Chapter 4
CHAPTER
FOUR
Axel
Furious. Coach can be furious. So can everyone else.
After Coach finishes scolding me, Troy joins me.
“What the hell was that?” Troy asks.
“An interview.”
“Dude. That’s going to go viral.”
Something cold spreads in my stomach, but I shake my head. “I was being polite.”
Troy studies me. “What happened between you two?”
“Not your business.”
The thing is, I don’t know what happened between us either.
One day I stopped mattering to Enzo. He stopped answering my phone calls and our scheduled FaceTimes.
It’s fine.
I don’t care.
The good thing is, now I know who he is and I can act accordingly. And when the world sees how badly Enzo and I play together, they’ll understand my concerns.
I’ll seem prescient.
I avoid Enzo when I see him in the tunnel, and I avoid making eye contact when we get onto the ice.
The crowd murmurs and applauds in its normal way and the bright lights and music play loudly, but I know better.
This game is going to be embarrassing.
I wish I’d texted my parents not to bother watching.
Guess they have to be disappointed sometime. Even winning streaks are bound to end after ten years.
I should have gone into goaltending like Troy. What I wouldn’t give for a huge helmet that covers my face.
Maybe Troy is in the habit of spouting off self-help type advice, like he’s our own personal skating Buddha, but he doesn’t get it: Enzo and I are enemies.
And the thing about enemies is, they don’t play on the same team.
People clap politely when Enzo is introduced to the crowd, and I scowl. The crowd should be roaring and clapping wildly. Enzo is one of the best hockey players in the country, and now he’s a Blizzard. Is his lackluster welcome because of my impromptu interview?
Not that this will go well, of course.
But they should still be thrilled, at least in the pre-losing stage of the game. Enzo’s stats are unreal.
I glance at him. His face is pale, his lips in a tight line. His dark hair curls from his helmet, and his chiseled cheeks catch the bright lights of the arena. There’s a reason luxury brands are crazy about him. His face is in every airport duty free store.
“You okay?” Vinnie asks.
Vinnie has never asked me that before on the ice.
“It’s about to start,” Vinnie says.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” I nod too many times, then skate to the referee for the drop. My skates scrape against the Zambonied ice, like in the really bad horror movies from the 60s my brother loves, where they didn’t bother with a soundtrack.
The puck drops, black rubber on white ice, and I snap it to Finn.
I skate forward, cold air sharp in my lungs, relieved to have something to think about besides delicate facial features and a strong muscular frame. I receive Finn’s pass back, then I slam the puck behind me to my left without looking—and hear the snap of Enzo’s stick receiving it.
He passes to me. I pass back. The puck snaps between our sticks, tape to tape, the rhythm so fast I stop thinking and just move.
Enzo dekes around the last defender and slams it past the goalie. The horn blares. The arena erupts, eighteen thousand people surging to their feet, the roar washing over the ice like a wave.
Okay, would have been cool if I’d been the first person to score in this game, but I’m going to accept it.
The DJ plays That’s Amore, leaning hard on Enzo’s Italian heritage, and some of the audience sing along.
He beams at me, flushed and bright-eyed. The DJ switches to I’m Shipping Up to Boston, and for a moment, I want to sweep Enzo into my arms like when we used to play for the Concord Cannons, but we don’t do that anymore.
Instead I raise my chin, and his face falls. He swerves away, like looking at me causes him pain.
A forward twice Enzo’s size barrels toward him. I open my mouth to shout a warning—
Enzo doesn’t flinch. He drops his shoulder at the last second, uses the guy’s momentum to spin him into the boards, steals the puck, and is halfway down the ice before the forward hits the glass.
The crowd gasps. I forget to breathe.
He makes it look like physics bends for him. Like the ice is his and everyone else are intruders. He dashes toward me, and I’m there when he passes it, and I score.
I pass the puck back to Enzo, confident he’s on my heels.
I don’t need to check where he is. Every nerve in my body tells me his location constantly.
