Chapter 22
HAILEY
We were on course for this team bonding camp to be a major disaster. Cue example one:
"Hey, I told you not to throw that at me!" Zoe was yelling up at her partner, Matt Dawson, the starting goalie for the Rink Runners as they unloaded their suitcases from the double-decker bus.
Matt scoffed down at her. "It's not like you can't catch it, right? Didn't you say you were a ‘pro’ goalie?" he said, and I swore Zoe's face turned a horrifying red.
"Hey, get down here so I can hit you!" Zoe hissed, and Matt laughed in her face.
"Did you just threaten bodily harm against me?" he called down to her. "Just wait till I tell your Coach about this."
"You asshole! I'll tell her myself! Get down here!"
Yep, this was shaping up to be a disaster of great magnitude, and we'd barely set foot in Blackwater Bay for more than ten minutes.
The Blackwater Bay camp was set against the backdrop of a sprawling lake, surrounded by towering evergreens that seemed to swallow the sky whole.
The cabins, all lined neatly along a gravel path, were rustic in a way that suggested no Wi-Fi, spotty cell service, and maybe a few unsettling creaks in the dead of night.
A set of training rinks sat further up the hill, their domed structures blending into the trees, and beyond them, the obstacle courses we’d no doubt be torturing ourselves on for the next week.
The air was crisp with the scent of pine and damp earth, a stark contrast to the tension radiating between both teams.
And there was tension; it was practically crackling in the atmosphere. The drive up here had been quiet, with both teams sitting on opposite sides of the aisle, pretending like everything was just fine and dandy when, in fact, it was not.
Despite the fact that we'd all projected a unified front three days ago, after the prank gone wrong , it totally didn't solve the years of blatant animosity between us anyway. And that animosity only had the chance to blossom again since the pairing list dropped.
I winced as I remembered the absolute meltdowns they'd had on the chat when the list dropped. It was safe to say that they were not fans of the list. At all. Heck, it'd been total chaos on the group chat.
Zoe : Who the HELL is Matt Dawson and why am I being punished?????
Sarah : LOL why are you already yelling
Gina: ohhh NOOOOOO
Dani : Yeah, but seriously, who is Matt Dawson??? I don't know these guys by name lmao
Sarah : GOALIE FOR THE RUNNERS BAHAHAHAAA
Zoe : GOALIE?????? No no no no no. I am NOT getting stuck with some STUCK-UP BASTARD who thinks the world revolves around him!
Sarah : Uh…aren’t you just describing yourself, atp? Besides that dude’s stats are actually solid.
Zoe : OH, ARE THEY??? WELL FUCK HIM AND HIS STATS. IF HE TRIES TO BOSS ME AROUND, I’LL brEAK HIS @#*##
Sarah: LMAO Zoe, breathe.
Gina : Okay but wait. He’s kinda hot tho.
Zoe : I DO NOT CARE.
Gina : I CARE.
Dani : I ALSO CARE.
Me : Can we focus?
Zoe : NO WE CANNOT BECAUSE I’M STUCK WITH A GOALIE WHO HAS NO EXPERIENCE HANDLING HIGH-PRESSURE STARTER MINUTES.
Sarah : … you're overreacting, Zoe. ... you literally just hate goalies who aren’t you.
Zoe : OKAY AND???
Gina : babe i hate to break it to you but Matt Dawson is actually, like, really good.
Zoe : I will not tolerate Rink Runner praise here!
Gina : I mean, if you're yelling like this, what do you think I should do? I got paired with the damn Vice Captain.
Dani : HA!
Sarah : HA!
Sarah : Isn’t that, like, really lazy of the coaches? They just slapped the captains and vice captains together.
Zoe : Yeah, they can go on double dates together.
Dani : HA!
Sarah : HA!
Gina : You little…
Dani : I mean, I guess you could say that he’s the only sane looking one of the bunch?
Gina : … I have a feeling he's a freak underneath that mask of saneness. You expect me to believe any member of that damn team's sane?
Zoe : HA! SO TRUE!
Rina : Hey. So, I just woke up from a nap and…WTF is that list?
Zoe : Hahahaha! Rin got screwed over for sure!
