Chapter 8 – Waylon
chapter
eight
Waylon
Focus.
Unlike half of the team, we’d taken it easy last night at O’Leary’s.
That was because I’d spent half the time watching Flash and nursing a beer like a pussy.
And of course my brain kept handing me the image of Josie grinding her ass on me.
Fuck.
I kept making excuses for how close she’d been dancing. It had been packed as hell in the hallway.
Yep. Uh-huh. And for some reason, you can still feel the imprint of her body against your dick.
“Look alive, Way.” Trace’s voice cut in as he skated by. “If you insist on the early ice, at least show up for it.”
There were no coaches watching my edges, no Marcus running his mouth from across the rink, no noise except our blades cutting clean lines into fresh Zamboni ice and the low hum of the refrigeration system. It was just me and Trace and the suicide drills.
I ran figure-eight edge work until my calves burned and pushed into the crossover sequence at the far blue line. Trace was doing backward C-cuts at the other end, one AirPod in, his breath fogging in the cold. We’d been at it for a while, and neither of us had said anything worth remembering.
That was normal. Trace and I didn’t need to talk to communicate.
He glided over when I stopped for water and pulled up beside me at the boards. I handed him the bottle without being asked.
“Still need to do some timed drills. But we’re looking good.”
“Thank fuck.”
“You okay?” he asked. “You’re completing the motions. Not the same thing.” He handed the bottle back and watched me. “You’re somewhere else.”
I wasn’t going to confirm that. I dropped the bottle into the rack and pushed back toward the hash marks for another rep as he followed me. “Way.”
“I’m running the drill, Coulter.” I wasn’t in the mood for whatever lecture was coming.
“You’ve run it eleven times. Your times aren’t the problem right now.” He planted himself in front of me, which took commitment, given I outweighed him by twenty pounds. “Your head’s not in it.”
I went around him.
He turned and kept pace backward, watching my face closely. “You good? You’ve been off since the party. Ryder said there was something at work too? Something about a certain girl named Josie.”
Fucking Ryder needed to keep his mouth shut. “I’m fine. All good.” The lie came out easily.
“She’s Kane’s girl.”
“Okay,” I huffed.
“You know how this will go. And I know you guys have history. Don’t go down this path.”
“Bro. You don’t need to tell me. I know. I’m not going to do anything stupid. My head is on straight. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Way, I know you, man. You get this look in your eyes. You cannot do this.”
“Fucking chill, Trace.” I spread my hands and dropped back into my drill.
“My man. I just want you to be fine. You’d let the whole building burn down before you asked somebody to hand you a hose. I’m looking out for you.”
“I hear you.”
I did hear him. I wished I didn’t, because he was right. He’d seen me at the party. He’d seen the want on my face. Hell, I didn’t even know Flash. She was nothing to me. It wasn’t worth blowing up the team. I settled into a stance.
Fix your edges, Johnson. Focus, you idiot.
Trace was right. I wasn’t going to do anything. I kept thinking about Josie’s smile anyway.
Congratulations, Johnson. You’re pathetic.
My cock had its own thoughts about that smile, and I was not going there on the ice at dawn.
But my body remembered every second of sitting next to her for two hours, her elbow four inches from mine, the shea butter and citrus smell of her settling into my clothes.
The way she’d leaned toward Caleb and I’d noticed.
The brush of her fingers on mine when we’d reached for the same page.
Down, boy.
I wondered if she’d gone for a run this morning. Had she used the same route? I could picture it, her in sneakers and curly puffs on the east quad trail, panting, legs moving, that same stubborn focus she brought to everything.
Stop thinking about her morning routine, you creep. You have a drill to run.
I came around the far boards and felt my edge slip on the turn, and the ice had nothing to do with it. I was in my own head. I locked my jaw and made myself focus on the footwork, the crossover, the weight transfer.
Trace came past on his way to the far cone.
“Distracted,” he said.
“I’m locked in,” I muttered.
“You slipped on that turn.”
“The ice is soft near the boards,” I grumbled.
Trace raised an eyebrow and said nothing, which was worse than if he’d pushed. He’d learned that about me the same way I’d learned he needed time after a bad period before he could hear criticism.
I stopped at center ice and made myself breathe.
Focus on the drill. Not on her.
She would become a problem if I didn’t get myself under control. But that tiny voice inside kept chirping, what if she doesn’t belong with him? I saw how he treated her at the party.
My father used to grab my mother like that.
Never hard enough that you’d call it anything if you saw it, but hard enough.
He’d called it love for a while, and then he stopped calling it anything, and it just became the way things were.
Marcus was all wrong for her. And he sure as shit didn’t deserve her.
I hated seeing his hands on her, whether she was mine or not.
When Marcus had grabbed Josie, the anger that lit up in my chest was the same anger I’d carried since I was a kid and watched my mother explain a bruise to a neighbor.
I started moving again, crossovers and edge work, then the backward figure eight, left foot then right, weight centered the way my freshman coach had drilled into me until I didn’t have to think about it.
Out here, none of that mattered, and that was the whole point.
Trace crossed behind me, and we ran the two-man passing drill, the one we’d been doing since freshman year, where nobody called the pattern because we both already knew it. The puck moved between us in a clean arc.
First round or bust. That was the pact.
Aaron had sent me the updated scout report last week, and the word “reliable” appeared in it four times.
Reliable was the word that got a guy like me drafted.
I was a scholarship kid from Bridgeport with no name to trade on and no father with connections to open doors.
All I had was the fact that I showed up at 5 a.m. and ran the drill until sweat poured down my ass crack.
Josie was not the plan.
But she could be.
She was Marcus’s girlfriend, which made her somebody else’s problem. All she was to me was an almost-smile at a tutoring table and the way she said my name, and I was going to leave it there.
You’re lying to yourself.
Yeah. I knew it.
Trace sent a hard pass that I caught clean on my left side and drove forward with, and after that, I stopped thinking about anything but the ice and the drill.
Head down. Draft. Stay in your lane.
That was what I had to focus on.
Trace skated past on his way off. “Breakfast. Come on.”
You’d let the whole building burn down before you asked somebody to hand you a hose.
He was right. Maybe this once, I’d take the help.
No more Josie Washington.
Even I almost believed me.