I pass to Enzo. He passes to me. We race down the ice, then turn around and do it over and over and over again.
My veins and nerves zing. I’m alive.
Enzo feeds me the puck at the perfect angle, and I one-time it into the upper corner. The goalie doesn’t even move.
The roar of the crowd vibrates through my chest, and I grin.
When I glance at Enzo, he’s beaming too, then he rearranges his expression into his now customary scowl.
A forward slams me into the boards. My shoulder screams, but I keep my grip on the puck and shove back. Enzo appears, snatches the puck and breaks away. Vinnie comes to scare off the forward, but Enzo passes the puck to Noah and attacks the guy himself.
I hear Coach shout my name.
Huh.
Did we miss the line change? Why is Noah on the ice?
I skate to the benches, then jump over the wall. Enzo follows.
I wipe sweat from my brow, careful to avoid looking at Enzo.
My legs burn. Sweat drips into my eyes. The arena lights are too bright, and the crowd is deafening, and I haven’t felt this alive on the ice in years.
“That was—” Coach pauses. He has a funny look on his face I don’t know how to interpret.
I raise an eyebrow. “See, we shouldn’t work together. I can go into defense.”
“You did great,” Coach says. “You are an excellent pair.”
I frown.
That wasn’t the point of this.
“We were just skating together. We shouldn’t work together. We hate each other. Like… super hate.” I nod multiple times to emphasize my point.
For some reason, Coach looks puzzled.
I know the man’s Swedish, but he’s never had problems understanding me before.
I glance at Enzo. “Back me up.”
“Axel is right,” Enzo says. “We hate each other. It would be a terrible idea for us to spend too much time together.”
Something scrapes against my chest when he says those words. It’s probably the sound of his stupid voice.
“Be that as it may,” Coach says finally. “You work well together. Better, Axel, than you work with anyone else. You both knew exactly where the other was on the ice. Every moment. This is rare.”
I flinch.
I’m a strong skater. But Coach is right.
Normally teammates aren’t my thing. I’ve had a rotating set of partners and a rotating set of positions.
“You both knew exactly where the other person was,” Coach says in wonder, and my legs are suddenly wobbly on my skates.
I stumble. Enzo’s breath catches, and he grabs my waist and steadies me, as my heart beats too quickly.
“Don’t touch me,” I mutter.
“You were going to twist your ankle.”
“Of course, I wasn’t.” I raise my chin. “I’m a professional.”
Coach watches us. “And as a professional, you’re going to continue to skate with Enzo.” He shrugs. “You have chemistry.”
“We don’t!” Enzo exclaims.
Coach blinks.
Like Enzo and I have chemistry. Please. That’s absolutely crazy.
Enzo shoves past me and drops onto the bench beside Jason, as far from me as possible, leaving me standing in front of Coach like an idiot. At some point the hatred will show on the ice. It has to. And then Coach will understand why I warned him.
Coach turns his attention to Evan, and I sit beside Vinnie.
The others know I hate him, and though they’re not treating him as poorly as Enzo deserves, they’ve restrained themselves from rolling out red carpets or thrusting champagne flutes at him.
When Noah joined last year, Finn threw a party for him, then married him in Vegas. Though maybe they knew each other before then. Finn and Noah always get cagey at that part of the story.
Good thing Finn is already married to Noah and can’t marry Enzo.
I squint. That was a weird thing to think.
Definitely proof that Enzo being here is bad, no matter how enthusiastic Coach is when he looks at statistics.
Makes me wonder how Coach ever got recruited from Sweden to become an NHL Coach in the first place. Clearly our wins are more because of our wonderful skating than we’re given credit for. Definitely not Coach’s skills, that’s for sure.
Poor guy will find that out when he sees how bad Enzo and I truly fit together.
Sure, maybe we were good together when we used to skate together back in college. But that’s different. And so far we’ve been good tonight. But at some point our hatred will come out on the ice, then Coach will be sorry.