now that I think of it, he probably is.
I lace up Hope and Glory with extra aggression, yanking the laces tight enough to cut off circulation. “Unbelievable,” I mutter under my breath. I stand and start to go through my upper body warmup routine.
“Morning, Kitten.” His voice carries across the ice, the smirk obvious even without me looking at him.
I glare and stretch my shoulders, triceps, neck, and wrists. I glide onto the ice, my bigger leg muscles tighter than they should be. “It’s Ivy.” I gesture to the vast spread of cones. “What part of ‘the schedule is the law’ was unclear to you yesterday?”
Because I’ve checked and double-checked, and I have this ice time. Finn Travers’s weekly sessions ended last week.
He stops mid-weave and skates over, tucking his helmet under his arm as he arrives. His hair is perfectly disheveled again, and I wonder if there’s a YouTube tutorial for that or if he’s just naturally blessed with effortless adorability.
“I talked to the building manager,” he says, pulling a folded paper from his jacket pocket. “The rink renovations erased some previously scheduled ice times.”
I snatch the paper and scan it, my heartbeat thrashing even as the organ itself sinks into my stomach.
“Collin says you just happened to get on before he knew it was a problem.”
What he’s saying stares at me in red, black, and white: Ice times that were there have been added back in, this time in bolded red, and Bobcat Traverse sits there from five-thirty to seven every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
A note from Collin Deskins accompanies it, explaining the situation and how the facility maintenance is shrinking the time available on the ice.
“It’s just for a couple of weeks.”
I look up at him, a scream gathering in my soul. “I only have a couple of weeks.”
His head tilts, and dang it, he’s so deliciously good-looking. “For what?”
“This is a disaster.” I huff and hand back the paper, then reach up to pull my loose ponytail into battle mode. “I only have three weeks until I have to compete—it’s my last chance to cinch a spot on the Olympic team.”
A sigh falls out of my mouth and I turn in a full circle, nearly kicking a cone in the process. I jump away from it, then fix my glare on him. “And this doesn’t explain why you were here yesterday. On a Wednesday.”
“I need to practice,” he says.
“Why? You’re a starter. Consistently voted most-loved in the Bobcat Banter fan club. Listed first or second for celebrity signing events.”
His eyebrows lift a little higher with every sentence I say. I should stop, but somehow my tongue and vocal cords hate me this morning.
“You have a pretty girlfriend.” I track my eyes down to his skates and back to his face.
“It’s almost like you’re too perfect.” I narrow my eyes and study him.
“So why are you here three days a week before dawn, during hockey season, when surely you’ve got practice every day already, plus games, and… yeah. Why are you here?”
I do kick a cone now, satisfied when it slides a few feet out of formation.
He slides in close to me, and I throw up a hand to keep him back. Seriously, how in the world does he cologne himself up so perfectly this early in the morning? That alone should earn him a citation.
“Someone’s been reading up on me.”
“I like to know who I’m dealing with,” I say, no apology in sight. He’s a celebrity, and he has four different Wikipedia pages, all of which is a him-problem, not a me-problem.
“You know the Internet isn’t always right, don’t you?”
“Tell me what I got wrong.” Besides what time I needed to get here to lock him out.
“Jade broke up with me,” he says evenly. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
Perfect! my heart screams, and strangely, my brain agrees.
“And I need to practice.” He clears his throat. “Because the Bobcats just signed a rookie who’s really amazing, and if there’s anything I know about this sport, it’s that anyone can be replaced, at any time, for any reason.”
I blink, because I so wasn’t expecting him to be worried about his starting position. “Oh,” falls out of my mouth.
“So, can we just be adults about this shared ice time?”
I look up at him, noting the way his dark eyes seem to catch every flicker of arena lighting. “What exactly does being adults about it look like?”
“We’ll go halfsies, Kitten.” He gestures to the rink. “I came a half-hour early to do my full-ice drills before you got here, but I can get these put away lickety split, okay?”
He skates backward for a few strokes before I have time to answer, and then he’s stooping to pick up the cones. I watch him weave through them with pure precision, and I wonder how anyone could be better than him.
“Lickety split,” I mutter, because it’s all I have to keep myself from throwing my arms around him and telling him no one will ever take his starting spot. It’s a stupid thing to think anyway, because he’s right.
Everyone is replaceable. I know that better than anyone.
He reaches the end of the ice and turns back toward me with a tall stack of cones. I startle into motion, quickly turning my back on him and starting to gather the cones on this side of the rink.
“We’ll split the ice,” he calls from the sidelines, where he unceremoniously dumps the cones over the boards. “It worked well enough yesterday, I think.”
Yeah, if he counts having heart palpitations and me stumbling every time I thought about him watching me as “working well.”
I say nothing and nod curtly instead, meeting him with the cones I’ve retrieved and letting him continue down to the end to get the rest.
“And how do you propose we mark these alleged boundaries?” The Bobcats play here, but the ice is used for more than hockey, and the lines aren’t currently painted for a game.
He scans down the ice. “I have those cones.”
“I have some tape in my bag.”
We both skate to the side, almost like it’s a contest to see who can mark the middle of the ice first. My heart races as I rip open the zipper on my bag and start digging for the strawberry shortcake athletic tape that Mae gave me last week as a joke.
I’d tossed it in my bag, laughed with her, and forgotten about it. Until now.
Unfortunately, Tomcat steps onto the ice before me, armed with an armful of cones. He starts setting them out, and I follow behind him, wrapping up his ugly neon cones with a strip of cupcakey tape around the tip and then leading to the next.
