I’m not stupid. I know I’m playing with fire. But hell if I care. Fire feels good when it’s aimed at me.
I grin to myself in the mirror while pulling my hoodie over my head. My reflection stares back, smug, hungry. This is the part I love—before the game begins, when all the pieces are still on the board, and I know I’m already in control.
By the time I hit the rink, the buzz in my veins is thrumming loud enough to drown out the chatter of teammates trickling in. The air is sharp with that cold, metallic tang of ice, layered over by the rubbery smell of pads and sweat never fully washed out of gear bags. I love it. Feels alive. Feels like possibility.
And then I see him.
My Leander.
He’s already taping his stick, hunched low on the bench, headphones in. The movement is sharp, precise, like even tape jobs need to meet some impossible standard. He doesn’t look up when I walk in, doesn’t give me the satisfaction of a glance. But I know he feels me. His body gives it away—the stiff set of his shoulders, the too-straight line of his spine. He’s trying to avoid me, and that alone lights me up like gasoline on a match.
“Morning,” I toss casually, dropping my bag a little too close to his skates.
No answer. He peels his headphones out, stands, and moves down the bench to another spot without a word.
I laugh under my breath. Predictable. Delicious.
Fine, he can run. Running only makes the chase sweeter.
Once we hit the ice, drills start as usual—whistles sharp, skates carving into clean grooves, the crack of pucks against boards. I glide through warmups, stick handling smooth, body loose. But my eyes keep straying back to him.
Leander’s quick, deliberate; the kind of player who wastes no movement. Every stride looks measured, every shot lined up to perfection. But I catch the tiny tells—the second-too-long hesitation when I cut across his path, the clipped nod when the coach pairs us for a passing sequence.
He doesn’t want this pairing, but he doesn’t get to choose. Neither of us do. And now, we’re tethered together on ice for the next half hour.
Perfect.
I let my glove brush his wrist as I take the puck from him, just the faintest graze of leather over skin. His eyes flick to mine with warning but the faintest flush climbs his neck above his collar. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t break stride, but the tension coils tighter in his body.
Good. That’s exactly what I want.
“Nice feed,” I murmur, voice low enough that only he catches it.
His jaw clamps down. He whips the puck back to me harder than necessary, the slap reverberating up my stick. I bite back a laugh.
It turns into a dance after that, me pushing, him resisting. A shove of my shoulder into his as we pivot along the boards. A comment slipped under my breath when the coaches aren’t close enough to hear. A look held a second too long after a drill. He never snaps, never gives me the explosion I almost crave, but the storm is right there under his skin.
I can feel it.
And the more he tries to avoid me, the more I know he can’t.
By the first water break, my pulse is pounding and not from skating, but from the thrill of him. I tug my helmet up, down half my bottle, then let my gaze slide to where he’s posted alone at the far end of the bench. He drags a towel over his face, studiously avoiding me like his life depends on it.
I grin into the plastic rim of the bottle. He thinks distance will save him.
It won’t.
Not when he’s already mine in his head.
Because I know the truth—just like me, he hasn’t stopped thinking about that call, I’d bet every paycheck he’s replayed it a hundred times since Friday, hating himself for it, wanting more anyway. He can hide and dodge, but his body has already given him away.
And I plan to remind him of that every chance I get.
The rest of practice is a blur of drills, scrimmages, and contact plays, but the game under the surface keeps me sharper than any coach’s whistle. Every time our sticks clash, every time our shoulders collide near the glass, every time his breath comes ragged inside his cage, it fuels me.
By the time practice winds down, I’m sweating, sore, and more wound up than when I walked in. Not from the workout. From him. Always him.
The locker room hums with silence, that strange after-practice emptiness when the echoes of voices still hang in the air but the bodies are gone. Most of the guys bolted the second the drills ended, chasing food, sleep, or women.
