Page 16 of Worth the Shot

There’s a high you get from winning. Something about the clean passes, full arena and puck hitting twine that makes you buzz like nothing else. For most of my life, that was enough. But tonight? Tonight the high has a name. Laney. I’m still half-sweaty, half-buzzing, sitting on the edge of the locker-room bench. The guys are talking, joking, slamming lockers, music playing way too loud; but it all feels far away, like I’m in another room. All I can see is her face in the stands and the way she tried not to smile when she thought I wasn’t looking. The way she did smile when my eyes finally met hers.

Yeah. I’m gone.

Shayne bumps my shoulder as he walks past on his way to media, smirking like he knows every thought in my head, which, unfortunately, he probably does. I need to chill the fuck out. I peel off my pads and toss my gear into the wash bin. My head’s still replaying the game, except the part that matters didn’t happen on the ice. It happened after, in the tunnel. Her standing there, letting Luca get his first of many postgame fist bumps from the team.

“Congrats on the win, Hale.”

She said my last name like she was tasting it, and when she caught the smirk spreading across my face, she fired back with, “Don’t flatter yourself. I’ll say the same thing to the twelve guys behind you.”

I swear I almost laughed out loud like a fucking idiot. She’s sharp like that. Cuts without trying and makes you want to offer your throat for it.

The trainer hands me an ice bag for a hit I took in the second period. I press it to my ribs, and the relief there is almost immediate, but the other ache—the one deep in my chest—doesn’t budge. Someone whistles at me from across the room in that annoyingly teammate way.

“Yo, Halesy. You got someone to impress tonight or what? You look like you’re thinking about poetry.”

“Shut up,” I say, but I’m smiling. And yeah, maybe I am thinking about poetry. Or whatever the hell you call trying to describe a woman who looks like she’s carrying every heartbreak she’s ever survived, but still chooses to love the world anyway.

I see the way she puts everyone before herself. How she’s relentless about her career and gives it everything she has. She’s smart, independent, and a force in every room she walks into.

And under all that sarcasm and those endless, playful digs…I see her.

I shower fast, pull on jeans and a hoodie, and step out into the cool night air behind the arena. I should be thinking about the season. About lines, systems, transitions, tape-to-tape passes, but all I can think about is her. About how she said, “Looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of each other” like it was a warning, or a promise. Maybe both.

I lean back against my car, watching my breath fog into white ghosts in the cold. If I were smart, I’d keep my distance, but I know myself well enough to know that’s impossible, so I remind myself to go slow. To be respectful, give her time, do it the right way and just be myself. Shayne’s voice echoes in my head: Just be patient with her. She’s worth it. I already know that. The hard part isn’t patience, it’s pretending I don’t already want her.

But wanting someone too quickly has burned me before.

Two years.

That’s how long I spent with someone who only ever liked the Top Five NHL Player version of me. The part that included interviews, the travel, the playoff WAGS jackets with my name and number on it. She liked being seen with me, but she never really saw me, and like an idiot, I let myself believe she did. I told her things I don’t tell anyone. Family stuff, what scares me before big games, the kind of dumb childhood dreams you think you’ve outgrown…she held it all like it mattered, at first.

Until the second my stats dipped.

Until my spotlight wasn’t bright enough.

Until we missed the playoffs that one year.

Until loving me required effort.

Love shouldn’t have conditions, but hers did. So now I take my time to learn who people are before I hand them anything real. Which is why Delaney is dangerous, because I already want to give her everything.

I let out a long breath and unlock the car. Just friends. That’s what I told her, because that’s what she needs from me. And maybe that’s what I need, too. I can do that. I will do that. And I’m going to be damn good at it.

Chapter Eight

Delaney

It’s barely eight o’clock on a Saturday and Johanna shows up unannounced, which is her preferred method of entry into my life. No text or call, just my door flying open like the Kool-Aid Man taught her boundaries.

“DELANEY?” she yells, stepping inside like she pays rent here.

I let out a long, suffering sigh as I round the corner to meet her. “Do we have to?”

“You say this every time,” she says, picking up my sneakers by the door and launching them at my chest. “And my answer never changes. Plus you really need to start running off all of the late-night baked goods you’ve been inhaling the last few months.”

She’s right. Unfortunately, I can’t argue with that one. I’d come home after long shifts and coped the only healthy way I knew how: angry-baking. Cookies, banana bread, blueberry muffins. Anything that required aggressive stirring and enough sugar to qualify as a cry for help.

Delaney Collins: calm, cool and collected trauma nurse by day. Feral, broken-hearted woman eating frosting over the sink by night.