Page 67 of Jaded

He straightens, scooping blood away from his mouth with the back of his hand, reddened teeth bared, fists clenched—

“Hey! Hey! Who’s open?” The deep voice pulls my attention from my fighting opponent to Twenty-Three—currently swooping down the ice. Dancing and ducking, trying to keep the puck away from not one but two defenders—

I launch into motion without thinking. Leave behind my fight, my fucking gloves on the ice as I snatch my stick up. My feet already flying, carrying me towards him.

“Here! Open!”

Like he’s been waiting for me, he sends the pass roaring my way. So fucking clean, so neat, I don’t even have to move to cradle that catch. It’s there, on my stick, and I’m sailing past the D.

He’s there.

Right beside me.

The goalie’s watching me, so it’s only too easy to slide the puck sideways, onto his stick.

He shoots.

Goalie butterflies—

Too late.

The puck thumps the back of the net, and the crowd explodes.

We win.

Just like that.

I hold my bare fist out to the other guy. “Nice pass.”

“Same to you.” He bumps his glove against my bloodied fist, and I can’t help but think there’s something familiar about the timber of hisvoice, the set of his shoulders, the dark of his brown eyes. The way his mouth crooks into half a grin behind his mask.

But I know better than to ask if I know him. This is the Ice Out—you don’t tell people who you are.

The losers slide off the ice, and I don my gloves again.

Three more take their place. The game starts slow, hacky. Our opponents are fighters, not skaters, and the chippiness of their every move stirs my ire. The fight inside me begs for release.

There’s a reason I skate here and not with the Dingoes.

A reason my knuckles are scarred with a history of violence.

My swinging fist draws blood. An answering sideswipe might leave a faint bruise against my cheekbone. I threaten to end the fight with a nasty left hook to the ribs—

But then his voice cracks across the arena. “You open, Forty-Seven?”

And I’m skating. Tearing across the ice like a horse out of the gate, my blades carving crescents into the surface as I push harder to accelerate, to reach him in time.

The puck hits my stick. I’m moving so fast I barely have to turn to sidestep the second defenseman, and I’m around. Twenty-Three cuts in.

Like we’re two magnets connected by some otherworldly scientific force, my pass finds his stick. He swirls in a mindbending deke he handles like a neat party trick—skates curving one way, arms the other, blade lifting puck.

He tosses it up over the goalie’s shoulder. Lacrosse-style.

The crowd goes haywire.

Twenty-Three swoops away from the net, hands lifted in the air, intentionally riling up the crowd. Stirring them into a frenzy. “You want more of that?”

I notice the rampaging opponent before he does.

---