Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
tyler
“I hate that guy,” Tyler mutters as he finishes tying his laces. “You remember what he did to your sister, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Alex pleads, “but there’s nothing I can do.
The acceptance letters just went out and everyone gets assigned an incoming freshman.
I have to mentor him. I don’t have a choice.
All I need to do is sit with him at this stupid welcome dinner next week and show him around the school for a few days in the fall, and then it’s done. ”
“I don’t like it.”
“Me neither.”
Liam Fucking Reyes, Tyler thinks with a sneer.
He’s hated that jerk since the second he heard Winnie label him as cute, and even though it’s been over a year since he found her crying behind the gym, that ire hasn’t cooled a single bit.
He’d smash the kid’s phone again in a heartbeat.
He’d smash a helluva lot more if he could.
“Private school kids are soft,” Tyler grumbles. “You know what I got on my first day of high school? A black eye.”
“Yeah?” Alex huffs, then looks at him with a wicked grin. “But what’d the other guy get?”
A smile twitches at the corner of Tyler’s mouth as he recalls the look on that asshole’s face when he realized the freshman ice hockey player he was trying to put in his place wasn’t the groveling type.
The rest of the school might’ve worshipped the senior QB, but that didn’t stop Tyler from bending his arm behind his back and threatening his season, his scholarship, and his entire career if he touched him again.
Needless to say, the guy steered clear after that.
“You ready for this?” Alex puts on his helmet.
Tyler does the same. “Let’s go win a championship.”
They look at each other for a moment, years of friendship flashing in their eyes—hours on the ice, hours off it, slapping a ball across the driveway, living and breathing this sport in any way they could, watching it on TV, playing video games, recounting every play until the wee hours of the night, slamming each other into the cushions as they reenacted their favorite checks.
They’ve been preparing what feels like their whole lives for this moment. So yeah, they’re ready.
They grab their sticks with the rest of the team and make their way to the ice. Coach stops them in the tunnel.
“I’ve never been much for speeches,” Alexandru Rusu states simply, his strong voice easily carrying over the cheers echoing from the rink.
On the other side of the opening, stands full of friends, family, strangers, and enemies await.
In here, it’s just them and him. Their leader.
Their god. “So I’ll just say this. I want to win. ”
Some of the guys smile and swap knowing glances. Tyler meets Alex’s hungry gaze. They want this. They all want this.
“You want to win,” Alexandru continues. “I won’t pretend this is just another game.
It’s not. But I believe in each and every one of you.
And if you play the way I know you can, there’s no team in the country who can stop you.
In here, you’re winners. I don’t care what anyone else sees.
Not your teachers. Not your classmates. Not your parents.
” The older man holds Tyler’s gaze, as if this message is meant solely for him.
A balloon swells in his young chest. “I see a winner. I see a champion.” Alexandru continues down the line, meeting all their faces with a sturdy, unyielding expression.
That tender emotion Tyler can’t quite place builds beneath his skin, buzzing and growing into a warrior’s call.
“It’s time to show the world exactly who we are.
So let’s go out there and do what we do. Let’s win.”
They holler together, pumping their chests and beating their sticks like a pack of wild beasts.
Then they take to the ice, storming out to mad applause.
Spotlights flash and music blares. While the other guys rev up the crowd, Tyler focuses on the scrape of his blades, the beat of his pulse, the cool brush of air as he moves.
Yes, he wants to win.
But this is about more than that. It’s about proving to Alexandru that he wasn’t wrong for taking a chance on a stray like Tyler, about repaying the man in whatever small way he can for believing in him when no one else ever has.
Tyler will never forget the night Alexandru caught him sneaking around the family rink. Five years vanish in a blink as the memory comes surging forward.
He lay in bed, trying to shut his ears to the moans traveling through the paper-thin walls of this freaking dump they called a home.
Yeah, it was better than their car, which was where they had been living before she met the sleazy car salesman doing he doesn’t even want to know what to his mother in the other room.
The guy would be gone in a matter of months, Tyler had no doubt, and who the heck knew what would happen after that.
