Page 1 of Puck Me Twice Over

CHAPTER ONE

KNOX

Blue eyes, blonde hair and the sort of smile that had been making me weak at the knees since junior high.

Felicity Murphy.

Everything that I could pretend to myself that I hadn’t thought about in the last decade, and sure as hell not when the Fairburn Basilisk’s defenders were double teaming me on the way to their goal posts. That didn’t stop me from staring right into those blue eyes that couldn’t possibly belong to my first crush, my first kiss—my first fucking everything. Not right as I took a shot at the goal moments before the buzzer blared.

A shot that landed into the net right before the basilisks’ defenders slammed me sideways hard enough to take me halfway across the ice and into the barrier. I half expected the tempered glass between me and the crowd to shatter Hollywood style, but it didn’t. I slid down the dasher boards while fucking canaries chirped and fluttered about the inside of my helmet.

“Christ, Vandevere. Get your ass up.” Shannon Incarson, the Jericho Chimeras’ center and one of my best friends, picked me off the ice as though we weren’t equal in weight. The man could bench me any day, I swore. He stood helmet-to-helmet with me, dusted me off while I squinted at him. “Coach would be handing you your ass if you didn't score just then. You need a fucking nana nap, or what?”

“I’m fine.” I ignored Shannon and searched the stands behind the Basilisks’s goalie, but Felicity’s shade had disappeared. Hell, let’s be real. She’d never been there in the first damn place. No chance would that girl be anywhere near a Chimeras’ arena. Fuck knows why I picked tonight to imagine her after attempting to purge the memory years ago of the girl I loved before anyone else in this world. Yeah, look how that turned out.

Shannon tugged at my helmet. Despite that I’d played on the team for the better part of three years, irritation at the simple gesture burst from me.

"What?" That single syllable turned out a whole lot sharper than I intended. His face swam in front of my face, though there was only one this time, thank God. I bit my tongue until a metallic flavor swarmed over my taste buds, resetting my limits. "Sorry, man."

Shannon stared hard at me. “Do you actually need a medic, or can I slap you later?”

Maybe a little playtime would be good. But no. Not the time or the place, Vandevere.

"Nah. I'm good.” I winced, sure that we all heard the inflection in my voice that made the three words sound like a question. "I'm good," I repeated with a little more oomph.

Another body slammed into mine. "You've got about five seconds to get moving before Coach replaces you." The Chimera’s captain, Hux, did me the favor of holding two fingers in front of my eyes. “How many?"

I managed to flip one finger up with my glove on, and that digit sure as fuck wasn’t my thumb.

“Cute.” Hux laughed, gliding backwards.

The ice cleared of bodies. Coach must've called a time out. I skated over to where the rest of the Chimeras huddled. Shannon still clutched my jersey like an underpaid babysitter keen to prove his worth.

Coach fixed me with a sort of glare that spoke of the intent Shannon and Hux warned me about earlier. “We got less than a minute left on the clock. You two are up.” He nodded to Shannon and Hux. “Keep the puck front and center. You’ve practiced the play, so use the distraction. Don't fuck it up." He eyeballed me. “You’re off."

I shook my head and held out my glove. Hell no. This was my play, too. We designed it together. Practiced it at four fucking o’clock for the last two weeks for this exact moment. "I’m staying right here."

A pair of heavy eyebrows raised at me. “I just heard, ‘yes, please take me off the ice, Coach’."

Any other day, that might have seemed cute. "I said no." Risking the wrath of the scariest damn man I knew, I glided backward as the Basilisks returned to the ice.

Our next training session would hurt. I’d wear his wrath for this last chance to close the game out. To finish the play. Coach could rip me a new one and rail me good when I was on the ice before him next. Tonight we had a home game to lock away. "I'm good."

“You scored before.” Coach considered. He opened his mouth to argue.

Shannon slid between us, shoving me deeper onto the ice. "Get moving, before he can find a fucking reason, Knox."

"He can do that later." After the game was done. Once we won.

Then the ice was beneath my skates, and the chatter stopped. This was what hockey was about for me. Despite being slammed earlier, I was back in my element. The puck flew between Shannon and me, while Hux skated between and around us. This was a play we’d practiced several times, enough that Shannon and I didn’t fuck it up on demand. The passes between us looked like a set up attempt at a goal, while in reality we were the real distraction, and Hux lapping us was the final approach.

The Basilisks never saw us coming.

Or rather, they did—but one and one never equaled what Hux could deliver.

The sacrifice happened at exactly the right time. Just as Shannon and I each took the hit from the Basilisks’s defenders who stole no small amount of joy in slamming us into the walls—again—Hux had built up plenty of speed.

The Chimeras’ team captain glided forward as he completed his fourth pass between us. Then it was simply a matter of right place, right time. Except that the poor Basilisks’s goalie, whose attention had been fixed on Shannon, didn’t clock that. He’d been watching the wrong player all along, as planned, while he should have been watching the Captain. The puck hit the back of the net just the siren blared.