Page 69 of The Longest Shot
A smile that almost looks like a dare.
Something about the light in his eyes makes me remember how young we both are and how much time I’ve wasted being afraid. All that time, protecting myself from hurt instead of chasing joy, wasted. So, letting go andlivingjust this once, I let Mills pull me into the circle my team has formed on the dance floor’s edge.
The music is objectively terrible—some auto-tuned nightmare about bottles and models—and the bass feels like repeated chest compressions, but my team doesn’t care. Theymove with graceless enthusiasm, arms around shoulders, laughing at their own ridiculous rhythm.
But me?
I stand frozen.
Every muscle locked.
This was a mistake.
I don’t know how to just… let go.
As if sensing my hesitation, Sarah grabs one hand, slightly sticky with spilled drinks, and Rachel grabs the other. They start moving me physically, like animating a mannequin, and it’s so ridiculous that a sound escapes that's not quite a laugh, but close, like the rusty machinery of joy is creaking to life.
“There she is!” Mills shouts, voice cracking with delight. “I knew Morgan was in there somewhere under all that ice!”
I catch James's eye again. He’s leaning back, Cooper saying something requiring hand gestures, but James isn’t paying attention. He’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite read, something that looks dangerously like pride mixed with want.
The bass drops, and instead of fighting it, I let it in. Let it vibrate through me. My hips find the beat first, muscle memory from before I locked myself in a fortress, when I was just a girl dancing in her room or with her friends, and before betrayal taught me that happiness was ammunition for others.
“Holy shit, she’s actually doing it,” Jen says, laughing, not mocking, and the distinction matters.
The movement feels foreign at first. My shoulders are locked, spine rigid, but soon I warm up and suddenly I’m moving and laughing. Not the sharp bark I use as punctuation, but something from deep in my chest that makes my face hurt from smiling.
“Our captain is human!” Sarah yells, throwing her arms around me in a move that six weeks ago would have ended with her untimely death.
Instead, I let her pull me deeper into their ridiculous circle. My body loosens incrementally—shoulders dropping, spine softening, that knot between my shoulder blades finally releasing—and then I'm spinning, arms raised, dizzy and young and impossibly light.
Suddenly, in the middle of this pack of my closest teammates, I realize what this is. I've helped mold them into a tough-as-nails hockey team, all steel and sharp edges. In return—in appreciation?—they're helping me rediscover something that I was sure was lost forever.
Me.
Suddenly, I realize I'm in a two-front war. On one side, my team is trying to fight their way to that part of me that keeps everyone at arm's length, and positivelycannotmake friends with anyone lest I be hurt. And James is hunting down the part of me that always wants to rebuild walls and refuses to trust.
As I dance, I watch him, and he's watching me.
He’s not pretending to pay attention to his friends anymore. Just watching me with this expression—like I’m a wrapped present he’s been shaking, trying to guess what’s inside, and now he’s finally seeing hints through the paper. And when our eyes meet, he mouths something…
I'm pretty sure it'sbeautiful.
Heat floods through me. Not the sharp spike of attraction I’ve been fighting every time we meet, but something far more dangerous. Something that makes me want to walk over there and claim that mouth that’s been haunting my dreams, show everyone that he's mine even though he isn’t, can’t be, won’t be?—
“Shots!” Mills appears with a tray of something violently green. “Team tradition! Everyone drinks!”
“I don’t?—”
“Vice captain's orders,” she says, pressing the glass into my hand. “Unless you’re afraid of a little alcohol?”
My team clusters around, their ice queen captain, who they love anyway.
The realization steals my breath.
“To the Morgue!” Mills raises her glass. “The scariest, toughest, most badass bitch in college hockey!”
“To the Morgue!” they echo, and I’m raising my glass with them, the burn sliding down my throat, tasting awful and perfect at the same time.
