Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
It scared me almost as much as the thought that I’d actually lost Maven.
Watching Will at the goal, I wondered if this was how he felt, if this was why he was always so quiet, so severe and focused. I wondered if he threw himself into hockey so he wouldn’t have time to think about the loss of his wife.
My stomach roiled, and I thought I might actually puke there on the bench. One of the trainers ran over to check on me when I gagged, but I waved them off, assuring them I was fine. My eyes locked on Coach’s next, begging him to call the line change so I could get back in.
When we cleared the puck out of our zone, Coach nodded, and I was already jumping the boards as the other line skated over to the bench.
As soon as my skates hit the ice, I felt calmer, steadier, less like I was about to spin out of orbit and float off into space. That ice grounded me, the thrum of the crowd humming in my veins as I sprinted toward the puck. I slammed into Ryan Crosby, heaving us both into the boards where we battled for the puck until I stole it away.
Then, I was skating down the ice.
I passed to our center, running a play that I knew would get me in scoring position. As soon as I was lined up, he shot the puck back to me.
But before I could take a swing, I was tripped.
I felt the stick catch my ankle, felt how my feet were pulled up from under me without a chance in hell of me saving it. I slammed down to the ice, my breath knocked out of me to the roaring disapproval of the crowd.
The boos intensified when the ref didn’t call the foul.
I jumped up, gritting my teeth before I laid into him. “Need to borrow my cell, ref? You got a few missed calls.”
He ignored me, which was par for the course, and normally I would have shaken it off.
But nothing about tonight was normal.
Before sense could set in, I skated hard and fast down the ice toward the player who had tripped me, and I shoved him into the glass so hard the entire stadium let out a collective, “Oh!”
Crosby was the first one to swing at me when he saw his teammate knocked to the ice, and then we were all fighting, the crowd cheering as we whaled on each other until the refs peeled us apart.
When they did, I was being steered toward the penalty box.
Coach gave me a stern look when they tossed me in, and I kicked the side of the boards before slamming my stick against the glass so hard I wondered if I’d cracked it.
I sat down furious, stewing, glancing at the clock and cursing when I saw we only had six minutes left. Two of those minutes would be a power play for our opponents now.
I cracked my neck as the puck was dropped and the power play began. Our fans chanted and cheered, giving their support to the four players we had on the ice trying to defend the post. Daddy P was an absolute weapon, blocking every shot that came close.
I watched from the sin bin with my eyes losing focus, brain fuzzy and in a daze. I wasn’t on the ice, and I felt that numbness creeping in again, threatening to drown me, to take me under and never let me up for air.
I glanced up at the clock, and then down at the bench across the ice, hoping to lock eyes with one of my teammates and get the reinforcement I needed to pull me back to the game.
Instead, I found Maven.
Time slugged to a stop like an old train, every noise that made the collective roar of the arena fading out piece by piece. First it was the screams, and then the sticks hitting the ice, the skates, the chirps, until nothing existed but my heartbeat.
It was unsteady and loud in my ears, my ribcage restricting every breath as I blinked, wondering if I was imagining her there. When she hadn’t shown by the second period, I was so sure she wouldn’t show at all.
But here she was — eyes red and swollen under the makeup she’d tried to cover them with. Even still, she was breathtaking.
She stood at the end of the bench, half-hidden behind the thick glass that led back to our locker room. Her hair was tied at the nape of her neck, an Ospreys hat pulled over top. Even from across the ice I noted the freckles on her cheeks, the ones I had mapped out at this point from all the mornings I’d traced the lines between them as she slept next to me.