Page 40 of Make Me Mean It

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CONNOR

Isink deeper into the seat, notebook balanced across my lap while the team pours out onto the ice below.

The rink comes alive around me, blades cutting into fresh ice, voices carrying up into the stands, the sharp crack of sticks and pucks echoing off the walls.

I should be able to work through it. Usually, once I decide I’m going to focus on something, I can force everything else far enough into the background to get on with it.

Today, apparently, the exception is skating around directly in front of me.

My eyes find Theo again.

He moves differently out there.

I noticed it the first time I saw him skate, but sitting here with nothing else demanding my attention makes it impossible to ignore. There’s no hesitation in him, no wasted movement, every stride clean and controlled enough that the rest of the team looks slightly slower beside him.

Even Marcus.

Marcus is steady. Reliable. He reads the ice well, knows exactly where everyone should be and somehow manages to hold the whole thing together without making it obvious he’s doing it.

Theo doesn’t play that way.

He looks like he’s already seen what everyone else is about to do.

A pass starts to develop, and he’s moving before it’s made. Someone closes in on him, and he changes direction before the contact comes, shifting the play around himself without ever seeming rushed by it. He doesn’t rely on anyone else to create space for him. He just takes it.

It takes the silence of my pen against the page to make me look down. I haven’t written anything in long enough for the ink at the end of the last word to have dried.

If it wasn’t for his temper, Theo and Marcus wouldn’t simply be playing at the same level. They’d be competing for captain, and the certainty of it sits strangely beneath my ribs when I realise I’ve spent the last several minutes studying Theo instead of anything I’m supposed to be here for.

I lower my pen to the notebook and force myself back to the page.

I came here to study.

The page in front of me hasn’t changed in the last several minutes, although apparently I’ve been staring at it long enough that the words have started blurring together. I blink, force myself back to the beginning of the paragraph and try again.

Nothing sticks. I make it halfway through the same sentence again before the scrape of a blade cuts across the ice below, sharper through the turn before settling into a long, clean glide.

Theo.

I know it before I look up.

My pen hovers uselessly over the page while I try to drag my focus back to the assignment, but there’s a constant awareness sitting at the edge of everything, tracking where he is on the ice even when I refuse to lift my head.

It’s ridiculous.

I blow out a breath and snap the notebook shut, giving up on the same sentence I’ve been pretending to read for the last several minutes. When I look up, Theo is already watching me from across the rink, green eyes holding mine while the rest of the team moves around him.

His mouth curves slowly, the kind of smug smile that tells me he knows exactly where my attention has been, and then the bastard winks.

Heat pulls low in my stomach, my fingers closing around the edge of the notebook. I should look away, but that smirk makes it impossible to give him the satisfaction, so I hold his stare instead and watch the amusement deepen across his face.

Lucas slams into him from the side.

The impact cracks across the rink, knocking Theo sideways and tearing his eyes from mine. My body pitches forward with his, feet already shifting beneath the seat.

My heart kicks against my ribs.