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Wyatt is good today.

Really good.

He’s fast and sharp, completely in his element, and watching him makes it dangerously easy to forget there are other people around us.

He steals the puck from Camden with an easy flick of his stick and takes off down the ice, only for Camden to catch him at the boards a few seconds later and shove him hard enough to make Wyatt laugh.

“You’re staring,” Riley says.

“I’m watching the scrimmage.”

“The whole scrimmage?”

I give her a look, which only makes her smile into her coffee.

When I turn back toward the ice, Wyatt catches me watching him and his grin changes immediately. It’s subtle enough that I doubt anyone who doesn’t know him would notice, but I do, and apparently Riley does too.

“He’s so into you,” she says.

I blush, but can’t help the smile spreading across my face when Wyatt gives me a quick wink before skating away.

Riley laughs under her breath. “Yeah. Subtle he is not.”

I ignore her and focus on the ice again, although I’m still smiling when the whistle sounds a few minutes later and the scrimmage slows.

A few of the guys head toward the bench for water while others stay where they are, resting their weight on their sticks.

Then there’s a loud crack from somewhere beneath the ice.

I barely register it at first.

I’ve heard that sound my entire life. Rinks make noise, the ice shifts, the boards bang, pipes groan somewhere underneath everything, and most of the time I don’t even notice anymore.

But my body is so tuned in to Wyatt that any shift from his normal happy-go-lucky attitude puts me on alert. I know him. I can read him.

His whole body goes still, so abruptly that it takes me a second to understand what I’m seeing, and then his stick slips from his hand and hits the ice.

What’s going on with him?

Jordan skates past and says something I can’t hear from here.

Wyatt looks at him, then down at his stick as if he’s only just realized he dropped it, and a second later he bends to pick it up.

Whatever Jordan says next makes him laugh.

Wyatt rolls his shoulders, taps his stick against the ice and skates back into position like nothing happened.

If I hadn’t already been watching him, I would’ve missed the whole thing.

“You good?” Riley asks, following my gaze.

“Yeah.”

I’m still watching Wyatt.

He takes a pass from Kai and sends the puck straight into the corner of the net, looking completely normal again, but my mind has already gone back to a few nights ago.

You have a brother?