Sugar and Ice - RJ Scott Page 0,12
confidence, Sam was still a puppy.
In the third and final period with the game tied at two goals each, Henry was on fire, anticipating where I would be, or where Sam was, he was blind passing. I caught the puck, but got blocked in the corner. Sam was there, no longer bouncy, but passionate about getting that disc of rubber on his stick, scrappy and fighting against the opposing team’s biggest D-man. As a line we got the puck out of the corner, I threaded the puck through two D-men, passed it to Henry who flew around the back of the net, changing direction on a dime, and shooting past the Suns goalie who’d been fixated on me and Sam. Goal!
When the horn sounded I grabbed at Sam and Henry and we shouted with glee.
This might have been a practice game, we didn’t even get points from this for the league stats, but fuck, we were on fire!
The Raptors fans were ecstatic, the Suns fans chanting something I couldn’t make out, and we were closing period three with a one goal lead. They called us the Craptors, and we were beating the Suns, a team that had made last year’s cup race, even if they did lose in the second round.
Okay, so maybe today they hadn’t put out their full roster, not their best like we had, but the pat on the head we got from Coach was the greatest thing ever.
Almost as good as the fist-bump I got from Vlad, and the nod he added in his supremely cool way.
“I got a goal,” Henry yelled in my ear.
“You rock!” I shouted back, as the arena erupted into applause.
I looked up. One of the Suns had tripped Vlad, sending him careening into the net, taking it and Colorado on a sliding mess of limbs to the wall. No one was hurt, but this was it, we were on a power play.
Getting the tap to indicate I was going over with Ryker, was like the icing on the freaking cake.
One Ryker-goal later—the puck defying gravity and wobbling on its edge before sliding under the goalie—and there was no chance of the Suns catching up.
This rag-tag Raptors team that worked damn hard to be better?
Yeah. We rocked.
And everything was quiet, and on an even keel.
Until Lacey posted about my attraction to Tennant Rowe, only an hour before I was leaving for a team party.
Fuck. My. Life.
Chapter Four
Vlad
Humming Taylor’s hit song ‘You Need to Calm Down’, I swiped at the steamy mirror above my bathroom sink to make a small hole to see myself. Frank was bathing in the shower now, the stream turned on cool and aimed at the wooden perch made just for my walk-in shower stall.
“Are you enjoying your shower?” I called to the bird in English. He wolf whistled in return. With a smile I ran my hand over my chin, opting out of shaving. Tonight was a party for the team, not a black tie affair. “Are you a handsome bird?” I glanced in the mirror to see him standing with his back to the stream, wings spread wide. “Who is a handsome bird?”
“Khui!” Frank cried out, bobbing along the perch joyfully.
I blinked at the profanity. Damn it. I hated it when Dimi was right. “It’s not so pleasant to call the man who gives you his shower a dick.”
His blue head twisted to the side and he gave me a click-click of his tongue. Then he called me a dick again.
I tossed a cuss back at him in Russian, turned off the water, and let him prance and dance on his perch for a moment or two. Giving him my hand, he then climbed on, and I carried him to the bedroom where he sat on a perch by the window to dry and preen as I dressed. I’d just gotten my underwear up over my damp ass when my phone rang.
“Alexa, answer the phone.”
“Alexa fuck phone,” Frank called and flapped. How grand was it that my parrot was a bilingual curser? The small device sitting beside the TV fed my brother’s voice through to me.
“Privet, brat,” Dimitri said, his tone light.
“Privet,” I replied, opening my closet to look at the vast wardrobe artfully arranged by color. “What are you doing calling me at this time?” I glanced at the alarm clock beside the bed. It was just a few minutes after seven at night. That would put him at two a.m. or so in Russia. “Wait,