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“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t. Do we need to go on YouTube and pull up all your greatest hits?”
That brought me up short. “Wait, you’ve seen those?”
Oh, man. That blush was so cute. So was the way he dropped his gaze as he tried to figure out how to respond.
“It’s okay.” I nudged his leg with my bare foot. “I’ve watched them myself. They’re kind of funny.”
He studied me cautiously, but then laughed. “They really are. I’m always amazed you guys stay upright as long as you do.”
“What?” I scoffed. “Hey, if someone’s going to put me on the ice, they’re gonnaworkfor it!”
“No, I know. But you’re on skates. On ice. I once fell on my ass because I sneezed while I was walking down an icy sidewalk. You’re fighting with someone—who’s usually bigger than you—with ice skates on.” He shook his head as he added, “I always feel like I’m going to lose my balance justwatchingyou.”
“Eh, it’s not that bad. But remember, I’ve been skating longer than I can remember. Staying balanced is second nature.”
“If you say so.”
“Trust me. And to be fair, there are compilations of me losing an edge and falling on my ass, so…” I half-shrugged.
“True.” He paused, sobering. “Can I… I’m curious about one fight, but I don’t know if you want to talk about it.”
I held his gaze. I had a feeling what it might be; I didn’t have a lot of infamous moments, but there was one that no one was in any hurry to let me forget. “You can ask.”
Isaiah studied me. Finally, he said, “The thing with Jordan Haynes. I’ve heard a lot of commentators and content creators give their two cents about what really happened. I guess I’m just curious to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
I swallowed as a familiar and uncomfortable prickle went up my back. I’d suspected this was what he was going to ask about. It was just never a fun thing to even think about. “The truth is that it was entirely accidental. We were fighting, sure, but the way it ended…” I shuddered. “I felt awful about it. Fighting is one thing, but I wasn’t actually out to hurt him, you know?”
Isaiah’s brow furrowed. “But they gave you an intent-to-injure penalty over it, didn’t they?”
Scowling, I nodded. “Yeah. Suspended me for a game, too. And I mean… I didn’t really push back. I told them in the hearing that I hadn’t intended for him to get hurt, and—I mean, same as Reilly did after he accidentally boarded me during the Stadium Series, I made sure to tell him as much the next time I saw him.”
“Did they believe you?”
“Player Safety didn’t, but he did. I think he knew as well as I did what actually happened.”
Isaiah tilted his head. “Whatdidactually happen?”
I sighed. “Just bad luck and bad timing? Like, we usually try to get each other down on the ice, right? So that’s what I was doing—I swung him around to try to throw him off-balance and take him down.” I grimaced at the memory. “I’d just… I guess I lost track of where we were, you know? We’d been over by the faceoff dot when it started, but when I took him down, we were almost to the boards. And I realized that about a half-second before his face hit the dashers.”
Isaiah grimaced, but he didn’t say anything.
I fidgeted uncomfortably. “The video looks like I’m deliberately shoving his head into it. I can totally see why they thought that’s what I did.” Shaking my head, I whispered, “But I’d never do something like that.”
“I believe you,” he said softly. “You’ve always seemed spicy out there, but never like you actually wanted to hurt someone.”
“No, never. I just lost my situational awareness at exactly the wrong time.” I exhaled. “Thank God he was okay. He was concussed and broke a tooth, but it could’ve been way worse. And he understood, too. He even told me—and the press—that it could’ve just as easily been the other way around, because he didn’t realize we were so close to the dashers, either.”
“That’s good that he didn’t hold it against you,” Isaiah whispered.
“Yeah. But his team made me pay for it, believe me. I don’t think I’ve ever been tripped, slashed, and cross-checked in the samegamebefore, never mind the sameperiod. And Boston’s fansstillboo me whenever we play there.”
Isaiah laughed quietly. “Hockey players really make sure they exact justice, don’t they?”
“We have to. You let shit like that slide, people start pushing the envelope even more.”
“What do you mean?”
