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I lower my eyes to my skates, drawing myself back to create distance between us. Distance Hudson clearly wants now.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he says. It’s hard to tell if he’s talking to me or himself.
I lift my eyes back to him. “I told you to.”
“I guess we both got … carried away.”
My lips twitch downward. Carried away. Sure.
Hudson’s got his hockey season coming up. His first here at Brumehill. I have my big competition with Jeremy coming up. Two good reasons for either of us not to jump into a real relationship, I guess.
But I just got a taste of what it feels like for Hudson Voss to kiss me for real. It’s something I want to feel again, no matter how many reasons there are to tell myself I shouldn’t.
After Hudson and I leave the rink, after I go home, when I’m lying in bed that night, feeling that kiss again is exactly what I think about when my hand sinks into my shorts.
24
HUDSON
For the thousandth time, my lips tingle with the memory of Summer’s taste, and I’m transported back to when we were alone on that rink, when …
I snap out of it in a flash, noticing that one of New Hampshire’s players just stole the puck from Rhys and is skating towards me, his eyes locked on me like a hunter, waiting for the perfect moment to send the puck past me and score.
His shoulders twitch, and I react instinctively, drawing on my years of experience to anticipate where he’s going to launch the puck.
But he fakes me out. When I commit too much in one direction, he sends the puck slicing through the air and fits it through the space above my left shoulder. That’s how I give up my first goal as a Back Bear.
“Shit!” I curse behind my mask.
We’re still up 2-1, and we’re deep into the third period. We’ve still got a firm grasp on victory. And sure enough, New Hampshire can’t follow up that goal, and when the end of game buzzer blares through the away stadium, we end with another win.
But I never should have let that puck past me.
It was a solid fake out, but I’ve blocked thousands of better ones. There’s only one reason that goal got scored on me. My mind wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
I wasn’t focusing on the game. I was thinking about kissing Summer. Which is exactly why it never should have happened.
When the kisses with Summer were all fake, it was easy to compartmentalize them. Lock them up in the back of my mind when I needed to focus on something else, and only reach for those memories when I wanted to.
But a real kiss? I can’t keep it behind any mental bars. It runs free through my mind, snagging my attention according to its own will, even at the worst possible moments. Even when I’m on the ice, when nothing else in the world is supposed to matter.
That’s why what Summer and I are doing has to stay fake.
When we’re getting changed in the back, everyone’s happy about another win. The guys are even telling me I had a great game. I can only shake my head. I can already hear my dad’s voice reaming me out for allowing a goal. It’s only a matter of time before he calls to do so.
“Come on, bro. Don’t tell me you’re down over missing that one save,” Tuck says to me while I walk from the shower, a dour look no doubt etched on my face.
“It was the simplest fake out in the book,” I grouse, feeling self-anger tightening in my back. “I never should’ve let something like that through.”
“It was a good shot, Hudson,” Lane says as he steps into a pair of joggers. “A shot like that gets past a goalie nine times out of ten, no matter how good he is in the crease.”
Yeah, but I need to be that one in ten. Otherwise, I might as well hang up my skates right now.
I shove in my AirPods when I take my seat on the bus to drown out the conversation around me. I let my eyes glaze over as I lean my head against the window, blurry scenery rushing past me outside the bus. My memory won’t stop replaying that fake out I should’ve seen coming. The fake out I would have seen coming if my mind was where it was supposed to be.
Maybe I need to pull back from Summer a little bit. Still hold up my end of this fake relationship, of course, because Salsa still needs a place to stay. But stop opening up with her the way I have been.
No more baking things to share with her. No more talking about our pasts. No more book recommendations. No more videos of her in my jersey.
