Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 86515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 433(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 433(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
His gaze drops to my mouth and heat crawls up the back of my neck. “Bet you say that to all the girls,” I murmur, and his gaze lifts.
“No,” he says, voice low and rich like melted butter, his eyes lasered onto mine. “I don’t.”
“There you are!” Arch’s voice cuts through the tension those few words and heated looks produced.
I turn to see the happy-go-lucky hockey player and close friend of Crosby standing there, his gaze flicking between us.
He frowns, sensing something might be off. “Did I interrupt?”
“No,” Crosby says, but his eyes stay on mine. “A little truth-telling between friends.”
I swallow hard. What does that mean? He really wants to kiss me?
And if he does, would I be averse to that?
I think the answer is evident.
I wouldn’t mind it at all.
CHAPTER 16
Crosby
The play is unfolding a hundred feet away, and I’m already standing taller in the crease.
Clock’s under twenty seconds and we’re up by one against the Edmonton Grizzlies. We lost last night at home against the Washington Breakers in a back-and-forth game that was hard fought and harder lost.
The Grizzlies have pulled their goalie and every skater on the ice is pinched high, desperate and reckless. I track the puck as it rims along the boards in the offensive zone, bodies colliding, sticks hacking, a scramble that feels like it might tip either way.
Miller fumbles the puck at the blue line, and suddenly the ice tilts. A Grizzly forward pokes it free, and I see it immediately—the way the lane opens, the way two of them explode into space with incredible speed.
Miller is the closest, skating backward between the two attackers as they all race my way. The crowd rises as a single organism, noise swelling but oddly distant, like I’m hearing it through water. I glide out to the top of the crease, knees bent, weight forward, eyes locked on the puck carrier’s blade. My mind is empty in the way it only ever is in moments like this.
No thought.
Pattern and muscle memory.
The puck carrier cuts in hard on the right, his teammate streaking to the left, stick tapping the ice. Miller angles his skates, matching their speed, stick extended as he tries to split the difference. He’s caught in the worst possible position… too far from the puck to challenge cleanly, too close to the passing lane to fully commit.
The forward sells the shot, pulling the puck in tight, shoulders dipping enough to suggest he’s going to take it himself. Miller bites half a step toward him, blade shifting, and that’s all it takes.
I don’t bite.
The pass comes anyway—threaded across the slot, flat and fast, sliding beyond Miller’s reach. He lunges, stick scraping the ice, but he’s a fraction late. The puck clears his blade by inches and lands clean on the other forward’s tape.
I’m already moving.
I push laterally, pads sliding against ice, chest square as my body stretches to cover the far side. The shooter doesn’t dust it off. He snaps the shot immediately, trying to beat me high glove side, aiming for the narrow seam of daylight above my shoulder.
It’s often as if time slows.
I see the puck leave his stick.
See the black blur rising, tracking its arc instead of guessing where it might go. My glove hand reacts on instinct, snapping up and outward, fingers flaring open.
Impact.
The puck hits the back of my glove with a sound I feel more than hear.
For a split second, everything goes quiet, then the whistle blows, and the fans go berserk.
I’m on my knees, glove pressed tight to my chest, the puck sealed there like a secret I refuse to give up. My heart hammers so hard I can feel it in my throat.
I rise to my feet only to have Luca Marcelli crash into me, nearly knocking me backward. His left winger, Oakes Anderson, follows. Someone slaps my helmet hard enough that I grunt, and I see it’s the other second-line defenseman, Chase Whitaker.
And then Miller is there, tapping my leg with his stick. “Thanks for saving my butt.”
“Great job in threading them. You didn’t make it easy for them to get a shot off.”
Miller lifts his chin and skates away. The third line comes on but there’s only nine seconds left. Still enough time for a bad bounce or a lucky shot, so there’s no celebrating yet.
♦
Axel’s house is already overwhelmed by the time we arrive, and that’s entirely his fault.
The win was barely five minutes old when he climbed up onto a bench in the locker room and announced the impromptu party at his place. I’m not sure how his wife will feel about having a house full of rowdy hockey players flying high after a victory against a really good team.
Axel lives five minutes from the arena, close enough that there’s no excuse, and after a finish like that—after that save—no one even pretended to hesitate. We earned this one and tomorrow is a travel day, so a party it is.