Page 83 of Faking the Goal

That gets everyone moving again.

Elijah sends the puck across the ice and the play develops fast, Zach carrying it up the left side with Cody trailing while Luke cuts through the middle. I track them into the zone, and when Zach releases the shot, I drop into a butterfly and catch it clean against my chest.

Liam skates past and taps my pads with his stick. "Show-off."

"You wish."

We keep going for another twenty minutes, although whatever structure the scrimmage started with disappears pretty quickly. Plays break down halfway through, someone starts chirping, and before long we're playing the kind of hockey Coach would probably stop within thirty seconds just to ask what the fuck we're doing.

Taylor photographs all of it anyway.

At one point Luke and Zach get tangled near the boards and both go down, laughing while Taylor immediately starts firing off pictures instead of showing even the slightest concern for their wellbeing.

Eventually Elijah lifts a hand. "That's enough. My legs are fucking dead."

We coast toward the bench, sticks clattering together as everyone slows down. I pull off my mask and run a hand through my damp hair while the cold air hits the sweat on my face.

Taylor is already sitting on the bench with her camera resting in her lap, scrolling through the shots she took. Her phone is beside her, face-down against the wood, and it buzzes again.

It's been doing that for most of the afternoon.

Every few minutes.

She hasn't checked it once.

I skate over and stop beside the boards, resting both hands over the top of my stick. "So? Did you get what you needed?"

She glances up with an easy smile. "Yeah. More than enough, actually. I think I have way too many good shots now. Narrowing them down is going to be the hard part."

Cody leans over the boards beside me, shamelessly trying to get a look at the screen. "Alright, let's see which ones of me are making the winter issue."

Taylor snorts. "Bold of you to assume any of them are."

"I'm offended." He puts a hand over his chest. "You're telling me not every photo of me is making the final cut?"

Taylor immediately angles the screen away from him. "Especially not the ones of you."

He presses a hand to his chest. "Wow. That's cold."

"You spent half the scrimmage posing every time you realized I was pointing the camera at you."

"I call that giving the photographer options."

"It's called being a narcissist," Elijah says, unscrewing his water bottle.

"Narcissism is such an ugly word," Liam says. "I prefer healthy appreciation for superior genetics."

Luke nods beside him. "Much classier."

Taylor snorts as she keeps scrolling. "You three really think the world revolves around you, don't you?"

"It doesn't?" Liam asks, sounding genuinely confused.

That gets a laugh out of almost everyone, including me.

And Taylor's camera immediately comes up.

Fuck.