I walk toward the tunnel. And I don't let myself smile again until I'm through the door and he can't see it.
Chapter 10
Rhys
Team dinner should not feel like a chore. It’s supposed to be fun. Mandatory, technically, because Coach Fitch has decided the solution to our losing streak is burgers, fries, and forcing twenty guys who already smell each other’s sweat for hours a day to make eye contact over shared appetizers. Team bonding. Very inspired.
But honestly, he’s probably not wrong. We need this. We’ve been eating massive shit lately and need some nice bonding off the ice.
The restaurant is loud and packed in the way college places always are on a Thursday night, every table crowded, every conversation competing with music that’s a little too loud to comfortably talk over, so we have to lean in just to hear the person next to us. We’re shoved into the back section under a line of dim yellow lights, two long tables pushed together, sticks nowhere in sight but hockey still all over us anyway. Guys are wearing team hoodies, backward hats, slides, that very specific exhausted-athlete look that says we all showered but barely.
I'm wedged between Bennett and Cooper, which is already a punishment I've done nothing to deserve. Cooper has been telling the same story for ten minutes and somehow making it worse with every sentence. The details keep changing. The timeline makes no sense. There's now apparently a second girl involved who wasn't there five minutes ago.
"Wait," I say. "Where did she come from?"
"She was always there."
"You didn't mention her before."
"She's not important to the main story."
"Then why did you just spend two minutes describing her?"
"For context."
"That's not what context means, Coop."
Bennett loses it. Head back, wheezing, practically choking with how hard he’s laughing. Which only encourages Cooper, who straightens up like he's been given a standing ovation.
"Thank you," Cooper says to Bennett, who is still unable to breathe. "At least someone appreciates good storytelling."
"He's laughing at you," I say.
"He's laughing with me," Cooper says with a pout.
"He doesn't even know what's happening."
"I know exactly what's happening," Bennett manages, still panting. "I just don't understand any of it."
Across and a little down the table Kowalski sits with his arms folded, posture stiff. He hasn't laughed once and he won’t. Kowalski doesn't laugh at things that don't deserve it and Cooper's stories definitely do not deserve it. Which is probably why Jamie likes him so much. Same terrifying commitment to never having fun.
Sick fucks, the both of them.
And then there’s Jamie Nash.
Captain America himself is sitting directly across, clean white shirt, hair still damp at the ends like he showered right before coming here. But not like the others on the team. He looks as if he smells nice and clean, always. He looks unfairly put together for a person who spent another morning telling me my wrist shot was too aggressive.
Which, rude.
I shouldn’t still be thinking about this morning. I should bethinking about literally anything else. This dinner. School. The fact that my chem lab report is due tomorrow and I am dangerously close to submitting something written entirely by caffeine and maybe Blake if he loves me enough today.
Instead I keep thinking about him on the ice.
Not yelling. Not looking at me like he wanted to skin me alive and use my bones as practice cones. Just watching me with that terrifying level of concentration he has, like once he decides to see something, there’s nowhere for it to hide.
Nowhere for me to hide.
And worse, he was good. Not good at hockey. Obviously he’s good at hockey. That’s old news and everyone knows it. He was good withme. We actually got along and I broke off a tiny piece of his hard shell.
