Pucking My Orc Goalie

1. Ellie

CHAPTER ONE

ELLIE

TEN MONTHS AGO

The sundress was yellow. That mattered because I’d tried on four others before it, standing in my apartment in my underwear, staring at the options laid out on my bed like evidence in a case I was trying to build.

The yellow one had capped sleeves and a flared skirt that moved when I walked.

When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t immediately think I looked awful.

I looked like someone who’d just graduated with her PT degree.

Which I had. Two days ago. I was Dr. Eleanor Lundrig now, thank you very much.

The drink in my hand was something with rum and pineapple and a little paper umbrella I’d already lost. Sticky-sweet and ridiculous, something I never ordered but felt entitled to after surviving three hours of academic interrogation.

The park pavilion had been strung with lights that hadn’t been turned on yet, the golden hour doing all the work, and I was sitting at a picnic table with green paint, watching the Purple Punishers celebrate the end of their hockey season.

My brain wouldn’t shut off. Occupational hazard.

One of the forwards, Fedor, favored his left knee. Veskar had tension through his shoulders, probably from the hit he’d taken in the last game. Mikael moved like someone who’d forgotten what it felt like not to be in pain, which meant he was either very good at hiding it or very used to it.

And then there was Brashe Kedish. The team’s star goalie.

Seven feet of green-skinned, tusk-bearing orc who looked like he could break someone in half and probably had.

A ridged tongue. Not that he was showing it now, but I’d pretty much grown up around orcs.

They had ridged tongues.

He was loud, though not in an obnoxious way. His kind of loud made people lean in, made them want to be part of whatever he was saying. He stood near the grill with three teammates, and whatever story he was telling had them doubling over with laughter.

I’d watched enough of my brother Crim’s games to know Kedish’s reputation.

He was brutal in the net, making saves that were perfect for highlight reels.

He left forwards with bruises they’d feel for weeks.

Off the ice, the whispers were different.

He was a player. He never dated anyone more than once.

I didn’t care about that.

What I cared about was how he moved through the world like he’d never once questioned whether he belonged in it.

Must be nice.

Fedor’s three-year-old daughter toddled past the group of players, clutching a juice box. One of her shoes was untied. Her mom, Simone, followed, laughing.

Brashe bent down and stopped her. He tied her shoe, tapped her nose when she laughed, and plucked a dandelion from the grass and held it out to her.

She took it, giggling.

He straightened and went back to his story without missing a beat.

I watched him and thought, I could make him laugh like that.

The bench beside me creaked. Crim dropped onto it, folding his tall, muscular frame into the space with the ease of someone who’d spent his last fifteen years being too big for human furniture. He held a plate piled with three burgers and fries.

“Oh, thanks!” I snatched a fry and ate it, enjoying how salty it was.

“You’ve been staring,” he said, his gaze following mine.

“I’m observing.”

“You’re staring at Kedish in particular.”

I took a sip of my drink. Pineapple and rum could lead to bad decisions, but I was confident they wouldn’t today. “I’m watching the team. You know, the thing I’ll be doing professionally after I finish my fellowship.”

Crim huffed and took a bite of one of his burgers.

I’d learned to read him by the time I was ten, a few years after we met.

When I was fourteen, his family took me in after my parents died and his parents invoked an ancient orc blood-oath I still didn’t fully understand.

Back then, I just knew it meant I wouldn’t be alone.

Crim was like a big brother before that, but he then became my brother in all the ways that made a family real.

“Kedish has a two-week expiration date,” he said after he’d swallowed. “You’re not a two-week kind of person.”

“How would you know what kind of person I am?”

“Because I raised you.”

“Your parents raised me. You were busy learning how to check people into the boards.”

His mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “You need to be careful with that one, El. Some males collect women.”

I rolled my eyes, but my throat went tight. The issue wasn’t if I might get collected but if I was worth collecting in the first place.

Crim thought he was protecting me. Instead, he was trying to stuff me into a box labeled fragile and assuming I couldn’t handle a male like Brashe Kedish.

Crim thought I was soft.

Everyone thought I was soft.

“You’re doing the protective stepbrother cliché,” I said. “It’s not a good look.”

“It’s not a cliché if it’s warranted.”

“I’m twenty-seven. I have a doctorate. I think I can manage a conversation without your supervision.”

He ate more of his burger. Chewed. Watched me with those dark orc eyes that saw too much. “Just saying. Kedish isn’t…he’s not serious about anyone.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Neither am I.”

Crim stayed at the table for another ten minutes, eating his meal while talking about the season and how Haley, Coach Beecham’s daughter and team video analyst, had shown him some opposing team weaknesses he was going to capitalize on.

He didn’t mention Brashe again, though he didn’t have to.

The drink in my hand was nearly gone, and I’d made a decision.

I placed the glass on the table and stood, then smoothed my yellow skirt that didn’t need it.

Crim looked up. “El?”

“Relax,” I said. “I’m going to get some fries.”

I walked across the pavilion, past the picnic tables, the grill, and a cluster of players arguing about something that involved a lot of hand gestures. My heart kicked up—that stupid, hopeful flutter I’d felt at sixteen when Jake Morris smiled at me in the cafeteria.

I was twenty-seven now and supposed to know better.

Brashe was still holding court. Mikael was there, and Fedor, plus a rookie whose name I couldn’t remember. They were talking about a save from the playoffs, the one where Brashe had gone full splits and caught the puck.