When he reaches the other side and looks back to me, the arena fills with the sound of his deep, charming laughter. It paints through my ears and down into my chest, rendering me motionless for a moment.
I mean, sort of. I’m skating, so I’m never really motionless.
“Nice,” he says. “It’s a little bit you and a little bit me.”
“And you have a little bit more ice,” I say, reaching the end and ripping off the tape before securing it to the tip of the last cone. I then toe the cone another couple of feet onto his side of the rink. “This is more the middle.”
“Whatever, Kitten.” He chuckles as he steps over my tape and skates off.
Our line is pretty ridiculous anyway. We didn’t have a physical barrier yesterday, and we did fine. What we’ve done today looks like a battlefield between dessert and sports equipment.
We retreat to our respective sides, and I try to focus on my warm-up routine. But it’s impossible to ignore the sound of his skates carving sharp turns, the rhythmic thwack of his stick against the puck and into the net he’s set up, the way he moves across the ice like he was born to be there.
I steal a glance and immediately regret it.
He’s working on some kind of shooting drill, and the controlled power in his movements is mesmerizing.
Every stride is purposeful, every shot precise.
There’s something almost hypnotic about watching him work, the way his entire body flows in perfect synchronization.
Focus, Ivy, I tell myself. Triple lutz, not triple Travers.
I push into my routine, letting the familiar music fill my head. The opening sequence flows smoothly, and I have to adjust my routine lest I take a header into the cupcake-cones.
I manage to build enough speed for my first jump, the weight of Finn’s eyes on my back as I launch into the air.
The attention makes my skin feel too tight, and I’ve put too much power into my approach for the triple lutz.
I land slightly off-balance, my free leg swinging wide as I fight to maintain control and stay upright.
I make a full recovery just as Finn arrives at my side, his hand steady on my elbow, his stride matched precisely to mine.
He says nothing, and his presence at my side comforts me in a strange way. I’m not used to someone being there to steady me when my jumps aren’t perfect. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Bobbles are usually met with yelled criticisms.
His hand burns warmly even through my practice jacket, and when I look up at him, I realize how close we’re skating. Close enough to inhale the scent of his skin, his cologne, close enough to see the way his hair curls at the ends, close enough to see the interest glinting in his eyes.
“You crossed the boundary,” I whisper, but there’s no real accusation in it.
“Sue me,” he whispers back.
We come to a stop somewhere near my end of the ice, his hand on my arm, when the arena’s sound system crackles to life with a “Testing, testing. Yep, the mic works.”
I jump back from him as I look up, and that’s a dangerous combination to my balance. I distinctly remember an instruction I got once while on vacation in Southern Utah, while touring a slot canyon.
“Don’t walk and look up at the same time.”
The next thing I know, the ice has risen to meet me, and my tailbone shouts in discomfort and my hands meet the cold sting of the ice.
I’ve fallen down.
This is it. My body has betrayed me, and I sit there and try to get a breath while Finn leans down. “Hey-oh. You okay?”
“Fine,” I manage to say.
He offers me his hand, and I let him help me back to my blades.
“Hey, I, uh, looked you up last night too, and—ahem—the uh, Internet can be unreliable, but it didn’t indicate whether you had a—an—someone—a boyfriend.
” He grinds his voice through his throat, and his eyes fly around the arena like he’s tracking a hummingbird that somehow got inside.
“If you don’t, maybe we could, um, eat dinner together sometime?”
I blink, sure I’ve started hallucinating. It’s the pink-on-orange combo of the strawberry shortcake tape on the sports cones. They’ve burned my retinas, and nothing I’m seeing is right.
Finn swallowing? Totally not happening.
The hope in his eyes when his finally meets mine? A fallacy.
The way he smiles and gives me a half-shrug with just one shoulder—literally the most adorable thing a man has ever done? That’s just my fantasy.
“I knew it. You have a boyfriend, right?”
“No,” I bark out.
“So we could go to dinner.”
“No,” I say again.
He frowns, the danger back in his eyes now. “Why not?”
“I mean, yes.” I start nodding, nearly pulling my neck I’m doing it so vigorously. “I mean, I guess I could go to dinner with you sometime.”
“What about tonight?”
“I have practice with my moth—coach until eight.”
“After that, then.”
“And you think you’ll be here by five o’clock tomorrow morning?”
He grins at me. “Nope. I only practice on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.” He grins at me as he skates toward the side of the rink. “And tomorrow is Friday.”
“You were here yesterday,” I call after him just because I can. “Where should I meet you?”
He comes right back to me. “Meet me?” He shakes his head, suddenly serious to go with his delectable woodsy scent. “I’ll come pick you up.” He glances over my shoulder. “Is your phone in your bag?”
I frown at him, not sure where he’s going with this. “Yes.”
“Great. I’ll put my number in it before I go, and you’ll text me your address. I’ll be there at…what? Eight-fifteen?”
“You think I can get home and get ready for dinner in fifteen minutes?”
He grins. “Now who’s pushing dinner to an even later time?” He shakes his head like I’m the impossible one and skates off again. “Text me your address and what time I should be there.” He spins to skate backward, and I’m going to have to give him a new nickname. Showoff Skater or something.
“Now, stop distracting me,” he calls. “I have a starting position to defend.”
I scoff as I watch him stroke away. “More like Tabby Trouble,” I mutter, sticking with the feline theme for the nicknames.