Rosie
My friend only had eyes for a certain hockey player.
She was pretending that she didn’t.
Pretending that he didn’t draw her focus each and every time he was on the ice, pretended she wasn’t watching the way that he interacted with his teammates on the bench, how he’d passed over pucks before the game, how he’d smiled and joked during warm-ups.
Look.
I got it.
My own focus was on my hockey player.
But not just because I wanted him, because he fascinated me, because I loved him and was proud of all the things that he did—hockey, notwithstanding. I was closely focused on him because of what he’d shared about his profession.
How burned out he felt.
How he was struggling to find his love for the game.
How he was thinking…he might be done.
And I knew how that felt, and I wanted to support him like he had me.
It was just…strange.
Because he was killing it on the ice—killing it. Raking up points he’d never seen before, playing at a level and speed I had never seen before.
I wasn’t a sports expert by any means.
But I knew my man was supposed to be on the leeward side of his career.
Supposed to be slowing down.
Furthermore, with the drama surrounding our lives the last few months, the stress he’d been under, he should be playing worse, not better.
Instead, he seemed to have laser focus when he was out there.
And tonight, with the Calder Cup within their grasp if they won this game, he was on fire.
So yeah, it was hard to focus on Joel and Dessie.
But I was talented at multitasking and being nosy, so I was able to track both of them.
And the longing on Dessie’s face, and the pain and worry and hope and—
Yup.
She was feeling a lot, and it was all big.
I got it—more so now that she’d opened up about what had happened. I didn’t know how to solve it, how to help her stitch up the grievous wound that was inside her like she’d helped me patch myself up. I just knew I had to be here for her, physically, emotionally, to be available when she needed me.
That was what friends did.
In the meantime, I was working my Mayoral Magic—or maybe I needed to rename that, considering I wasn’t going to be mayor for much longer.
A special election was happening in the fall.
My vice mayor was almost ready to take over.
I’d be around to help.
But…I was moving on.
Dessie, I worried, wasn’t.
Dessie, I feared, was so focused on the past that she might never find a way to move forward herself.
Only…the way she looked at Fox didn’t seem—
Clang.
The puck hit off the boards right in front of us, making me jump, drawing my focus from my friend and back onto the ice, seeing Fox trailing after a player who was hauling ass toward our goalie.
And our D were…
Not in the right position.
I’d learned that during my time with my hockey-playing fiancé.
Go me.
Unfortunately, the Rush weren’t very go-like.
They were slow or had been caught flat-footed or whatever the right hockey term was for a bunch of players from the other team beating them into their own end of the ice and their goalie being the only one available to defend was called.
“Shit,” Dessie muttered.
Yeah. That.
I reached for her hand, clenching tight. She clenched right back.
“Crap,” Veronica whispered from my other side.
I reached for her hand, winding my fingers through hers.
Because also, yeah. That.
We held tight and focused on our players skating back, our goalie moving forward to challenge the other team. I didn’t know about Dessie or Veronica, but my lungs froze, all the air within them stilling, holding my breath, digging my toes into the soles of my shoes.
The puck sailed across the ice, landing on an opposing player’s stick, who corralled it from the air with seemingly little issue at all.
Like breathing.
Easy for them.
Challenging as hell for me right then.
He lifted his stick, shot, and I exhaled in a rush—no pun intended—when our goalie stopped it, when it ricocheted loudly off his pads, and shot into the corner.
“Come on,” I whispered as Joel and Fox and Ryan and the others sailed into their own zone, got on their opponents, closed ranks around their goalie.
But the other team kept possession.
And my guy, his linemates, they were all chasing.
Hell, they couldn’t even get close.
I didn’t know if it was because they were exhausted, or because they were just…discombobulated after the sprint back, or if it was because the other team was better at that moment.
All I knew was that it was painful to watch the man I loved, the men I cared about, the team I was rooting for struggle out there—even if that struggling was less than a minute.
Back and forth.
Getting the puck. Losing it.
A shot on the goalie. That he stopped again, sending it away from the net.
Another shot that Joel blocked, echoing off his shin guards and he went down on one knee, his face screwed up in pain.
“Shit,” I whispered this time. “Shit.”
Dessie squeezed my hand. “He’s okay,” she murmured. “He’s okay. Look.”
I was looking.
My eyes hadn’t gone anywhere but there, hadn’t strayed from Joel as he tried to get his leg out from under him, tried to get up onto his skates.
But one leg wasn’t working quite right.
He couldn’t put all of his weight on it.
“Come on,” I whispered, eyes stinging, stomach knotting. I hadn’t been in this position before, hadn’t watched Joel, obviously hurt, struggle to get up, to get back into the play, to help his teammates as they fought to keep the score even.
And it was a fight.
A battle.
A fucking war.
“He’s got it,” Dessie said. “Oh, damn. Look! He’s got it.”
Joel was up.
Still skating awkwardly, but he was boxing out one of the guys on the other team, pushing them toward the blue line, toward the boards.
Thunk.
Another shot that had me gasping, that had me wincing and squeezing Dessie’s hand even harder.
He dropped to one knee.
But only for a second.
Then he was launching himself to the side.
THUNK!
The puck hit him again and the crowd gasped, but my man—my tough, amazing, insane man—just reached out with his stick and chipped the rubber disc out of his own end of the ice…
Sending it right onto the blade of Fox’s stick.
I gasped.
Dessie gasped.
Veronica gasped.
The entire arena gasped.
The men on the ice didn’t.
Fox started hauling butt down to the other end of the rink, moving faster than I’d ever seen him move, even though he had to be exhausted, even though he’d been on the ice for far too long. Ryan was right on his heels, trailing close behind him.
But my gaze kept darting back to Joel, who was all but crawling toward his bench, clearly in pain, clearly struggling. But intent on getting back to the door, so that his teammate could get on the ice and help out.
“Come on,” I whispered again.
“Come on,” Dessie whispered for a whole different reason, her gaze on Fox.
“Come on,” Veronica whispered for another whole different reason, her gaze on Ryan.
I looked back. Joel was almost to the open door.
Then my stare moved out across the ice again seeing that Fox was over the blue line now. Ryan was right behind him, getting in the way of the other team’s defenseman, giving Fox room to maneuver, to move closer to the goal.
“Come on!” Dessie bellowed, the noise lost in the screams from the rest of the crowd, all of them rooting for Fox as he streaked in.
As he closed in on the goalie.
My eyes flew back to Joel, saw that he’d finally made it to the open door, that his teammates were helping him onto the bench, that a trainer was immediately by his side.
But Joel wasn’t paying attention to him.
His gaze was on the ice.
On Fox.
I turned back, watched the big man dart to the side, lift his stick.
He shot.
The puck flew toward the net, and—