Page 10 of The Pucking Coach's Daughter

“From FSU. Someone leaked their playbook, that’s why we’re crushing it.”

I scoff before I can stop myself.

“You don’t believe it?” He eyes me. “Aren’t you related to the FSU coach?”

“It’s a common last name.” I move up in line. I’ve had almost two full years of peace, and now someone makes that connection? “You think someone snuck over there and stole a playbook?”

He shrugs. “That’s what my brother said. His girlfriend goes to FSU.”

“So much for not crossing enemy lines,” I mutter.

The guy nods along with me. “Right? That player, Ruiz?—”

“Oh, shit,” Lettie exclaims. “I knew his name sounded familiar.”

“He was telling everyone that someone broke into his house. So it’s not out of the ordinary…”

Lettie’s gaze flicks to me.

I ignore her. My pulse has picked up, and a new clammy sensation breaks out across my back. If that’s the rumor, then I’m fucking screwed. He already thinks I stole something—is he going to put me and this together? Of course he will.

Fuck.

The rest of the game is a bloodbath. The refs eventually put away their whistles. The playoffs are single elimination, which really just means higher stakes for the game. Winner moves on. Loser goes home.

What’s happening now, on the ice, is purely psychological. The Seawolves have gotten into their opponents’ heads, and the rest is history.

In the last minute of the game, I glance over at my father on the bench. I had carefully not looked in his direction the whole game, but now I’m just in time for him to throw his papers down. He’s in a gray suit and purple tie. Unlike the last time I saw him, he sports a trimmed, salt-and-pepper goatee that he now rakes his hand over.

The hair on his head is still dark. Same shade as mine, I’d hazard to guess.

While Carter’s question from the party still rankles, I understand why I haven’t actually seen my father in a while. Mom lost her shit, and he got the courts involved. While she shielded me from it, I was twelve going on twenty. Forced to grow up way too fast. The trauma of it still seeped in.

It was something about custody. She would come home and shed the silk blouse and pencil skirt from her day job, wiggling into sweatpants and crawling onto the couch beside me. And she’d lie, saying everything was going fine. That my dad was just trying to get out of our once-a-month visits.

And before that, when we were actually a real family…

My father and I have the same mouth. The shape of it, the way we smile. Mom used to point it out when I was younger, tracing my lip. And then later, after Dad left, she’d whisper it almost to herself with a weird expression.

It wasn’t until I was older that I realized my smile hurt her. So I stopped smiling.

Mom’s eyes are brown, his blue. And mine were probably meant to be blue, but instead they’re somewhere stuck between gray and colorless. We have similar hair color. He’s freaking tall, I can tell even from here. And I remember it, looking up and up and up at him as a kid.

I passed Mom’s height in seventh grade.

The final horn blows, the game over. The St. James crowd around me leaps to their feet, while I am slower to rise. The score is almost painful to see.

St. James had a complete fucking shutout.

6-0.

“Celebration time!” Lettie sings in my ear.

Three hours after the end of the game, I’m blissfully drunk. The party rages around me, but I’ve got to the stage where I can’t really feel my toes. The rest of me is solid. And Lettie, knowing that glazed glint in my eye, hands me a bottle of water on her way by.

I sip it and people-watch.

Although people have been watching me, too. It didn’t bother me at first. Just a few glances. But as the night wears on, they become more… more. Itches on my skin in places I can’t quite reach, an uncomfortable sharpness to them.