Cooper salutes. “Yes, sir.”
I bite my tongue, barely suppressing my laugh.
Jamie hears me anyway and scowls at me.
I smile innocently at him.
He narrows his eyes like he knows exactly what I’m not saying.
Good.
Progress.
Practice starts and for once, it’s actually good. Better than good. The team feels looser, less rigid. Whatever happened this week, whatever delicate little peace treaty Jamie and I accidentally signed in the blood of our mutual stubbornness, it’s doing something. Guys are passing cleaner. Talking more. Trusting the next man to be where he’s supposed to be.
Even Fitch notices.
He stands at the boards with his whistle hanging from two fingers and watches Jamie and me run a drill together, eyes moving between us like he’s seeing the answer to a problem he’s been trying to solve all season.
So maybe we really were the problem.
“Again,” Fitch calls. “Nash, Callahan, reset. Same play.”
Jamie skates past me, close enough that his shoulder brushesmine. On purpose. Absolutely on purpose. My smile drops. Not because I’m mad. Because for once, I don’t have a joke ready. No smart remark to piss him off. Nothing to hide behind. He doesn’t look back and I missed my moment anyway.
Fuck.
We reset.
This time when he passes me the puck, our timing is perfect. I take it up the right, pull the defender in, send it back across at the last second. Jamie is already there and buries it clean.
The puck snaps into the net so hard the sound echoes.
For a second, nobody says anything.
Then Bennett yells, “Fuck yeah!” Cooper bangs his stick against the ice. Kowalski nods once, which is basically him screaming with joy.
Jamie turns toward me. He’s breathing hard, face flushed, eyes bright in a way I haven’t seen before. Something closer to happy. It hits me in the chest in a way I don’t like. I skate toward him before I can think better of it and bump his shoulder with mine. “Look at us,” I say. “Teamwork. Growth. Very moving.”
His mouth twitches.
There it is. The almost smile.
I want to see it again and again and again.
What the fuck is wrong with me.
Practice keeps going and Jamie keeps opening up in these tiny, barely-there ways that I’m probably the only person stupid enough to notice. A dry comment under his breath when Cooper overskates a drill. A look at Bennett that’s almost fond when Bennett celebrates not falling during a run. A quietgood jobto me after a clean pass that lands somewhere under my ribs and stays there.
By the end, I’m buzzing. Not from the workout. From him.Which is insane. I know that. I’m self-aware enough to know when I’m being an idiot.
The locker room after practice is chaos. Steam, voices, gear hitting the floor, the sharp stink of sweat and ice and tape. The guys are loud because practice went well and Coach didn’t get the urge to murder us. Successfully completing a drill apparently restores the male spirit or whatever.
I’m at my stall, peeling off my jersey, when it lands.
Jamie’s looking.
I know before I turn.
