I shovedown my mixed emotional response that I don’t want to examine too closely right now and ask, “What did I get wrong?” I legitimately thought I had that right. Iwatchedthem do that stuff in training camp. How can I be wrong?
Felix gives a one-shoulder shrug, his gaze sliding away from my face and back to the ice. “There’s no ball in hockey. We use a puck.”
Fuck, I knew that. Sort of. I don’t think I actually registered what it’s called, but I knew it wasn’t a ball. English might not be my first language, but my grasp of it is good enough for that.
“Puck,” I repeat, because what else do I say? How am I always unprepared with this man? “Thanks. But, uh, I know you’re busy. I can watch some televised games and pick up the important stuff. I don’t want to take up your time.” And make even more of a fool of myself than I already have.
Frustratingly, he shakes his head. “I said I’d teach you about the game, and I will,” he insists stubbornly. “It’s no trouble at all.” He mutters something that I’m probably not supposed to hear, but I catch a couple of words—something about “impress” and “team player.”
Who’s he trying to impress? Surely not me. The DEA, maybe? But he’s a felid shifter—why would he care what my government thinks of him?
But then, he’s also friends with Jared, who’s consort to the king. Maybe he wants to impress his friend’s boyfriend?
Or maybe it’s something else entirely. Either way, his motivation doesn’t really matter to me—it’s not going to change the fact that I’m being forced to learn about a game I have no interest in from a man I’m sure must despise me in an attempt to redeem myself in the eyes of my boss and king.
Racking up the wins, Ari.
“Are you sure?” I press. “Because?—”
His head jerks around, and he glares at me. “I fucking said I’d do it.” The hard words bounce around the rink, and his shoulders drop. “I mean… Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I’m happy to teach you about the game I love.”
My mind races, magic vibrating under my skin. For a split second there, my danger instinct kicked in, and I was on the verge of taking defensive action. I’ve witnessed Felix’s temper on the ice and in that long-ago footage from his ex-boyfriend’s doorbell camera, but this is the first time I’ve seen it directed at me personally. Even when I was being an ass to him during the interview at the DEA, he didn’t snap like that, and I was giving him far more provocation than today’s simple question.
Was I right all along about him being a danger to others? The evidence didn’t seem to support it, but maybe I need to dig back into it from another angle.
Not right this second, though. For now, my priority needs to be the job I was assigned by Eoin, and if that means I need to learn about hockey… fine.
“Very well, then. Where do we begin?” The stilted tone draws his attention back to me, and I wish, not for the first time, that I was a better actor. Anytime I’m even slightly off-kilter, theformal speech patterns of my childhood rear their stupid heads and I sound like someone shoved a stick up my ass.
Felix seems like he’s going to speak, then stops, takes a deep breath, and forces a smile. “Let’s start here,” he suggests, gesturing out to the rink. “Do you see the lines painted under the ice?”
They’re impossible to miss, but I bite back my instinct to say something snarky. He’s doing me a favor, and he’s trying to be nice about it.
“Yes.”
“Okay, so—wait. Are you familiar with any team sports? Here on Earth, I mean.”
“I’ve watched some basketball,” I admit. I’m not an expert, by any means, but I can mostly follow the game. Some of my counterparts at CSG have a hoop in one of the offices, and I got interested after they challenged me to “shoot some hoops,” a phrase that is inexplicable without a demonstration.
“Great! Okay, so hockey is like basketball only in the sense that they’re both team sports and both require you to have five players on the ice—or court—at a time. In hockey, we also have the goalie.”
“Who stays at the net to block goals,” I volunteer, wanting to make up for the ball comment earlier.
Felix beams, and something unfurls deep inside me. Something… surprising. The wide smile makes him look different—young and carefree. He’s young, even for a felid—the Earth species may have finite lives, unlike us, but forty years is nothing to a species that lives more than twenty-five times that—but I’d somehow forgotten. Every time I’ve seen him, he’s been so serious, so focused… and sometimes so angry. The smile transforms him from that person to someone I can understand Consort Jared being friends with.
“That’s exactly right,” he agrees. “Okay, so let’s start with the goalie, then. They stay in front of the net to block goals. Do you see that blue rectangle?” He points toward one of the goals, and I look. “That’s called the crease, and it’s the goalie’s domain.”
“They have to stay there?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “They don’thaveto, but I don’t want to go into too many technical details just yet. The goalie is generally going to stay in the crease, because that’s the best way for them to do their job of blocking goals.”
“Makes sense.”
He snorts. “Yeah. Anyway, the goalie is the only player who’s on the ice for the entire game. The rest of us play in shifts, rotating on and off.”
“You take turns? Like subs in basketball?”
“Kind of, but not really. So, aside from the goalie, each team has five players on the ice at any given time, right? Three forwards, and two defensemen.”
