Thankfully, I wasn’t doing the face-off. I wasn’t going to be that close to Elliot. Yet.
Neutral. Remain neutral.
It wasn’t until they lined up for the puck drop that I saw the A on his chest.
When had that happened? How had I missed it? The sports journalism world was probably blowing up with that new development and the addition of a new team member. He deserved it, that much I knew. No one cared more for his team than Elliot. He might have had a one-track mind when it came to his own career, but he looked out for his teammates.
Had he been blindsided by the position or had he expected it?
I would never know because I wasn’t privy to that information. I wasn’t the person he called to share that news with anymore. I’d been avoiding news coverage of him like the plague.
I suddenly felt the emotion clogging my throat, making it impossible for me to do my job.
Fuck, I needed to pull it together.
The puck dropped. The roar of the crowd dulled around me as I blocked it out. I had to put aside the distractions both in the physical world and the mental one. I couldn’t think about Elliot and how much I missed him, his touch, his scent, just being near him.
I had a game to ref, and it wasn’t fair to the teams if I didn’t put forth my best effort.
I followed the play, keeping my eyes on the puck and the players but doing my best not to care who was who. Of course, Elliot was in the center of it all. He had the puck and was making a break for the net, his pass to Evan was flawless, and within seconds of the game starting, they were scoring their first goal.
The crowd went wild for their star players. Evan and Elliot embraced in celebration. Elliot skated right past me, not even sparing me a glance.
Chapter 13
Elliot
The game had been amazing. Another win for the Badgers. Another hat trick for me, plus two assists. Had Silas noticed? Of course he did. He was on the ice with me. His gaze had followed me while I played just like it did when he was in the stands. Only this time, he got a front-row view. We’d never been on the ice together like that. Part of me loved it. The other part of me could barely believe it was real.
Derek let me know I was on my way to breaking my scoring record. I didn’t really care about that. I had felt Silas’s presence on the ice the whole game. He knew that I had scored a hat trick.He had also called a tripping against me in the second period. To be fair, it was definitely a penalty.
He remained neutral the entire game. Of course, he did. He was nothing but a professional. He called high-sticking against my opponent not long after he made the call against me. Silas never let anything slip by him. It was why he’d been called up to this league at such a young age.
To the rest of the world, it was a regular game. We made it look easy. We never looked at each other with anything except professional interest. It was agonizing. I didn’t think I’d even locked eyes with him at all. I’d glanced his way plenty of times, but I was careful to cover it up. If he looked at me with anything except professional interest, then I hadn’t noticed.
And now that I was off the ice and the adrenaline was winding down, the actual pain was settling in. Pain and heat were radiating through my body. Was it just the adrenaline from the game, or the misery of seeing Silas again and not being able to talk to him?
Had he noticed the A on my chest? Of course he noticed. Silas never missed anything. But did he care? Did he understand how much I had strived for that? I’d been working really hard since having that A put on my jersey to be a better teammate, to be someone my team could rely on. It meant going outside my comfort zone. And without Silas around for me to talk to, I was doing it alone. I’d fumbled a few times, but it felt like my teammates were opening up to me and coming to me like they did with Evan.
When Coach had given me that A, I longed to call Silas and tell him the news.
Why did we both have to be so good at our jobs? If he was a shitty ref, he never would have been promoted to the league. If I was a worse player, I could drop to the lower league and we would never have had to break up. It was impossible for us to be together while working at the same level. There were literally rules against it. Being with Silas was all that I wanted—more than I wanted an A on my chest, more than I wanted to break my record. More than I wanted the cup win.
I stumbled my way through the interviews, mumbling something about the win being a team effort. I was in the locker room, gathering my things. I realized just how much I was swaying on my feet. Everyone else had cleared out. Heat seemed to radiate off my body. All that I could think about was Silas. Where he was. What he was doing. Was he in our apartment? Had he moved? My hands shook as I packed away my gear in my locker and tried to organized my stuff in my bag.
I leaned back, almost falling off the bench. I put a hand to my forehead. Sweat beaded there, despite the fact that I had taken a shower and cleaned off the grime from the game. So why was I so hot now?
Silas.
I needed him. I couldn’t get him out of my head.
Sweat dripped down my back. I was more worked up now than I had been on the ice.
Fuck.
This couldn’t be right.
I reached for my bag and pulled out the thermometer that was there. It wasn’t standard to keep in a gear bag, but I kept a miniature heat kit ready at all times. As an omega, my body naturally went into heat twice a year. I was on suppressants, which meant that I rarely went into an actual intense heat unless it was during the off-season. But the stress of the A on my chest and breaking up with Silas caused me to go into a heat prematurely. Fuck.
