Page 83 of Worth the Shot

“I called you last night, dude. What happened? You ghosted.”

“Yeah, I uh…wasn’t feeling great.” I hate to lie to him. I know we’re boys, but Wes and Morris were close before he left. I’m not bleeding out in front of him. I won’t give them the satisfaction.

“I told you not to eat from that food truck, idiot.”

“Right.” I force a laugh. “Gonna throw on my gear. See ya out there.” I don’t make eye contact, but I feel him staring.

“Hey…you good?” he says, lower this time. Real. Concerned. That rare Wes tone that comes out almost never.

“Fine. Just itching to get on the ice.”

He hesitates.

“I know this is weird,” he goes on. “But Matt’s not a bad guy. He just made some shitty, selfish decisions. We all do sometimes.”

Yeah, maybe, but not with her. Some mistakes are just mistakes, some are character. I don’t say that, though. No use. I just nod. “Let’s get on the ice,” I tell him.

Shayne and I grab our sticks and step out onto the rink. The second the cold hits my face, something inside me calms again. We pass the puck between us a few times like warm-up autopilot. I rip a slapshot from the blue-line into the empty net, retrieve it, move around the ice and go again.

Again.

Again.

Until on the fourth shot, I notice the net isn’t empty anymore. Morris is in it.

He’s tightening his pads, digging his blades into the crease, marking the ice like he owns the goddamn space. I watch him track Shayne, who’s already grabbed a puck at the blue line. Shayne snaps one into the five-hole, slipping under Morris’s stick like butter. Morris jolts, barely, but there. Shayne grabs another puck, works it around the net, and whips a wraparound past him. Easy. Too easy.

He doesn’t say a word.

He just stares at Morris for a beat, then skates away toward the defensive drills. The message is loud. Clear. Simple. You’re back, but you’re not ours. Not yet. And I feel something low and hot in my chest again.

The goalies swap and I scoop another puck off the half wall, ready to fire it far side, when the air shifts behind me. A presence that feels too close and unfamiliar in the worst way. I don’t turn, not yet.

“You gonna shoot it,” Morris says, “or just stare at it like it personally offended you?”

My whole body goes rigid. His voice is familiar, smooth, careless and full of the easy confidence of a guy who’s coasted on talent and charm his whole life. But there’s an undertone now. Something forced, like he’s trying hard to act like everything between us is normal. I rip a hard shot, faster than it needs to be, burying it into the back of the net so clean the sound echoes. And then I turn.

Matt stands there, glove tucked against his hip, mask pushed to the top of his head. He looks older. Not much, but just enough to show the last year wasn’t as kind to him as he’ll pretend it was. His eyes flicker over my face.

“Looks like you’ve had…quite a night,” he says. Confidence suddenly overwhelms me.

Yeah buddy, you have no idea.

I don’t blink. “Looks like you’ve had quite a year.”

He huffs a laugh that’s clipped and empty. “Fair enough.”

Silence folds between us, thick as slush. The team drifts around us, giving subtle glances but not stopping. They know what this is, they know who we are to each other, even if neither of us has said it out loud.

Finally, Matty shifts his weight, the metal of his cage tapping against his pads. He’s uncomfortable. Good.

“Look,” he says, lowering his voice, “I know this is…complicated. For you. I heard you and Delaney are playing around.”

Playing around.

My jaw clenches. “You really wanna do this here?” I ask.

“I’m just trying to clear the air.”