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He puts his thumb and forefinger against the corners of my mouth and pushes them upward.
“Let’s turn that frown upside down,” he says.
I bat at his hand. “I will chop those fingers off.”
“See? You’re already getting into the fighting spirit,” he says. “Keep that attitude. You’re going to need it.”
He throws his arm over my shoulders and starts steering me toward the blue metal doors. I dig my feet into the sidewalk, but it’s no use.
“Come on.” He pushes the door open and me inside.
“Is this place even open?” I ask. My voice echoes eerily, and it’s dark.
“No,” Ryker says.
“So we’re breaking in.”
He snorts and flashes a grin my way. “Don’t worry. I know people.”
“Oh, well, if you know people then that’s obviously fine, because if somebody calls the cops I can just be all, ‘Oh, it’s okay. You see, Ryker knows people,’” I grumble.
He just laughs and pushes me forward through another set of double doors.
“Just a sec,” he says. He disappears for a moment and then the lights come on. I sigh and stare gloomily at all the ice.
Ryker appears next to me again and holds out a pair of skates.
“Is there any point in arguing?” I ask.
“If you want to waste time.”
“Running away?”
“I’ll tackle you,” he says.
I send him a sour look and take the skates.
I drop on my back on the ice, wheezing, breathless. The cold seeps into my back. The freezing air is stabbing my lungs as if I’m inhaling ice crystals, black spots creating patterns in front of my eyes.
Serious self-reflection moment. Am I out of shape? Because I swear I used to be able to do this. Granted, not for hours on end and not perfectly, but I didn’t used to have blurry vision or show signs of an impending heart attack after forty minutes on skates. And I should know. There was that winter holiday when I was fourteen when I spent an ungodly amount of time hanging out at the pond behind Ryker’s house while he taught me how to play.
I don’t get to contemplate that for too long, because almost immediately I receive a face full of snow when Ryker shows off his hockey stop skills, and the tip of a carbon fiber blade digs into my cheek. I glance over my head at Ryker and the smug grin I’d like to wipe off his face, if only I had enough energy to move my arm.
“Giving up already?” He puts a laughably flimsy look of fake concern on his face that he further undermines with the way his lips twitch as he looks at me.
“If you were an orphan, and I was a billionaire, I wouldn’t adopt you,” I tell him. “I’d take every other kid off the streets. And then once that’s done, I’d drive past you in my orphan party bus and flip you off.”
He adjusts the forest green wool hat on his head.
“It’s cute you think you’d get the chance. I’d be such an awesome orphan there’d be a line out the door for me the moment people got a whiff I was on the market for a new set of parents. Now, look alive, rookie. We’re just getting started.”
“Screw you,” I gasp.
“Is that an offer? Because I accept.” He waggles his brows.
He laughs when I pull off my glove just so I can flip him off more easily. He extends his hand to me, and I let him pull me to my feet, slightly dizzy from getting up too quickly. He’s already skating backward away from me until he gets to the puck and hits it my way.
“Ten more minutes,” he says.
