Page 87 of Slapshot Baby

I did everything right. Every exercise, every protocol, every milestone they set in front of me. I hit them all and asked for more. And the result is a designation on a roster sheet that says I'm not ready, decided by people who never asked me.

The parking lot empties around me. Players leave in ones and twos. Nobody knocks on my window. They know better.

I pull out my phone. My thumb finds Ava's name.

I don't want her walking into this facility and hearing secondhand that her fake boyfriend just got benched from the team he captains.

I pick up the phone and call her.

Three rings. "Hey. I'm between sites. Still coming to the rink once I get the chance."

"Don't."

A pause. "What happened?"

"Can I come to you?" I ask.

Because some things you don't say through a phone. You say them sitting across from the person who makes you believe the worst day isn't the last day.

She's quiet long enough that I hear traffic and a car horn on her end of the line.

"You can come over to my place,” she says finally. "But I won’t be home for at least another hour. There's a spare key under the ceramic pot by my front door. Third from the left. The dead succulent."

"You hide a key under a dead plant?"

"Don't judge my security system. I'll text you the address." Her voice softens. "Let yourself in, Kai."

15

AVA

Midnight Blue Lace

The spare key is no longer under the ceramic pot by my front door.

I crouch and check. The pot is exactly where it's always been, third from the left, the one with the dead succulent I keep meaning to replace.

From inside my house comes the sound of footsteps. That means Kai is in my house.

I push the door open.

He’s standing at my stove.

He's in a grey henley with the sleeves shoved past his elbows. Dark joggers sit low enough to expose the cut of muscle above his hips. His feet are bare on my kitchen tile.

The lamp above the stove catches the tattoos winding down his left forearm, the black ink shifting with every flex of his wrist as he adjusts the burner.

His back is to me. Broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. The henley stretches across the ridge of muscle between his shoulder blades in a way that makes my mouth dry.

My chest does a slow, dangerous expanding thing, like a lock opening from the inside.

No.

I clamp down on it immediately because that spreading warmth at the sight of this man barefoot in my kitchen is the exact feeling my mother described having every time my father came back.

Biscuit rockets past my legs and throws herself at Kai, tail going in circles, body wiggling so hard she nearly takes herself out. She stares up at him with adoring brown eyes.

Kai turns. The henley collar is stretched loose, showing the hollow of his throat, and I have to stop staring at it.