Chapter Eight
IAN
“Kennedy, you’re lagging! Get your ass across the line! You need training wheels?”
Jankowski nudges me. “Who’s gonna be the one to remind Coach that skates don’t have training wheels?”
“Not it,” Rankin snorts. “He’s already riding me like he’s paying for it.”
“Oh?” Sanchez leans on the end of his stick as we hang back in the neutral zone, watching Coach run defense through a drill. “And how much would you charge him?”
“Fuck off,” Rankin mutters.
A chuckle escapes me, watching Sanchez give Rankin a good-natured shove. “Don’t worry, babe, you won’t be a rookie forever.”
“I’m not a rookie now!”
Sanchez shrugs. “You’re a rookie till we get a new rookie. I don’t make the rules.”
Rankin skates off mumbling curse words under his breath, and Jankowski shoots me a conspiring grin. “Coach gonna give us a break anytime soon, you think?”
“He’s never been big on breaks, as I recall,” I point out.
“Fair,” Jankowski concedes. His grin turns sly then. “You wanna tell us about this situation with you and Baker’s sister?”
“You know damn well there’s not actually a situation.”
“That’s what you and Jack are singing, but seems like a waste to me. Dee is hot.”
I feel a prickling sensation in my chest, tamping down an influx of bad feelings that don’t make any damned sense. “Watch it,” I warn.
“Ooo,” Sanchez chimes in gleefully. “Sensitive subject? You know we don’t step on another man’s territory. Team rules.”
“There’s no territory,” I huff. “We’re just doing this to help each other out.”
“I can think of a lot of ways you could help each other out,” Jankowski says, waggling his eyebrows.
That prickling feeling intensifies, and I scowl back at him. “You want to finally lose a few teeth? That’s Jack’s sister you’re talking about.”
“Mhm.” Jankowski’s eyes are practically sparkling. “That’s all it is, I’m sure.”
“Hey!” Coach shouts from the other side of the rink. “If you have time for chitchat, you have time to get your asses over here and run speed drills!”
Another elbow nudged in my side as Jankowski laughs. “Come on, Old Man. Let’s get shit done so you can get home to your sweetheart.”
“Is it cheesy to say you’re on thin ice?”
Jankowski gives me an innocent look. “Dude, I was talking about Jack.”
I glide after him over the ice as he takes off, cackling, and I have to remind myself that I like Jankowski.
“Fuck, I’m sore,” Sanchez groans.
“I think even my balls are aching,” Olsson gasps, bent over at the waist. “Is Coach trying to kill us on day one?”
“Funny, I feel fine,” Rankin pops off, his hair drenched in sweat and his face startlingly red.
Sanchez shoves him, nearly knocking him off-balance. “Fuck off.”
“Knees still good?” Jankowski teases me.
I roll my eyes. “They’re holding up. If you don’t stop acting so concerned for me, I might start to think you have a crush on me.”
“You’re not my type,” he answers. “I’m saving myself for Coach.” He perks up, clapping me on the shoulder. “But speaking of types…”
I follow the nod of his head to the railing on the edge of the rink, spotting a familiar mass of brown waves piled high above what I know to be bright eyes and a brighter smile. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since Lila and I agreed to our little PR endeavor, and even though I know there’s nothing real about this thing we’re doing, I still feel a tiny flutter in my stomach at seeing her so soon. Like I haven’t had enough time to properly figure out how I’m going to approach the whole thing.
Jankowski straightens, smirking at me. “Think I’ll go say hi to Dee.”
God, I really do like the guy, but he’s asking for an ass kicking with this shit.
My body moves on its own to follow him, so quickly that it’s like my brain has no say in the matter. Jack gives me a bit of side- eye when I sidle up next to Jankowski below the railing where he and Lila are huddled together; we had a long talk last night about everything that’s going on, and I know (or at least, I think) he’s cool with it, but I get the sense that there’s still a bit of weirdness he’s sorting through. He’s definitely not the only one.
Lila immediately brightens when I approach, her lips curling into a wide smile and her eyes crinkling at the corners, and the electricity of it paired with the knowledge that there are a few dozen people meandering around the arena with their eyes on us has that flutter in my stomach intensifying to something that feels like it’s crawling up my throat. Her tight jeans and her soft green sweater make her look delicate, the color making her already big brown eyes seem wider, sweeter even. Not to mention her smile. And that goddamned dimple.
“Hey, Cupcake,” she greets me, her voice sweet and musical and entirely too loud to be calling me that. “Looking good out there.”
