The Unexpected Save (Seattle Puckaneers #5)

1. Zach

ZACH

OCTOBER

Rodriguez’s theory about goalies is that we’re all fucked up.

We spend our entire lives waiting for something bad to happen to us and when nothing does, we don’t know what to do with ourselves.

He dropped this statement last week in the locker room while I was taping my stick and he was eating a protein bar sideways like a harmonica.

I told him it was probably the dumbest thing I’ve heard him say, and he said no, the dumbest thing he’s ever said was telling Coach Barrett the tie he was wearing made him look like a youth pastor.

Barrett bag-skated him for twenty minutes, then Rodriguez threw up twice but claimed he still wouldn’t take back his opinion.

He might be onto something though, about the waiting for bad things.

Because that’s exactly what I’m currently doing, in the bar the team reserves for events.

Standing with my back against the wall, waiting for something bad to happen and considering my life choices, including my friendship with Rodriguez.

I’ve been nursing the same beer all night and on my third recount of the ceiling tiles.

Rodriguez told me I only had to go for an hour, show my face, and leave.

Nothing interesting has happened tonight and so at this point I’d like to leave, except Rodriguez is my ride and now I can’t find him, I’m convinced he forgot I exist.

I watched the veterans filter out over an hour ago—Jack Anderson and his wife with Coach Barrett not far behind.

The older guys peeling off until it was just the younger guys and girlfriends and people who know someone who knows someone.

Rodriguez disappeared into the crowd twenty minutes ago, probably on his way to make horrible romantic decisions, which is his primary hobby.

I could leave and order an Uber. He’d never notice.

I’m halfway to convincing myself when I catch it again.

Red hair. A flash of it I’ve been seeing all night, a color that doesn’t match anything else in the room.

I’ve been clocking it the way I clock movement on the ice, a peripheral awareness that keeps pulling my attention left even though I’m trying to look straight ahead.

The crowd shifts, opening for a moment, and there she is, ten feet away.

I can finally see her clearly for the first time with some guy who has his hand around her elbow. I don’t recognize either one of them.

She jerks free and says something I can’t hear over the music. She has it handled. Probably. But he reaches for her again and my feet are moving before the rest of me catches up.

I drop my arm over her shoulders and hold out the beer. “Hey babe. Sorry that took so long.”

She takes it almost automatically but I can feel her body go rigid under my arm for half a second before she leans into my side and smiles up at me. “Not a big deal.”

The guy stares at my arm, then my face. “Who the fuck are you?”

Great. I picked one of these assholes tonight. I straighten up. Planting my feet and taking up space the way I do in my crease when someone crashes the net. “She’s done talking to you, man.”

He mutters something and storms off. She steps out from under my arm and turns around and I get hit with all of it at once.

Red hair, light eyes, freckles scattered across her nose that I’m counting before I can stop myself, and she looks pissed off in a way that’s somehow aimed at me.

Guess she wasn’t such a damsel in distress after all.

“What the hell was that?” She demands.

“It looked like he was bothering you.”

“He was. But I had it handled.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Sorry.” She repeats it slowly, dragging it out. “So you’re just—what? Going back to the Stella you’ve been pacing yourself on all night?”

Wait. She was watching me? My brain files this somewhere in the back because the front is too busy counting her freckles to do anything useful with that information. I scramble for something to say.

“Can I buy you a drink?” It seems like an appropriate thing to offer. I genuinely don’t know what else to do right now.

“No, but you can take me somewhere quieter explain why you did that.”

She leads me through the back hallway, past the bathrooms, through a door propped open with a cinder block. She knows exactly where she’s going. I suck in a breath of the October air that’s just starting to get chilly at night.

She hops up onto one of the picnic tables, plants her feet on the bench, and wraps her arm around her knees. I lean against the railing across from her under the string lights watching her breath puff out in little clouds, still trying to figure out what just happened to my night.

“I’m Zach, by the way.” I tell her.

“I know who you are.”

Oh, okay then. “So how do you know the team?”

She gives me a look like I just asked her what year it is. “That’s what you’re going to lead with? That’s so boring. Ask me something better.”

“Okay...” I have nothing because my brain has been replaced by static. “What’s something interesting about you?”

“I cried during the third period tonight.”

