Christensen grinned at him. “Try to keep up tonight.”
“Not gonna be a problem,” he shot back and then went into his room to get ready for the morning skate.
Doing lazy loop-de-loops on the ice was one thing. Being in the mix of a morning skate was totally different. It was fucking magic. It always had been. Even when his dad had warned him that professional hockey wasn’t for everyone when Ian got drafted late, he hadn’t lost his love for it. The crisp air. The slice of his blades on the ice. The sound of the puck smacking on his stick. The high of watching the opposing goalie do a pretzel-bend trick and still not be able to stop the biscuit from crossing the line.
Three hours later, still riding that wave after a killer slap shot, he skated off the ice at the end of practice right toward the spot in the stands where Shelby sat typing away on her laptop. No doubt she was about to upload another update about the Ice Knights and the Petrov and Christensen show to The Biscuit’s blog.
“Hey, Petrov,” Alex called out from his spot by the bench. “Coach says to go see him before showers.”
Fuck. Really?
Without missing a stroke, he pivoted away from Shelby and toward the tunnel. But when he looked back over his shoulder, she was watching him skate away, her fingers pressed to her lips again, a slight blush making her cheeks pink, as if the rink had suddenly gotten twenty degrees warmer. Looking at her, he felt that heat wave himself.
“I’m sure it’s just to go over the plan for tonight, since you’ve been out for so long,” Christensen said, falling into step with him as they both got off the ice and walked on the rubber mats leading from the rink to the visitors’ locker room.
“Pregame milks in the locker room?” Ian asked, pausing for a second before he had to turn right outside of the locker room to go to Coach’s makeshift office.
Christensen’s eyes widened with surprise. They hadn’t chugged pregame milks in the locker room since the news that they shared a dad broke.
“I’ll bring them,” Christensen said, looking off past Ian as if there was something super interesting about the plain beige walls of the hallway.
Yeah. He got that. What did they have to say anyway? What was done was done.
Ramming his fingers through his sweaty hair, he turned and started toward Coach’s office. A brother. How many times growing up had he wished for one? Too many to count. His sisters were great but a brother, that was just different. Now he had one. Maybe that wasn’t the worst thing after all.
…
“What do you mean you’ve never been ice-skating?” Ian was trying to wrap his brain around that as he, Christensen, and Shelby had their usual team dinner at what everyone on the team was calling “the kiddie table.”
It made no sense. To a man, every guy on the team had probably been in skates almost as soon as they could walk. Professional hockey players started young, and they never stopped if they wanted to make it to the NHL. Shelby—someone who lived and breathed hockey almost as much as he did—smoothed her fingers across the close-cropped side of her hair and shrugged.
She fidgeted with her napkin. “You say that as if everyone has been ice-skating. I really don’t see what the big deal is.”
Didn’t.
See.
What.
The.
Big.
Deal.
Was?
The feel of fresh, smooth ice in a rink was all speed and adrenaline. A frozen pond? That was agility and quick reaction to the dips and divots in the top layer. Either way, skating was about as close to total freedom as he’d ever gotten, and that’s what made the game so great. It wasn’t just speed and skill, it was being strategic and knowing just when to lay a good hip check to take all that freedom away from an opposing player—and the puck, too.
Eyes practically popping out of his head, he glanced over at Christensen, who had the same big-eyed, what-the-fuck expression that Ian was sure he had on his own face. His brother looked over at him, and it was as if the past few months had never happened. In an instant, they had that old line of silent communication back again.
Raised eyebrow: She has no clue what she’s missing.
Double raised eyebrows: What do you think, go grab some unofficial ice time?
Quick look around followed by a conspiratorial smile: Really, it’s the right thing to do.
Clink of his glass to Christensen’s: You should do this.
They both got up while Shelby looked from one of them to the other. “What’s going on?”
“I’m taking you ice-skating,” he said as he got up. “It’ll be fun. I’ll hold on to you and everything so you don’t have to worry about falling.”
As she stood up, a nervous giggle squeaked out and she slapped her palm over her mouth as if to hold in any more high-pitched noises. Her cheeks turned pink and she immediately looked over at the big table of Ice Knights players. It wasn’t the first time she’d reacted like that whenever her volume went above the minimum. For someone who looked like such a badass, she seemed to just want to only be heard at the keyboard when she was writing for The Biscuit.
He couldn’t explain the urge that had him reaching out to bring her hand down; he just went with it. “You have a great laugh.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but it seemed to do the trick and the tension in her shoulders seeped out.
He and Shelby said their goodbyes to the rest of the team and walked out of the restaurant right into the blinding flash of the lone photographer lying in wait
