Page 9 of Fractured Ice

"Yeah. I. Was. There."

"I'm just saying. Petrosky's a sophomore. You let Petrosky dangle you twice."

"I know."

"Twice, Ethan."

"Fuck." I pull my hoodie over my head. "I know what happened."

Knox leans back and stretches his legs out. The last two guys on the other side of the room grab their bags and head out, and then it's just us, which means Knox is about to actually say what he came over here to say.

"So what's going on?" he asks.

"Bad practice."

"You've had bad practices before. You don't stare at the floor like someone ran over your dog after bad practices." He tilts his head. "What's actually going on?"

I should probably just tell him. Knox is going to figure it out anyway because Knox always figures everything out eventually, and the longer I make him work for it the more material he's going to have when he inevitably roasts me for it. I've known him since we were barely old enough to walk, long enough to understand how this works.

"It's nothing to do with hockey," I say.

Knox raises his eyebrows. "Okay. So what's it got to do with?"

I don't say anything.

He stares at me for a second and then a slow grin starts working its way across his face. "Oh, this is good. This is actually good." He sits up straighter. "It's a girl."

"Knox—"

"It's absolutely a girl. Look at you. You've got the face."

"I don't have a face."

"Ethan. You have a face. You've had it since we got to the rink this morning." He points at me. "Who is she?"

"It's not—" I stop. "It's complicated."

"It's always complicated when you've got the face. Who is it?"

I rub the back of my neck. The thing about Knox is that he's going to keep going until I give him something, and I'm tired enough from practice that I don't have the energy to hold out. "Just someone I've been thinking about."

"Someone from campus?"

"Yeah."

"Does she go here?"

"Yes, Knox, she goes here, I just said campus."

His eyes flash with a warning. "Is it my sister? Because she’s with Jace now, even if I’ll never completely get used to it, that means she’s off-limits."

I choke on absolutely nothing. It comes out as a genuinely undignified sound and Knox immediately loses it, folding forward on the bench laughing. I spend a few seconds trying to recover my dignity while he gets that out of his system.

"No," I say, when I can talk again. "Obviously not. What is wrong with you?"

"I had to check." He's still laughing. "You've lived in this house for three years, I had to rule it out."

"You know Rory and I dating was all fake, you absolute maniac."