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Wiping my forehead again, I let out a nervous laugh. There’s no way I’m answering this one. What I have with Nikolai is too important for me to taint with the media grabbing hold of it.

So instead, as I pull my towel away, I wink at her and say, “That stays between me and my special someone.”

She dismisses me and I head to the locker room.

When I walk in Gavin and Connor are staring at me from their stalls. On the TV above them is the reporter I was just talking to, speaking back and forth with the panelists based on a set in the newsroom.

Gavin raises an eyebrow and grins at me. His gaze is dark, teasing, and, if I’m being honest, slightly foreboding. I’m about to get roasted.

“Special someone,” he says. “Seriously?”

“What?” I ask. “It’s not like I was going to tell her the truth.”

“Which is?” Connor asks. One of his eyebrows raises at me as well. But at least, on him, unlike on Gavin, it looks playful. As if he’s gearing up for only a light roast of me.

“That Nikolai has been a huge help for my mental game.” What is so hard for them to understand? It’s not like they’re not the ones who encouraged me to find a way to maintain a friendship with him once they noticed he was having a positive effect on my game.

“Your mental game,” Gavin says. “Right.” He looks at Connor and I see his stern facade lightly crack like he’s keeping himself from laughing.

Connor’s face scrunches up and he tips his head from side to side. “He does have a point. He can’t tell them the truth.”

“He could have found a way to lie to them without making it sound like he has a secret girlfriend.”

Connor playfully swats at him.

Gavin finally laughs. “I’m sure Nikolai is going to love that.”

“Why would the reporter assume I was talking about a girlfriend?” I ask as I finally pull my jersey off and start the painstaking process of removing all my gear.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Gavin says. “Maybe because saying something like ‘my special someone’ generally implies a significant other.”

I shrug. “Connor is your special someone and he’s clearly not your girlfriend. Why would she think that’s what I meant?”

Gavin looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Because that’s the default.”

“And there’s no reason for anyone to think otherwise,” Connor says.

“Except for us,” Gavin says. “Because you can deny it all you want, but you and your special someone seem to be spending a lot of time on not-dates.”

Connor presses his lips together and stares at Gavin before he looks back at me. “Don’t listen to him,” he says, then takes a breath. His expression softens as he scoots down the bench closer to me. “But… if what he’s saying is closer to the truth than you having a girlfriend, I want you to know, you can tell us. We have your back, like you’ve had ours.”

I toss my shoulder pads to the side, then bend forward to begin removing my leg pads. “There’s no need for you to have my back. It’s not like that. Besides, we’re both straight,” I say, even though saying that suddenly has me feeling a little uneasy. My heart rate is rising again like I’m out on the ice getting ready to stop a breakaway, and my stomach feels empty, but not in a starving way.

Speaking of, I am quite hungry. I need to get some food into my system.

“Okay.” Connor holds his hands up. “But if there was, just know, you can talk to us.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I say. Not with them. Because the only person I want to talk to right now is Nikolai, my lucky charm.

Reaching behind me, I check my phone. A smile spreads across my lips, lifting up my cheeks and crinkling my eyes. A missed call from Nikolai. And what a traditionalist, he left me a voicemail! I can’t wait to hear his voice and listen to what he has to say.

“Hi, Ander. Sorry to leave you message. I did not want to congratulate you over text. It is much more important to tell you how happy I am for your shutout this way. Have fun celebrating tonight. I will talk to you night before your next game.”

I listen to the message twice, then place my phone on the bench beside me so I can go back to getting undressed. I’ll try calling him back after I shower. Maybe I can catch him before the Mules take off to head home.

While I’m untying my skates, I feel a giant hand land heavily on my shoulder. I look up to see Gavin staring right at me from above. “Was that a message from your special someone?”

“You mean my friend Ivanov?”