The messages had gone on for a while into the early hours of the morning, each teammate coming online to cry about their pairing as soon as they saw it. It had been insane and, apparently, they still weren’t over it.
Now, I watched as my teammates unloaded their gear, half of them already at each other’s throats.
A few feet away, Dani was engaged in what looked like a heated debate with her partner, Randy Barnes, over the proper way to store their sticks and, if I was being honest, it looked very one-sided, with Dani doing all the talking, and Randy just staring down at her, expression mild.
Ha, it was hard to even know what went on in that tank of a man’s head, really.
Zoe, on the other hand, was still shouting threats at Matt Dawson, who, despite his status as a starting goalie, seemed to be excellent at stirring chaos. Even Gina seemed to be having trouble with her partner, the Vice Captain of the Rink Runners, with her face carved in a hard scowl.
So why the hell was I the only one not breathing fire down my partner's neck, especially since everyone would expect me to be leading the ‘yelling at your partner’ competition? Well, that was simply because my partner wasn’t within two meters of me… not yet, anyway.
Lively Summers stood a few paces away, a clipboard in one hand, his other gesturing sharply as he spoke to his team.
His usual smirk was nowhere to be found, replaced instead by an expression of quiet command, his mouth set in a firm line, brows drawn in focus even as a blond cowlick rested over one brow.
He wasn’t joking around, wasn’t grinning or flirting or being his usual aggravatingly cocky self. He looked…
Different .
The realization left something uneasy curling in my stomach, an itch I couldn’t quite scratch—vastly different from how it had felt during our one-on-one match.
All I knew was that seeing him like that was.
.. weird . I figured it had everything to do with the fact that he no longer looked like everything I'd already figured him to be: unserious, entitled, arrogant, playboy . I’d only be a bitch if I kept hanging on to that image now when he was painting a whole different one in front of me in real time, no matter how unsettling it was.
“I don't pick up girls anymore. It hurts that you don't know that.”
Why the hell had he expected me to know that?
I mean, thinking about it these past few days, I had to admit that I'd been letting other people's stories about him color how I saw him, and that wasn't quite fair.
But then, he'd also been a goddamn bully to me for two years!
He couldn't blame me if I didn't have any good opinions about him or anything like that—who the hell ever had good things to say or know about their bullies?
But then, a bully wouldn't have sacrificed his own body to help an ‘opp’ the way he had, and I couldn't even decide if that made me feel better or something much worse .
To say that he'd shocked me when he'd dove after Dani, shielding her with his own body, so thoughtlessly like that, would be a damn understatement , to say the least. I could still hear the sickening crack when their bodies had crashed into the boards, and my fingers squeezed tight around the clipboard in my hands, my knuckles whitening with the effort.
Even after three days, I still couldn't quite shake the guilt over what happened.
So, every time I looked at him now, I just couldn't help but think that I still owed him—there was a sickening roiling in my stomach every time I remembered the crash, and all the ways things could have gone south in a matter of seconds.
He could have broken his spine or something, and that would've been all on me .
So when he'd deliberately singled me out to be the one to blame for his injury—he’d pretty much said it himself, “Because she's not the one I want taking care of me, Hailstorm” , that had totally been his way of blaming me for his injury, and I honestly couldn't argue that he was wrong.
It was my fault. And I'd expected him to ask for something way bigger than just ice cream from me, as compensation. Honestly, I didn't know whether he was just dumb, or he was still messing with me, even now.
I glanced over at him again, trying to check the status of his injury by the way he was standing.
Sure enough, he was standing tall, no longer bending over slightly in an attempt to lessen the pain.
But it wasn't like anyone could fully ascertain the exact extent of healing just by looking at someone.
At least, if he'd gotten a bit better, maybe I’d be able to shake off a few pounds of the guilt that was still needling its way around in my chest.
Ugh. I was already so damn high strung, and camp hadn’t even begun yet. And with the chaos of my teammates around me and Lively standing just a few feet away, I couldn't help but think, that this camp was possibly going to be the longest chore ever, and still not be long enough—
“You think we'd be able to get through this in one piece?” I turned my head at the sound to find Lively standing beside me, clipboard under one arm and his hand running through his hair as he surveyed our teams. This close, his skin looked golden under the sun, and it was something I hadn't noticed before—
Snapping my head to face forward, I curled my fist tightly around the clipboard in my hands, my hockey bag draped over one shoulder. “We'll just have to make it work.” I said, relieved at how normal I sounded.
