Sugar and Ice - RJ Scott Page 0,35

two points. All we needed to do was get one more goal, just one, and we’d have a clear win. In Toronto. Everything was amped up to the max, and weirdly slowed down all at the same time. I got the tap to take my line over and we hit the ice just as Toronto lost control of the puck, a turnover from an exhausted forward, and Vlad had it for a second, hitting it hard to the boards so it flew around the net, straight to my stick. It didn’t stay there for long, a no-look pass to Henry because I knew he’d be there, Lewis was close to the net, waiting for Henry to shuttle the puck to him. The Toronto goalie had his eyes on Lewis, a scrappy front of net fighter, and he’d made a rookie mistake, taking his eyes off me.

Henry feinted a pass to Lewis, sent it careening to me instead, and with the goalie out of position I slammed that puck so hard it sent the goalie’s water bottle flying. The lamp lit and there was no call against the goal. We were three-two up, and there were twenty-seven seconds on the clock.

Toronto pulled their goalie for the next face-off, left their net exposed and replaced the goalie with another forward, but it wasn’t enough. We didn’t get an empty net goal, but we sure as hell got a win.

And it was the best freaking thing in the entire damn world.

Dinner was at this pizzeria that Alex knew, and he was there waiting for us, congratulating us on the win, pissed he couldn’t have been part of it, but so happy for us all. We were on a high, and everything was lit up in my head. I even got a smile from Vlad and a fist bump with an added nod of encouragement. I wonder if maybe tonight I would get a call? Just at the thought of it I was half hard, and he knew.

The food was great, the conversation great, everything was great.

Only, halfway through dinner, Ryker’s phone lit up, and he looked at the messages and then up at me. Then Sam’s phone lit up, then Henry’s. We were all connected in a group chat, but my phone hadn’t vibrated in my pocket, so this wasn’t a group chat post, or a joke, or some stupid Tik-Tok video guaranteed to have me snorting with laughter.

“Tate,” Ryker caught my gaze and held it, and my chest tightened. Was this some Tennant Rowe shit blowing up in my face? Hell, was it Ten himself messaging his stepson? I understood the silent message that I should check my phone and had to wriggle against Eli who grumbled and teased and made some comment about me touching his thigh.

“In your dreams,” I muttered, and he elbowed me in the side.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I didn’t have to go far. I had a long list of messages on Instagram and over three hundred twitter notifications commenting on a link. When I clicked the twitter link it was direct to a heartfelt essay on Lacey’s hockey-girlfriend’s blog, the one she’d dedicated all her time to when I was back down south and she was still my fiancée in that damn live show. The headline was enough to have me scrambling to stand in horror, in shock, in a new kind of hell.

Sometimes you don’t even know the abuse is happening.

Chapter Ten

Vlad

The flight back to Arizona was rife with tension. As soon as we’d piled onto the charter jet the anxiety among the players was obvious. Tate sat by himself in the back, burrowed into his own private hell. I longed to leave my seat across from Colorado and go to him, take him in my arms, settle him protectively on my lap, and reassure him that all would be well. I could not do that though. For several reasons. One being that I had promised Coach I’d keep a short leash on Penn, who was fidgety already. Lack of groupies, or so I imagined. The second reason was the most obvious one.

Pulling my sexy teammate into my lap in public just might be considered a declaration of my gay status, something that was not on my To-Do list. And thirdly, I remained in my seat because I wasn’t sure if the accusation Tate’s ex-fiancée had made against him had any merit. Yes, I knew Tate Collins biblically, but I didn’t