Page 300 of Power Play

“I play.”

“The scouts are still coming?”

“Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and Washington.”

“And you’re good?”

A brutal laugh left me. “No, but in hockey terms, I am violently ready.”

“So, you can play?”

“That’s a different question.”

“Can you?”

“Hockey existed before her. It’ll exist after her.”

The lie came more easily than the first.

I could play hurt and angry. I could turn every fractured piece of myself into speed and drive it through anybody stupid enough to stand between me and the net.

The ice had never asked me to prove that I deserved it.

“Call Chris when you get to Flint,” Cade said. “Let him know you’re there.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

“No, but your agent needs to know his left wing didn’t wrap his truck around a guardrail.”

“Drive the speed limit,” Bliss added.

I glanced at the speedometer and eased off the gas without admitting I had done it.

“We’ll stay with Charm tonight,” Cade said. “You don’t have to worry about whether she’s alone.”

“I hope she’s alone.” My grip tightened on the wheel. “Espero que sin mí no sea más que un fantasma.”

It was another lie.

“I hope that without me, she is nothing but a ghost,” Briggs translated, although nobody sounded like they wanted the English.

“I know,” Cade said.

I hated that he let me keep that lie too.

Briggs spoke from the back seat. “I’ve got your back, Ry.”

The words were simple and stripped of his usual bullshit.

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “I know.”

“If you need anything—”

“I won’t.”

“I know that too.”

Something in his tone tightened my chest, but I didn’t examine it. I had spent enough of the night digging through things capable of killing me.