Page 37 of Pucking Curves

“My bad, Graves.” I can tell by his tone that the prick doesn’t mean it.

“Get the fuck off m–”

“You dirty son of a bitch.” Jordan hauls Oliveira off, shoving him hard.

He lands on his ass, laughing.

“I’m getting real sick of that motherfucker tonight,” Jordan mutters, hauling me back to my feet with a thunderous scowl on his face.

I grit my teeth, hissing out a breath.

“You’re hurt.” Jordan’s eyes narrow in assessment. “How bad is it?”

“I’m fine.”

“Fucking liar. How bad is it?”

“Not bad enough to get me off this ice,” I murmur, voice pitched low as the ref skates up.

Jordan jerks his chin in a nod, keeping his mouth shut when the ref asks if I’m good. My knee isn’t blown, so it’ll be fine long enough for us to win this fucking game.

“You need to get him under control,” Jordan snaps at the ref. “That hit was dirty, and you know it.”

“It was an accident,” Oliveira lies. “I tripped.”

“I already warned you once, Oliveira,” the ref says before assessing a penalty for checking from behind against him, effectively knocking him out for the rest of the game.

Their coach is pissed, glaring at Oliveira like he wants to hit him.

“Should have been game misconduct,” Jordan mutters, handing my helmet to me.

I grunt, securing my helmet before we line up again. My gaze drifts toward the row behind our bench, where Wren is sitting with Elodie, Emilia, Alice, and Logan’s girl, Peyton. Her eyes are locked on me, her lips pulled down into a frown. She’s worried about me. But fuck. Just seeing her out there, wearing my jersey is like a shot of adrenaline.

Play resumes with the Dutchmen down a skater and fire in my veins. My knee throbs like a motherfucker as I line up a shot, preparing to send the puck hurtling toward the goal.

I see their center racing toward me at the last second and change the angle of the shot, sending the puck careening across the ice toward Micah.

Their goalie doesn’t even have time to adjust before Micah sends it whizzing toward him. The puck goes right past him into the net, and the sirens go off.

Micah glances at me and then away.

I grit my teeth and skate toward the bench. There’s no goddamn way the Dutchmen are going to catch up now. We have a minute and half left on the clock.

“Told you that he was out for blood,” River mutters as I limp into the box, and he races out for an unplanned shift change.

Coach takes one look at me and scowls before hurrying over with one of the trainers right behind him. “What’d you injure?”

“My knee,” I mutter, dropping onto the bench between Joaquin and Trenton. “Twisted it when I went down.”

“Son of a bitch. Get to the back and let the doc check it out, Graves.” Coach holds up a hand. “Don’t argue. We need you ready to go when we face the Bucks next game.”

Fuck. The Bucks are Jordan’s old team. He got booted from the team for kicking Jamison Peters’ ass in the middle of a game. The prick deserved it. Hell, he deserves jail for the shit he did. But that didn’t happen. Things are always tense when we go up against them. I’m guessing it’ll be even more so since Jamison’s little sister showed up here to talk to Jordan.

“I’m going,” I mutter to Coach, hauling myself back to my feet.

I shoot a look at Wren who is on her feet, looking at me.

“You okay?” she mouths.

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