But, seriously, what the ? Since when did I notice if Lively Summers had golden skin or not? What the hell was that?
Was I noticing things like this because the guilt I was still feeling was messing with my head?
I mean, it was making me remember all sorts of things about him that I either hadn’t cared about before, or that I’d just recently discovered; like how he volunteered at the hospital Mallory frequented, and how he was unironically friends with a freaking fourteen year old, and how he was more than a half decent person.
The guilt was definitely making me wonder what other things I didn’t know about him that—
Stop . I blinked, my breath catching in my throat. What was that? Since when did I care to know anything about him?
Let’s not take this too far, alright?
Before I could spiral any deeper, a sharp whistle pierced through the chaos, the shrill sound making everyone jump to attention.
I watched as the teams slowly gathered in front of the bus, dragging their feet like they were headed to execution instead of a retreat.
And I watched as our coaches’ eyes roved, tallying bodies like we were elementary schoolers on a field trip.
With the way everyone was behaving, it might as well have been.
Coach Hawkins, our coach, stepped forward first. “You’ve all been paired up for a reason. This camp isn’t just about sharpening your individual skills, but about learning how to work with each other. I expect every one of you to take this seriously.”
I heard a few grumbles from both our teams, no doubt they were getting tired of hearing the words, “take this seriously” and “learning how to work with each other”.
They were sounding like broken records trying to sell this pairing arrangement to us, at this point, and I really couldn't blame them, though.
This had to work out, or else the fallout was going to be worse than the near accident that happened three days ago.
“These little brats, listen up!” Coach barked, her clipboard clutched like a weapon. “We'll be doing the final headcount and your assigned tasks for today.”
Coach Gunner stood beside her, his scowl carved deeper than usual. “Each pair has responsibilities to handle before welcome dinner at seven. These aren't suggestions, brats, they're orders.”
I could feel Lively shift beside me, suddenly way closer than I remembered him being. The heat from his body seemed to radiate even through the inches of space between us, and I found myself taking a subtle step sideways. The bastard noticed, his lips twitching slightly.
Coach Hawkins started calling out assignments and I forced myself to focus on the words coming out of her mouth, rather than the man standing beside me.
“Curtis and Dawson, you're on setup for the weight room and equipment check.” She said, and my eyes cut at once to where she was standing.
“Please god, no,” Zoe muttered under her breath, while Matt's grin only widened.
“Whitehall and Langley,” she continued, “dining hall setup and organization.”
Gina's face tightened into something that promised violence, while Dylan—the Rink Runners’ ‘sane’ Vice Captain—merely nodded, his expression unreadable.
“Ferguson and Barnes, you'll handle trail marking for tomorrow's conditioning run.”
Dani perked up at that, while Randy just blinked slowly, like he was the human equivalent of a particularly unbothered mountain.
“Kent and Hughes, you're responsible for the recovery station setup—ice baths, massage tables, the works.”
Rina looked like she'd rather jump into the lake than work with Mason Hughes, who was already checking his phone, barely paying attention. With the way she was glaring at him, it was clear that she wanted to grab that phone and chuck it into the damn lake.
“Dane and Kelly, you're on supplies inventory—make sure everything ordered for the week arrived.”
Sarah's sour expression matched Logan's exaggerated eye roll.
“And Baleman and Summers,” Coach Hawkins finished, her eyes locking with mine with what looked suspiciously like amusement, “you'll handle locker room inventory and assignments, plus determining the leadership schedule for each day's practice sessions.”
Of course . Not only did I have to spend time with him, but I had to handle the most collaborative tasks possible. Shit.
“Each team has their own cabin dorm,” Coach Gunner added. “Check in, drop your gear, and get to work. Welcome dinner's at seven sharp. Don't be late.”
As teams started breaking apart, I sucked in a flimsy breath, trying to delay the inevitable for as long as I possibly—
“Hey, Hailstorm.”