Was not expecting that. “Why?”

“Because Moretti made that save, the one where he went post to post and got his pad across? And the way the crowd reacted, I don’t know.” She shrugs, a little embarrassed. “I’ve been watching hockey my whole life and it still does that to me sometimes. My mom thinks I’m insane.”

“That’s not insane. It was a great save.”

“It was a ridiculous save. He had no business getting there.” She points at me. “You were good tonight too, by the way.”

“I sat on the bench.”

“I know. The back of your head is very nice to stare at.” The way she says it is extremely matter-of-fact. “You do this thing where you track every shot even though you’re not playing. Your head moves with the puck. I don’t think you realize you do it.”

I didn’t realize I did that.

“Most of the guys on the bench are talking or whatever. You’re playing the game from the bench. You see everything.” She pulls her knees tighter. “Anyway. Your turn. Something interesting about you. And don’t say hockey.”

“I don’t have anything interesting that isn’t hockey.”

“Try.” She watches me steadily. “One thing.”

The problem is everything I am is tied up in the crease and the rink and the routine.

I haven’t had to describe myself to another person in so long that I don’t know what’s left when you strip hockey out.

She’s sitting here like she’s got all night, and the look on her face is making me want to try harder than I normally would.

“I can’t sleep without noise,” I finally say. “Not music. Just ambient stuff. Rain, or a fan, or traffic. Without something running in the background my brain won’t shut off.”

“What does it do?”

“Runs every mistake I’ve ever made on a loop.”

I don’t know why I said that. I’ve never told anyone that, definitely not a girl I met seven minutes ago. She nods like she understands.

“Mine too,” she says. “Except mine runs everything I haven’t done yet.

Every conversation I should have had, every risk I didn’t take.

” She pauses. “I dragged you out here because of that, if we’re being honest. I saw you against that wall and I thought, I’m going to regret it if I don’t talk to him tonight. ”

“You didn’t exactly drag me. I came to you.”

“Because some asshole forced your hand but I had a plan. It was a good plan. It involved me being smooth and charming and not needing to be rescued from a guy at a bar.” She hops off the table and lands right in front of me. “I think I owe you for that, actually.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Too bad. I’m a big believer in paying debts.”

Before I can react she grabs the front of my shirt. Her fingers curl into the fabric then she’s up on her toes and her mouth is on mine.

My brain stops. The running commentary I carry everywhere—evaluating, adjusting, reading angles—goes completely silent for the first time in my adult life.

She starts to pull back, a flush climbing her neck, obviously thinking she read me wrong, and I catch her waist and step into her, backing her gently against the picnic table and kiss her again.

She makes a small frantic noise and her hands slide from my shirt to my shoulders and I lose my mind a little.

I can taste her cherry lip gloss and I bite her bottom lip gently.

The gasp that comes out of her goes through my entire body.

I press closer, making sure she can feel what she’s doing to me, and she arches into me, eager and clumsy and responsive to everything.

Every shift of my mouth, every slide of my hands up her ribs makes her shiver.

I pull her closer because there’s still space between us and I realize suddenly that I never want her to stand further away from me than this.

The door bangs open as some of the team spill out onto the patio.

She steps back fast. Arms crossed, casual-conversation posture deployed in under a second. Meanwhile I’m standing here with my hands open at my sides trying to remember how breathing works.

Brody glances over. “Oh hey, Almardon. Didn’t know you were still here.”

“Just getting some air.”

She catches my eye. Her lips press together like she’s fighting a laugh, and there’s still color high on her cheeks. She starts combing her fingers through her hair where my hands were in it, then she tilts her head toward the door and starts to walk away.

I follow her inside and she stops in the hallway where the music swallows everything.

“I have to go.”

“Can I get your number?”

She hesitates and turns away for a second, biting her lip. “Next time. I’ll see you around, Zach.”

Then she’s gone. Into the crowd, out the front door, and I realize suddenly that I don’t know her name.

She knows mine, but I don’t know hers. She watches me from the stands and I didn’t know she existed until twenty minutes ago.

Rodriguez finds me five minutes later in the hallway, he’s talking about something that I’m not even listening to because I’m still on that patio replaying the gasp she let out when I bit her lip.

All I can think about is how I’m going to even begin finding out who she is.