Page 30 of Payback On The Ice

I rip my mask off. I throw it on the ice. I get my hand on his helmet and shove it back off his head and it goes clattering away behind him, and his hair is wet and flat and his face is red and his mouth is open, and he's looking at me like he's been waiting for this for three weeks.

"Do it," he says. "Do it, you coward, I dare you⁠—"

I kiss him.

It's more fight than kiss. He bites my lip, hard, and I taste blood, and I don't care, I push him harder into the boards and he makes a sound into my mouth, a low, rough, broken sound that goes straight through me. His gloves hit the ice. His bare hands come up and grab the back of my neck and hold on, his fingers digging in, like he thinks I'm going to get away.

I'm not going anywhere.

There's too much gear between us. Pads and plastic and foam, and it doesn't matter, I can feel him anyway, I can feel the whole shape of him pushing back against me. I get my knee between his and he gasps against my mouth and his head goes back against the glass, and I go after his jaw, his throat, the place under his ear where his skin tastes like salt and cold, and he says "Dane," just my name, like he's just learned it.

My blocker's on the ice. I don't remember dropping it. My hand's in his hair. I've got a fistful of it and I'm pulling his head back and he's letting me, he's letting me, his throat bared and his eyes half shut and his chest heaving, and he looks⁠—

He looks the way he looked on Monday in the room. Hands behind his back. Holding something too heavy, and not putting it down.

Because I told him not to.

I stop.

I'm breathing like I've just come off a ninety-second penalty kill. So is he. My forehead's against his. Our breath is mixing in a cloud between us. My lip's bleeding, and his mouth's red with it, and his hands are still on my neck.

I'm the one who has the puck. That's what this is. He's in the crease, and I've got the puck, and he's waiting to see which way it goes.

And all I can think is: this is the guy who put Nico into the boards.

I let go of his hair.

I step back. His hands slide off my neck. He stays there against the boards, like he's been stapled to them, with his mouth open and his jersey twisted around and his chest going up and down.

"Dane," he says.

I pick up my blocker. I pick up my mask. I don't look at him.

"Tomorrow," I say. "Six."

I skate up the ice toward the tunnel. I don't turn around. I can hear him behind me, breathing, and then I hear him say, quiet, to nobody, "Fuck," and then a long scrape and a hard clatter, like he's dropped his stick, or thrown it.

I step off the ice onto the rubber, and keep walking.

My lip is still bleeding. I can taste it all the way down the hall.

9

THEO

Idon't sleep. Obviously.

I lie on my back in Nico's old bed in the dark, staring at the four white squares of tape on the wall, and I touch my mouth. It's swollen. There's a cut on the inside of my bottom lip where his teeth caught it, or mine caught his, I don't know. I keep pressing my tongue against it to make it sting.

He kissed me.

He kissed me like he wanted to break something, and then he looked at me with his hand in my hair, and he stopped. He stopped. I saw it happen. I saw something come down over his face like a garage door, and he stepped back, and he picked up his mask like he'd dropped it in warmups, and he left me there against the boards with my stick on the ice and my dick so hard it hurt.

Tomorrow. Six.

Fine.

Fine. You want six, Kovač? I'll give you six.