“You got hit hard,” the trainer muttered, stepping back. “Walk it off.”
Staying on the ice was objectively stupid when a rhythmic pressure throbbed right behind my eyes. But letting the medical staff pull me meant causing a scene and answering questions I didn’t want to answer, so I just nodded at the trainer and skated back to the face-off circle.
I spent the remainder of the period taking stiff, guarded strides.
We ended up winning the tournament opener. The rest of the team was loud and ecstatic in the locker room afterward, but the final score felt entirely irrelevant to me. Instead, my mind was stuck on the guy who was currently making his way back to his hotel room across town.
Dirty, half-frozen slush soaked straight through the thin cotton of my t-shirt. I shifted my weight on the pavement, trying to find an angle that did not send a spike of agony through my bruised ribs.
To my left, Matt’s teeth were audibly chattering. The rest of the freshman class knelt beside us in the freezing mud, forming a pathetic human path from the entrance of the local bar all the way to a rented fifteen-passenger van idling at the curb.
This was apparently the brilliant Ridge Cross tradition for the first win of the season. We were acting as a literal carpet so the upperclassmen could walk to their ride without dirtying their expensive boots.
Through the frosted glass of the bar windows, I could see the seniors laughing in the heat, knocking back drinks and taking their time.
It had already been twenty minutes, and the biting cold was making my joints lock up. Plus, the massive hit I took on the ice was catching up to me.
The wooden door of the bar swung open, spilling a wave of warm air and the harsh red glare of a neon beer sign out into the snow. Elliot stepped onto the curb. He paused, casually zipping up his jacket, and looked down at where I was kneeling in the dirt.
Elliot stopped at the edge of the curb, his eyes sweeping over our miserable, shivering lineup. His gaze locked onto me, taking in my pale face and the slight, dizzy sway I could not quite control.
“Get up, Karter.”
I kept my knees planted in the freezing mud and forced my best easygoing smile. “I’m fine right here. Just doing my time with the rest of the guys.”
Next to me, Matt let out a shaky, freezing breath. A few guys down the line, Clay was quietly cursing at the snow.
“You look like you are about to pass out,” Elliot said flatly, ignoring my performance. “Stand up.”
“It is a team tradition, El. If I get up, it makes the rest of them look bad.”
“Enough with the theatrics.” Elliot rolled his eyes and dug into his jacket pocket. He tossed a set of keys at my chest, and I caught them with numb, clumsy fingers. “You’re the designated driver tonight. Freshman duty. Go warm up the van.”
The order pulled me out of the mud while the rest of the freshman class stayed on their knees in the slush. Elliot didn’t look at me after he said it. He just jammed his hands in his pockets and stared down the shivering lineup like he was doing a headcount.
I stood up, my frozen joints and painful ribs protesting every movement. Brushing the wet slush off my ruined jeans, I looked down at Matt. Guilt twisted in my stomach. I hated using my last name for a free pass. And bailing on the rest of the freshman class, while they stayed in the mud, felt like a massive betrayal.
“Sorry, man,” I muttered to him.
Matt just gave me a tight, shivering nod, keeping his eyes locked straight ahead so he could endure the rest of the wait.
I walked stiffly toward the dark van, my boots crunching in the slush. Before I could reach the driver’s side door, a tall figure detached from the deep shadows of the brick alleyway.
Aleksey.
He was not restricted to his room after all. He was right here at the bar with the rest of the seniors, holding a plastic cup of cheap draft beer. Snow dusted his broad coat, meaning he had been standing out in the freezing dark for a while instead of celebrating inside.
He had just been watching me.
My heart kicked into a fast rhythm. This was the very first time we had been face to face since the aisle of the bus, let alone since he had beaten a guy mercilessly on the ice for tripping me.
He stepped into the dim pool of the streetlight, and I instinctively glanced over my shoulder. Matt and the other freshmen were still kneeling a few yards away, shivering violently but definitely within earshot.
We were not alone.
Aleksey stopped right in front of me, cutting off my path to the van door.
“Must be nice to have a captain for a brother,” Aleksey said. He kept his rough voice low-pitched so the guys behind us could not hear.
