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“No,” he said, shaking his head quickly. “It was about you not looking. You assumed the worst and decided I fucked up.” He pushed himself away from the island and walked to the other end of it. “I thought you’d look. I thought you’d get it. But you didn’t. And it’s my fault, I admit it. It’s my fault I expected you to trust me for once in two years of playing together.”
“I have faith in you,” I said, clawing for some thread that would get me out of this horrible situation where I was only realizing how much I wanted him while losing him on all fronts.
“Prove it,” he said simply.
“And us? The kiss? What are we gonna do about that?” I asked. There I was, pretty much as naked as I could be without it being literal.
Caden paused and thought about it for the briefest of moments, then shot me a bewildered frown. “They’re not separate issues, Beckett.”
With that, he spun away and headed up the stairs. I heard his door slam. For better or worse, this conversation was done. And he was off limits once again.
Our match was in less than twenty-four hours and I had a lot to figure out. If only I knew where to begin. And if only I could stop, for one goddamn moment, imagining pressing my lips against Caden’s.
What the hell had he done to me?
5
CADEN
I led the way, like I always did. Swiftly baiting and switching between our opponents, I dominated to the cheers of the crowd and my teammates. But they were all just blurry faces and indistinct voices to me. My focus was razor sharp and the only objective was to not lose the puck.
Luckily, I was very good at that. And even more luckily, our opponents weren’t.
The battle raged with neither side taking the lead for long. Though the players couldn’t match me — or, where credit was due, Beckett Partridge — they still often managed to get through our defenses and trick our goalie.
My heart drummed hard; my face was burning. Time was running out and the opposition was becoming fierce. Our opponents were growing desperate to defend their line and all eyes were on me.
I tried focusing on the puck. And, for a little while, that was what I did. I narrowed my attention to the immediate threats and evaded their defenses. But as soon as the threats were a little further away, my mind returned to the one thing I really wasn’t supposed to be thinking about. Not now. Not ever. That way lay in ruin and little else.
Beckett Partridge.
Since last night, we hadn’t spoken more than the bare necessities related to the match, as well as those aimed at the coach to show how well we were getting along. But the moment nobody observed us, we chose silence, awkward as it was.
Last night, I’d gotten the most honesty out of Beckett since I’d known him. Or, at least I hoped it had all been honest. Because he’d admitted to some feelings that I might have been harboring myself.
My attention slipped away from the puck and I only noticed when an uproar of disappointment alerted me that another player had attempted, but failed, to take it from me.
I bared my teeth, racing toward the goal, and realizing that the opponents were amassing on the other side. No matter how good at deception I was — and I was good enough to deceive my own team on occasion — I wasn’t going to pull this off by myself. I needed an assist.
I’d told Beckett the truth of it. In the two years I’d been on this team, I’d never had anyone truly believe in me. I’d been the second best all these years. And I would have been the co-captain had I been any more sociable; but I’d never gotten the acknowledgment for my contributions. When I cost us a victory, I got the brunt of the backlash. When I won us a match, I got a slight nod as though Beckett approved of me doing precisely what I was supposed to do. As if I’d done the minimum and won.
I glanced ahead, left and right. Michaels was on the far left side on the lookout, evading an enemy defender. Partridge was parallel with me, on the right side of the rink.
There it was; the victory. It was within my reach, if only I played it smart.
The last time I’d found myself in this spot, Beckett hadn’t seen me. He hadn’t trusted me. He had decided that I’d done the wrong thing and he’d given up on me.
Time seemed to slow down as if we were caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole. Everything stopped. My senses sharpened until I could see the future as clearly as I could see the present. Except, two futures lay ahead. One was the same as our past; I would do the same maneuver and lose us the game. The other, though, relied on Beckett’s faith in me. And that had a massive question mark hovering above it.
We could win this if you trusted me, I thought, glancing from Michaels to Partridge. Our gazes met. Though it lasted for less than a heartbeat, it felt longer. His blue gaze wasn’t as icy as I’d known it. Something had changed. Either now or last night or over the course of this entire week. Perhaps it was the electricity of that one kiss I wouldn’t let myself think about. Perhaps.
Whatever it was, I blinked, and Beckett blinked back. The temptation was maddeningly strong to just believe we could read one another’s minds.
This was it.
The moment of truth.
Have faith in me. Just once. It was a silent prayer as two defensemen rounded on me. I waited for as long as I could until our opponents believed I was out of time to bait and switch; I swung my stick from right to left, as though I was sending the puck to Michaels. The blade of the stick missed the puck by a fraction of an inch just as the two defenders took a sharp turn toward Michaels.