“I’m sorry,” Sanchez snorts, skating up behind me. “Cupcake?”
I groan, narrowing my eyes at Lila, who looks like she knows exactly what she just did. “Really?”
“What?”
She winks at me, and for reasons beyond me, I feel the innocent gesture as if she reached out and touched me. Me suddenly acting nervous around her just because we made a formal agreement to spark some rumors makes no sense. The only thing that I can fathom is the added microscope it’s putting me under, even if it’s a slightly more positive one.
“Cupcake played great,” Jankowski coos.
“Oh,” Jack snorts. “I actually just decided I am going to like this whole thing between you guys.”
I roll my eyes. “So happy everyone’s on board.” I arch a brow at Lila. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, you know.” She shrugs, giving me another sweet smile. “Being seen. Perpetuating rumors. That sort of thing.”
I take a quick look around, and sure enough, there is more than one phone pointed in our direction. “Looks like it’s working.”
“Anything for the team,” she laughs.
I turn my head again when I see a flash go off somewhere to my right. “I can’t wait to see whatever the internet is going to be saying tomorrow.”
“You’d better get used to it,” Lila hums. She leans over the railing, hanging between my arms—which are reaching up, hands clasped there—and extends her arm until her finger closes in on my nose, giving it a boop. “We’re the talk of the town, Cupcake.”
It’s little more than a brush of her fingertip against the tip of my nose, but I feel the heat of it spread through my face in a way that surely must show on my fair skin; am I embarrassed or amused? I don’t allow myself to consider anything else I might be possibly feeling about it.
“Perfect,” I mutter.
Jack scoots closer to his sister as Sanchez and Jankowski start arguing about some play they didn’t quite get down during practice, looking between us pointedly. “You tell him about the play day?”
I cock a brow. “Play day?”
“Dee’s thing. She got it going a few years back. We do it every year now at St. Michael’s.”
It takes me a second to place the name, but only a second. Jack and Lila didn’t spend more than six months at that orphanage before their aunt got full custody after their parents’ accident, but I have to imagine it was long enough to leave an impression.
“What is it?”
Lila looks almost shy for the first time since seeing her again, her cheeks turning a sweet shade of pink as she reaches to tuck a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. “It’s nothing too crazy,” she says. “Just an event I pitched a few years ago that stuck. The kids really love it.”
“She’s being modest,” Jack tsks. “She worked her ass off organizing it. Still does. Every single year. She put together this huge fundraiser when she got back to the States, right? Raised enough money to get the kids a bona fide hockey rink built behind the orphanage. Every year, me and some of the guys take the day to run drills with the kids, play around, you know, nothing too crazy. Dee always comes out with her shit and teaches them how to bake something. The ones who don’t want to play, that is. It’s always a huge hit.”
Lila still looks embarrassed during Jack’s praising speech, but I feel a swell of pride coursing through me. Everything about what he just told me sounds exactly like something my Lila would do.
My Lila?
I mentally rear back. Where the hell did that come from?
“That’s really great,” I tell her, meaning it. “Seriously, Lila. It’s amazing.”
Her blush deepens, her teeth pressing against her lower lip, accentuating the fullness of it and drawing my eye for a second longer than is appropriate.
Without my consent, there are flashes of images in my head of that same soft mouth touching me in places that are entirely inappropriate. Those same teeth biting into my skin. They’re so quick and so vivid, I don’t even have the time to mentally kick my own ass over them.
I tear my eyes away when she finally speaks.
“The kids really love it,” she says quietly. “And I love doing it. The guys always seem to have a good time too. I was thinking that it would be a good place for you to be seen. I mean, if you’re not too busy. I don’t want you to feel like you have to—”
“Of course I want to help,” I tell her firmly. “Are you kidding? Even if we didn’t have this whole shit show on the internet. Sign me up.”
Her smile is so wide that it makes my face hurt, but that might just be a general ache from how hard it is not to stare.
“Awesome. Thank you, Ian.”
“I mean, I’m terrible with kids, but still.”
She chuckles. “You’ll be fine.”
“Oi!” Jack shouts suddenly. “The fuck are you doing over there?”
We both watch him stomp off toward the other end of the rink, where a few players are roughhousing against the rails.
I shake my head. “Dumbasses are going to hurt themselves. No plexiglass around the practice rink.”
“Leave it to Jack to play rink mom,” she laughs.
I huff a laugh through my nostrils. “He’s very good at it.”
