Page 13 of Halftime

At the next break in play, Cooper skated by and tapped my pads. “Guess we should have known after the freshman practice that you can take care of yourself.”

“Hell yes.”

“And you aren’t going to clutch your pearls if we swear.” He smirked.

I shoved up my face guard. “That was nothing. If someone gets in my crease, I’ll really get upset. And loud.”

Cooper narrowed his eyes. I wondered if he was one of those guys who didn’t like women who swore. He’d seemed cool at the party a couple of weeks ago, but assholes sometimes had good fronts.

“You’re from Canada, right?”

I nodded. Canadians might be known to be polite, but hockey players weren’t going to say sorry all the time.

“Toronto?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Just working out something.”

I had no idea what. The coach blew his whistle, and play started back up, so I put down my visor and got back into the playing zone.

* * *

Sebastien

I admit, I freaked out a bit playing with Faith. I couldn’t get out of my head. I was slow to join play in the offensive zone and spent too much time watching the net when we were in our own zone. Cooper noticed. Of course, he did. Fortunately, Briggs got moved into net after a bit, and I could focus on my own fucking game for the rest of practice.

Coach told me to get my head out of my ass, which was deserved, and I promised to do better. He gave me a sharp look but let it go. A lot of the guys had had problems playing with the women. The women didn’t appear to have any trouble. The guys were tentative about checking and gave them too much space. That lasted about ten minutes, until they handed us our asses and Coach blew up at us. Then we smartened up. I still missed a couple of checks, but this was an exhibition game, so we didn’t need to play that hard. Except, of course, we wanted to avoid suicide drills.

After practise, we went back to the hockey house to grab some food and rest. This was the first pre-season game, so we were following game-day schedule.

I went up to my room, and Coop knocked on the doorframe.

I looked up from my textbook. I wanted to get on top of my reading. I’d told Holly I’d be tied up until after the game. The women’s team was hosting a party after, and I’d promised her we’d go together. Faith was not going to mess with my head anymore.

“Got a minute, Hunter?”

I put my book down. I was on my bed, and he sat on the desk chair.

“What’s up?”

He stared at me for a minute, and I wondered what was wrong.

“Is Faith the one?”

I froze. I couldn’t speak. I wasn’t ready to talk about Faith. How the hell had he worked this out?

“Devereaux. You two obviously know each other, but you pretend you don’t.” I shook my head a bit, and he held up a hand. “She didn’t swear at any of us or call us by our first names.”

At least Faith was the one who’d messed up.

“Plus, you knew she’d done that newbie shoot-out thing before, but then you disappeared. And her name is Faith.”

I’d mentioned her name last year when it had all gone down. I hadn’t said she was a hockey player. I hadn’t said much about her to anyone those first couple of weeks before the big blowup, but I had said her name. I’d hoped no one had remembered.

“She’s from Toronto, and you were playing like someone else while she was in net today.”

Cooper was listing everything off like I was on the stand and he was cross-examining me. Had he switched to a prelaw major? He leaned back, waiting for me to respond. He knew. No way I could deny it. I forced my muscles to relax. I hadn’t committed a crime. It was just embarrassing.

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