I walked right up to them.

Mikael noticed me first, his eyebrows shooting up.

Brashe turned my way.

Up close, he was even bigger than he looked from across the pavilion. Orcs were all massive—Crim was seven-one—but Brashe’s bulk came from spending his life as a last line of defense. Shoulders that could block out the sun. Slightly uneven tusks, the right one chipped at the tip.

Dark green eyes, almost black in the fading light.

“Hey,” I said.

Brilliant opening, but a girl had to start somewhere.

His head tilted. For a half-second, his expression did something that looked like surprise or recognition. Or maybe I imagined it because I wanted it to be there.

“Hey,” he said back.

Mikael grinned. Fedor looked vaguely uncomfortable. The rookie had already wandered off.

“I have a question,” I said.

Brashe’s mouth curved, though it wasn’t quite a smile. “Yeah?”

“Do all goalies have a god complex, or is it just the ones who can do splits?”

Mikael choked on his beer.

Brashe’s smile widened, all teeth and tusks and genuine amusement. “Just the ones who are really good at it.”

“So all of them, then.”

“Most of us have the humility to pretend otherwise.”

“But not you.”

“I’m working on it,” he said. “It’s a process.”

This was going well. I could feel it. I’d caught his attention. His eyes were moving over my face in a way most men never looked at me.

I sensed interest.

My pulse had started doing a hummingbird dance, but it felt good, like flying instead of falling.

Mikael said something about next season. Fedor was checking his phone. And Brashe was still looking at me, his mouth curved in that almost-smile that made my belly do interesting things.

“Maybe sometime you could tell me a little more about it,” I said.

“Oh, I…”

This was the part where I said something charming. Where I made him laugh and see me as someone worth spending time with. I had a whole doctorate. Surely I could manage another coherent sentence.

I opened my mouth.

His gaze flashed past me, and his expression changed. No, it shut down. As if someone had flipped a switch and the version of him that had been present a second ago had been replaced with one who was polite and distant.

“That’s cute,” he said.

The words came out light. Breezy. He could’ve been commenting on the weather.

“But I don’t do—” He gestured vaguely between us, his gaze slanting down my body.

My skin overheated. Prickled. And I suddenly wished I’d worn the dark blue dress, the one that made me—and my plus-sized body—fade into the background.

Brashe pivoted back to Mikael and Fedor, both appearing very interested in their phones.

I stood there for much too long, trying to process what had happened. Had there been a joke in there I’d missed?

The words took a second to land. When they did, they hit like a kick to the sternum.

Oh. He wasn’t brushing me off. He was filing me under girls who don’t get played with. Ones who were too soft. Too big. Too much of the wrong thing.

Maybe he meant something else. Maybe he didn’t date anyone from the team’s circle, some kind of rule, or superstition, or—

But no. I’d seen the way his eyes had flickered down my body and back up. He’d taken a good look, and he wasn’t interested. I’d been seeing versions of that look since I was fourteen and wasn’t able to shop in the juniors section any longer.

And the gesture. That vague, dismissive wave of his hand, one you’d use to brush away a fly. As if I were something to be swatted aside before I got any ideas.

The other guys had gone quiet. That told me everything. If I was misreading this, someone would’ve laughed. They would’ve spoken up. Mikael would’ve made a joke to cut the tension.

Instead, they looked at their drinks, their beer fascinating.

My laugh came from somewhere. My mouth, probably.

It sounded almost real. I’d learned it at sixteen, when a boy I liked told his friends I was pretty enough for a big girl.

It had been reinforced when I was twenty-two and a potential date looked me up and down and suggested we skip dinner and go back to his place, like he was doing me a favor.

I relearned the same lesson every time someone acted surprised that I was smart or capable or funny, because how could I be those things and also be fat?

So I smiled.

“Noted,” I said. Or maybe I said, no worries. Something with consonants. Words that fell out of my mouth while my brain got busy adding to my walls.

I turned and walked back to the picnic table.

Crim was still there, not looking at me, which was its own kindness.

I sat. Picked up my drink and sucked in air through the straw, because the cup was empty.

My brother told a joke. I laughed loud enough that no one around us would suspect a thing.

I stayed at the picnic for another forty-five minutes, where I perfected the art of looking unbothered. I did not note the exact angle of Brashe’s shoulders across the pavilion or memorize the fact that he didn’t look at me. Not once.

Leaving early would’ve shown it mattered, and if nothing else, I had my pride.

Crim drove me home. He didn’t ask if I was okay or say I told you so, which I appreciated because I might’ve cracked if he had.

“You defended your dissertation,” he said as he pulled onto my street.

“I did.”

“We should celebrate.”

“We are celebrating.”

“I mean really celebrate. Dinner. That place you like with the chips.”

“Mexican,” I said. “Yeah, sure.”

He slid his truck into a spot in front of my apartment building, which was old and brick. The radiators clanged, and the neighbors played music too loud. I was renting it while finishing up the work I needed to do after my degree.

After putting the vehicle into park, he turned toward me. “El—”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You don’t have to be.”

“But I am.”

I got out of his truck. Shut the door. Waved with an aching smile on my face. I watched him drive away before crossing the road and going inside.

Once I’d reached my apartment, I went to my bedroom, took off the yellow sundress, and stuffed it into the far corner of my closet.

Confidence was just the lie you told yourself before the world corrected you.