Page 90 of Jaded

The one I hope never stops haunting me.

Chapter 22

Olli

Ithinkmaybeyou’rethe one who got those words wrong.

Two days, and I’m still humming the song he wrote for me. Well, notforme—for my poem. Somehow, that’s even more intimate. Not that I’ve ever had a guy write a song for me, but like . . . this dude set my stupid words tomusic, and I don’t know what to do with that.

Luckily, the next two days are so busy I don’t have time to dwell on anything that’s happened: My conversation with Coach. The kiss at the bar. The boy with the green eyes and the backwards cap.

That song, however, is doing wonderful things for my mood.

I know it’s not real, this buzzing high of the crush. It’s external validation, it’s the false rush of a drug. And when it wears off, it’ll leave me lower than ever.

But for right now, I’m gonna ride this wave, right onto the bus, onto the plane, and into the next away game.

I hope.

We’re on the ice once more, poised for another face-off.

Puck drops, and I surge forward. Shove my back to the opposing center as that puck hits the ice near my feet.

Kick puck to stick.

Flick—it scoots forward to reach Holls on the wing, dropped back in a perfect read of my play.

Holls zooms forward, and I race free to open for the pass.

Puck to tape. In my control now as I sail over the blue line into the Eagles’ zone. Two defense, goalie ahead. Dev lurking just behind.

Defenseman hurtles towards me, and I drop the puck for Dev as we collide. Dev follows with a cross-ice pass onto Holls’s blade.

One-timer.

The puck bounces off the goalie’s pads, evoking a sigh of relief from the watching crowd, but I’m already cutting in, crashing the net.

Lifting the puck in a shot—

I let the game take me.

For whatever else I might be, for all the self-doubt I’ve let invade my soul, I am damn good at hockey, and every once in a while I let myself remember it.

This is one of those games. I own every play, every shift—skates on the ice, hands on the stick, eyes on the players, dictating the direction of the game.

My passes fly tape to tape, saucering over the ice in neat little arches, flitting into the tiny gaps between opponents’ sticks and pads to find Dev’s or Charlie’s waiting blades.

I always know where they are.

I’m always open for them.

The Eagles’ defense can never quite seem to catch us, touch us, stop us.

Somehow, somehow, we’re everywhere and nowhere all at once.

My very first shot finds the back of the net, launching our bench into a frenzy of cheering and sending the crowd behind us into a volley of groans.

I grin.

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