Page 18 of Pucked Up

I wanted him panicked. I wanted him to go back to Boden and warn him that he was on thin goddamn ice.

Ford went pale again. “I have to, uh… Listen, I gotta go. I have to call my sandwich guy. I’m late with my order.”

“You have a…sandwichguy?”

“Yes. He’s amazing. He creates miracles with salami. Don’t ask me his name though!” He stood up and stumbled toward the door. “But he hates French people. And coaches. And people new in town. And don’t ask anyone else about it. They’ll lie and say I made him up. Okay, bye!”

He was gone, and the moment the door shut, I let out a heavy sigh and bent forward until my forehead knocked on the side of the desk. “Ow.”

Turning my head, my eyes snagged on my single office photo of Reid. I’d taken it in Key Largo during our five-year anniversary trip. He was standing on the end of a pier at sunset, the wind blowing his hair back away from his face.

His flow, he’d called it. His good luck flow. I could still remember what it felt like when I ran my fingers through it.

We’d been so good together. Best friends in ways I’d never been friends with anyone before him. But our relationship had cooled years ago. Not in a way that made me unhappy, but in a way that led me to forget how good something new could feel.

I thought, after Reid, I wouldn’t miss that sensation of lightning in my veins. And I hadn’t felt it with any hookup who had come after him.

Until Boden.

I wished I could get under a scalding shower and scrub him away from the inside out, but he was under my skin where I couldn’t reach. I didn’t know what to do. Time was supposed to fade this desperate want.

But every time I saw him, it only got worse.

And in just a few hours, I’d have to look into his angry eyes again and fantasize what we could have had, if he wasn’t such an obnoxious little shit.

Or if I wasn’t such a goddamn coward.

Two weeks later, and there was blood on the ice again. By some miracle, Boden hadn’t been ejected, and he hadn’t tried to fight me this time. But I could feel his glare like a physical thing as he sat in the sin bin. It wasn’t set up for the sleds exactly, so all I could see was his helmet-mussed hair and his eyes, which were only just visible over the ledge of the penalty box.

He looked like an angry cat, and he was directing all that fury at me.

He was, once again, fucking up all my plays. They should have had at least half a dozen decent shots on goal. Somehow, they were able to save four. Tucker had managed to recover one, and Cooper had two. Ford had the last one, though it went slightly wide and hit the post, and the Dogs recovered the puck to score against us with two minutes to go in the second period.

Boden had lost it then. I could tell he was angry at his friends more than he was angry at the guy with the number twelve on his jersey, but he had nowhere else to put his anger.

It was worrying. This was a goddamn community league. There was a reason fighting was prohibited. These guys were all friends, for fuck’s sake. We were definitely going to have a chat after the game.

A very long, hard, stern…chat.

I turned away, fighting the urge to fan myself as I gripped the back of Tucker’s jersey. “I want you taking over for him. I’m benching him.”

Tucker stared at me, eyes wide behind his mask.He knew though. I could see it on his face. Boden was fucking this all up, and it wasn’t fair to the rest of the team. I might have wanted him desperately, and dreamed about it nightly, but I couldn’t let him ruin this for these guys.

He was better than that, and I was starting to get truly angry about it.

Shoving up my sleeves, I gripped the wall and leaned down. “Are you going to fight me on this?”

Tucker sighed. “No, Coach.”

“Good man.” The buzzer sounded as if to punctuate my sentence, and that was it for the period. There was always a flurry of guys abandoning their sleds for their wheelchairs, then a fumble to get back into the locker room.

It was a reminder that they probably needed longer than fifteen minutes to be equitable to an NHL game, though this was not the NHL. But no one was complaining.

I followed the guys back through the doors, but as they all sat around wiping off sweat and spitting on the ground, Boden wasn’t with them. For a moment, I felt a surge of panic. Had he been left in the box?

I snagged Ford, who was just coming in through the door on one crutch, and I yanked him close. “Go over the plays for the third period with the guys. I’m going to find Boden.”

“Don’t bother. He took off.”

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