They’d moved to Dallas with the asshat, the place like a foreign country compared to Minnesota, his real home.
God, he missed the cold.
The thumping and panting and shrieking got louder.
Tyler stuffed his hands over his ears. Unable to take a moment more, he suddenly jumped out of bed, grabbed the beat-up old skates from his floor, and snuck out the window.
A few days ago, he stole his mom’s phone to look up the location of the nearest rink.
It was about a mile and a half away, but screw it, he needed the escape.
He ran, praying he had the map right in his mind.
For a few minutes there, he was absolutely positive he was lost. Then he turned two more corners, and there it was, like a freaking mirage.
He shimmied open a window and climbed inside.
Hockey had started as a way for one of his mom’s old boyfriends to get him out of the house—the guy had shoved a pair of his old skates, about five sizes too big, into Tyler’s arms and pointed toward the local pond, which was frozen over—but it didn’t take long before he was hooked.
The guy was long gone, but the skates remained.
And with every passing year, they fit just a little bit better.
In fact, tonight Tyler had only needed to stuff one pair of socks in each boot before lacing them up as tightly as he could.
He borrowed a stick from behind the register and some soda cans from the trash.
Stepping onto the rink felt like stepping into an alternate universe.
He flew too fast for the real world to catch up.
Here, there were no hardships, no worries.
There was just the cold nip against his skin and the hot rush within his veins.
He got lost in the burn, lost in the slap of wood against aluminum, again and again, as he raised his stick, imagined an inner demon, and sent it soaring.
A sudden bright light flooded the rink.
Tyler tried to run, but the second he hopped the wall, a strong hand grabbed him around the back of the neck.
He braced himself to be rejected the way his father had done, cast out the way his grandparents had done, mocked the way his classmates had done, dismissed or beaten or cuffed.
Instead, the dark brown eyes meeting his defiant look were intrigued.
The large man who’d caught him told him to stay put.
When he returned two minutes later, it was with a brand-new pair of skates that were just Tyler’s size.
“Put these on,” the man said, his voice deep and commanding with an accent Tyler couldn’t place. Then he tossed a little black disk onto the ice. “And use a puck this time.”
They played hockey.
For hours.
Tyler would spend the rest of his life wondering why he had chosen that moment to actually listen to a direct order, and be forever grateful he had.
When dawn came, it was more than a new day.
It was a new life. Because instead of seeing a thief, or a miscreant, or an idiot, Alexandru looked at him and saw potential—potential Tyler has no intention to waste, especially not tonight with a trophy on the line, the trophy he knows his mentor has coveted since the moment he took over this junior team.
Tyler plays lights out. He’s faster than ever, sharper than ever, all over the ice. He scores once in the first, then again to start the third, with an assist to Alex in there too.
With thirty seconds left in the game, it’s tied.
The other team shoots. They miss. The puck slaps into the boards.
He scoops it up and sends it toward Alex, who’s ready near center ice.
Their eyes meet. Alex has always been the leader, the playmaker.
He’s got one of those magnetic personalities that can’t be taught, the sort that makes people want to follow him.
Tyler has none of that. But he’s an assassin, and with ten seconds left on the clock, a closer is exactly what the team needs.
So he pushes off his defender and cuts past the block from their left wing.
The puck is there waiting by the time he gets into position.
Before the other team even sees it coming, his stick is swinging down hard.
The slap reverberates across the sudden silence in the arena as the crowd seems to collectively hold its breath.
A second stretches into a year as the puck soars and—
The net flutters.
The buzzer sounds.
Game!
Tyler rips off his helmet and screams. Bodies slam into him from all sides as his teammates rush the ice.
“We won!” Alex yells, grabbing him by the cheeks, shaking him. “We actually fucking won!”
They crow like maniacs up to the rafters. He’s not sure how long they spend out there celebrating. Time passes in a blur. Hugs and handshakes. Trophies and speeches. But when they’re finally done and back in their sweats, he does know one thing. No one is waiting for him on the other side.