Page 107 of The Pucking Coach's Daughter

“No, Syd.” He puts his hands on the top of his stick. “No, I wasn’t going to do that to you or her.”

Then… “Where did her resentment come from? Why did you take her to court when I was a kid?”

Dad comes close again, forgetting the pucks and our passing game. “I didn’t take her to court. She wanted more money from me and less visitation. I was fighting it.” His gaze softens. “I don’t know where her feelings came from, kiddo. I wish I did.”

“Coach?”

He glances over his shoulder. Our positioning hides the other person from view—and probably hides me, too. Which is why Oliver Ruiz stops dead on his way toward us when Dad shifts enough to clear our lines of sight.

“What are you doing here?” he blurts out. He looks around. “It’s…”

“Skating with my daughter, Ruiz,” Dad snaps. “Do you have a problem with that?”

His hockey captain straightens. “No, sir.”

“Good.” He checks his watch, then glances at me. There’s a lot conveyed in that glance, but compassion is at the forefront. “Come to dinner Saturday night, Syd.”

I nod.

He motions to the pucks around us. “You up for a passing game, Ruiz? I’ve got some work to do before my nine o’clock meeting.” He pushes the stick into Oliver’s grasp on his way by. “Oh, and you’re invited to dinner, too.”

Great.

We stare at each other a beat. I haven’t seen him since he beat Bear at the fight, and he doesn’t seem particularly worse for wear.

“Penn talks about you,” he finally says. He skates closer. Who knows why he even laced up—and on his own, no less. “It’s driving me absolutely insane.”

“Why?”

“Are you exclusive?”

I shake my head. No, we’re definitely not.

“Do you want to be?” The muscle in his jaw jumps.

“He thinks he can convince me to pick him.” I don’t say the other part: that I don’t know how I’m going to choose at all.

“Who’s his competition?” Oliver demands.

I laugh. It startles out of me, and I have to move away from him. I can’t just have a staring competition with the man, or else my thoughts will turn wicked. And I certainly can’t have that with my father in the building.

“Sydney,” he calls.

I snag a puck and move it to the far side of the rink. I take a snap shot toward the boards, the boom of it hitting and rebounding back to me satisfying.

“Sydney, who’s his competition?” He skates up beside me and pauses again. “Are you dating someone else?”

“More like I have two stalkers.” I flip my hair off my shoulder. “They know what they want and are going after it.”

Unlike you, I don’t say.

His gaze darkens.

“What are you going to do about it, Oliver?”

I head for the door, and he follows. I’ve admitted some pretty painful truths to him and got nothing in return. Nothing except where my bracelet ended up, which I guess is on his mother’s wrist. If she even wears it.

My stomach flips at the idea of it sitting in a box somewhere, in the dark. That’s how my mother kept it, too. Hidden out of sight. But from that photo in the yearbook I found, it wasn’t always like that. She wore it at school.