“You really don’t mind helping out at the play day?”
“What?” My brow furrows. “Of course I don’t mind.” My mouth twitches. “Besides, when have I ever been able to say no to you?”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s been a long time since I’ve put that to the test.”
“Definitely a lot of wheedling to catch up on.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t abuse my power too much.”
“Somehow I highly doubt that,” I snort. “You were always a needy little shit.”
She folds her arms over the railing, resting her chin against them as she smirks. “I think you were just a bit of a pushover.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Total pushover,” she affirms. “I could play you like a fiddle, Ian Chase.”
I don’t tell her I have a sneaking suspicion that she still could, if she wanted.
“That right?”
“One hundred percent, Cupcake.”
I narrow my eyes before letting them drop to her legs, doing the first thing that comes to mind, wrapping my arms around her thighs and pulling her downward until she slides under the railing with a squeak. She falls into my arms in a laugh that sounds more like a squawk, my arms landing under her knees and her shoulders just as her hands wind around my neck to steady herself.
“What the fuck, Ian?”
“Seems like you’re a bigger pushover than I am,” I deadpan.
She snorts as she wiggles out of my hold, grumbling as she falls to her feet on the ice. I hold her steady with an arm around her waist so she doesn’t slip, feeling smug. I should probably be thinking about how it looks, what I’ve just done, but it’s something I wouldn’t have thought twice about ten years ago, so I try not to let myself do that now. Even if she feels much softer and much more…grown-up against me now.
Lila looks flushed, and I can’t help but tease her. “How’s that for being seen?”
“You think you’re so slick.”
“I have my moments.”
I only have a split second to register the calculating look in her eyes before her hand slips under my arm, weaving its way over the back of my jersey until her fingers are teasing the sweaty ends of my hair sticking out of my helmet.
“I told you not to play this game with me,” she says coyly. “You’ll lose.”
With the slight tremor that runs down my spine with the weight of her against me, I have to admit she makes a solid argument.
Suddenly, she gives my hair a sharp tug that I feel all the way down in my balls, and I only have about four seconds to form a solid “What the fuck was that?” thought before thudding footsteps and Jack’s shouting voice blast through whatever the hell just happened.
“Okay, okay, that’s enough canoodling,” he grouses. “It’s weird as fuck.” He crouches and offers a hand out when I finally manage to tear my gaze away from a still-smug-looking Lila, watching as she slowly unwinds herself from me to take Jack’s hand. “And what are you doing on the ice? You trying to break your neck?”
“Doing dumb shit on the ice is your department,” she fires back, hoisting herself up over the ledge and crawling back under the railing.
I resist the urge to watch her ass as she goes, and to the surprise of no one, it’s incredibly difficult.
Seriously, what the fuck, Ian?
“Save the touchy shit for public spaces,” Jack huffs.
I frown. “This is a public space.”
I hear him muttering something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like: fucking weird, and I have a feeling he would be losing his shit on me if he knew the weird thoughts I’m having right now.
But Lila seems entirely unfazed.
“So I’ll see you next week at the play day, then?”
It takes me a second to realize this is directed at me, and I manage to nod dumbly as I try to remember how to make words while the sensation of her tugging on my hair still racks through my body.
“I’ll be there. For sure.”
Another blinding smile that I feel in a more PG-rated part of my body, and then she gives Jack a stern look. “You too. You might be useless right now, but you can be my assistant.”
“Assistant, my ass,” Jack snorts.
She wiggles her fingers at us, looking breezy and unbothered like she didn’t just leave me with weird thoughts and even weirder feelings about them. “Bye, guys.”
Jack waits until she’s out of earshot to say, “She’s such a pain in the ass.”
I’m nodding at him, mainly because I’m only half listening, but I can’t say that I agree in the slightest.
“Gonna be weird as fuck watching you two pretend to be into each other.” He makes a gagging sound. “Training camp can’t be over fast enough.”
I’m nodding, again, because I’m still only half listening, and again, searching every corner of my brain…I can’t find any shared irritation to this situation to match his.
Even if I have no clue as to what that means.
Later, when the guys are talking shit in between changing out of their gear, I’m still lost in my own head. Every time I think about Lila’s hands on me—of her small, delicate hand grabbing a fistful of my hair and making me feel it in places I have no business feeling—there’s a tingling awareness that creeps along my skin. Like my body refuses to let me forget just how much I felt that mostly innocent action. It’s confusing as hell.
“Yo,” Sanchez calls from across the locker room, drawing me out of my thoughts. “You coming out for beers?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m kind of tired.”
“Dude, we always get beers after the first practice of training camp,” Jankowski says seriously. “It’s tradition.”
“Is this a superstition thing?”
“Hey,” Olsson says. “We don’t judge you for keeping that shaggy-ass haircut.”
I frown, running my fingers through my sweaty mop. “I cut it…after the season ends.”
“Don’t worry,” Jankowski says, puckering his lips. “You’re a total hunk.”
“Fuck off,” I mutter.
Sanchez crosses his arms. “So, beers?”
“Yeah, yeah, fine,” I relent. “Let me shower and see where Jack is at.”
“Oh, he’s already there,” Olsson says. “Saving us a table.”
“We’ll wait for you outside, yeah?”
I nod at Jankowski. “Sounds good.”
They all start to file out, and I peel my base layer over my head before rolling my shoulders as the cool air touches my sweat-drenched skin. A shower sounds fucking fantastic, actually.
I’m just peeling off the last of my layers when my phone starts to chime in the pile of my discarded clothes. I riffle through the fabric, trying to find the trilling device, my thumb swiping across the answer button before I actually see who it is.
“Shit.”
I considered hanging up for a second and claiming it was an accident, but I know I can’t avoid him forever.
“Hello?”
My father’s voice is exactly as it always is—gruff and laced with irritation. Probably aimed at something I did, most likely. “How was practice?”
“It was…practice. Same as always.”
“Don’t get smart with me,” he scoffs. “How is the team treating you? Anyone giving you shit?”
“No? And what if they were?”
“Well, we’d take care of it, obviously.”
“I don’t need you to take care of anything,” I huff. “I do just fine on my own.”
“Yeah, well, tell that to your piss-poor point average last year,” he laughs scornfully. “You could be on the all-star team if you just applied yourself.”
I shut my eyes, my jaw clenching. I don’t tell him that I don’t give a shit about that, because I know from experience it would fall on deaf ears. My opinion has never really mattered to him, not when I was a child and certainly not now, so I let him rant for a moment about all the things I could do to be a better player, only speaking again when he seems to tire himself out.
“How’s Mom?” I say, ignoring everything he’s just said.
He makes a disgruntled sound. “What the hell do you mean? She’s the same as she always is. Maybe if you came and visited her once in a while, you’d know that.”
I also don’t comment on the fact that I would visit a lot more if every single instance didn’t end in him berating me for every perceived slight he can think of in regard to “his game.” I know there’s no point in arguing with him. You can’t argue with someone who won’t entertain the idea of being wrong. Even if I did make the all-star team, even if I visited every other day—I’d still be a disappointment somehow.
“I’ll try to come visit soon,” I say instead. “I gotta get in the shower. The guys are waiting on me.”
“Just make sure to keep your nose clean, you hear? I’ve been filled in on the details of this scheme with you and the Baker girl, and I can’t say I’m a huge fan of it, but if it gets the vultures talking about something other than you and those damned pictures, I’ll allow it.”
I’ll allow it. His echoed words in my head make my face heat. As if he isn’t just as complicit in this mess as I am. As if every step I’ve made in the last six years hasn’t kept his ass out of the spotlight. I would love to say that his concern is of the fatherly sort, but it would be a lie. It’s his reputation he cares about. The fact that the only problems that plague me in this town are the ones he created for me. Not that he’ll ever admit it.
“It will blow over,” I manage tightly, praying that it’s true.
“It had better,” Dad scoffs. “Don’t make me regret letting you come back.”
Letting me come back. I have to actually bite my tongue.
“Sure, Dad,” I force out. “I’ll do my best.”
I hang up with my father, feeling the same as I always do after we talk. Tired, mostly. Tired and simmering with a sort of anger that feels like old coals. Hot, but also died down, just waiting to be stoked by the next jab.
I’m about to throw my phone back into my pile of clothes when it vibrates with a text, and I almost ignore it on the off chance it’s something my father forgot to throw in over the phone.
But it’s not him, much to my pleasant surprise.
LILA: Thanks again for agreeing to the play day. It’ll mean a lot to the kids.
I’m grinning as I tap out a reply.
ME: And you too, right?
LILA: Eh. I guess so.
I cover my mouth with my hand, my palm pressing into my smile as I picture the teasing tilt of her mouth as she typed it. Amazingly, all the bitter feelings that had been threatening to consume me dissipate in the wake of that imagined smile.
And I still have no clue what that means.