Sugar and Ice - RJ Scott Page 0,61

of—”

“Don’t tell them that!” Josie cried, and then began to laugh. When she and David hugged it was pure beauty and my heart ached with it.

I was going to be an uncle again. I touched Vlad’s thigh hoping he would take my hand and hold it. He laced his fingers in mine.

“I love my family,” I admitted, and when I looked into his gorgeous eyes, he smiled.

“I love your family, too.”

We were staying at my parents’ house, in two separate rooms, but that wouldn’t last long, and Mom and Dad knew. Not that we could do anything but hug because the thought of doing anything more freaked me out, but at least we were together.

He proved it when he wore pointy ears at the princess party and pretended he was a giant. He also never said a single word when Lizzie demanded he allow ten six-year-olds to paint his face. They made him an ogre, with green skin, and his white-blond hair was flecked with red. They made sure his horns weren’t going to fall off, and he sat there and he stared at me and I was more in love with him with each second he didn’t move.

The ogre was the hit of the party, particularly when he was vanquished and I couldn’t see him under a heap of Disney princesses. Which is when they turned on me and declared I was going to be a prince for real.

When we snuggled into bed that night, we ended up finding just how much glitter there was on us both, despite showers, and how the green might not come off the bit behind his ear. I didn’t want to mention that I thought one of the girls might have been using a permanent marker.

He patted the area. “It’s okay,” he rumbled, trying to whisper. “We will get to the playoffs, and my beard will hide it.”

Playoffs were weeks away yet, we wouldn’t know if we’d gotten a place until April, and it would rest on so many factors as to whether we made it in as one of the ‘best of the rest’ wildcard places.

Stranger things had happened in hockey history.

We still had flecks of glitter when we wrapped up for pond hockey. On my parents’ land, not much more than an acre, but resting in front of the trees there was a large pond which was frozen solid, and already carried the marks of blades. Lizzie was a demon on her skates, and I exchanged glances with her dad as Logan rolled his eyes. Logan used to play shinny hockey in the winter just to stay in shape for baseball and Josie skated a little here and there when she wasn’t in an acting class or on a stage somewhere, Lizzie had the Collins genes, and we went toe to toe on a couple of occasions; she was a canny operator, using a combination of big woobly eyes, and her height to get past Vlad twice.

“You can’t fall for the eyes, dude,” Logan warned him after the second time.

Lizzie shoved her dad from behind and all three of them ended up bundling into a snowbank, Vlad on the bottom.

All I can say is that I was sure it washed off most of the remaining glitter.

We separated into two teams for a snowball fight, Vlad and I on opposing sides. Getting a face full of snow was worth it if the two of us were rolling in the white stuff. Losing to Vlad’s team was a bit of a shit, but my big sister was missing from my team, and Josie had a demon throwing arm.

By the time we went back to the house for everything that was laid out–cookies, hot chocolate, cakes of all kinds, sandwiches, and chips–Josie had her feet up and was eating from a tub of Ben and Jerry’s, I reached for Vlad’s hand and squeezed it. So brief a person could’ve missed it. But the touch was enough.

On the flight back to Arizona we were both quiet and lost in thought, and thankfully none of the attendants were hockey fans, not in the slightest.

“Someday I would like a family,” Vlad murmured, and I turned to face him.

“For real?”

“I’m thirty-five, I’m ready to…” He frowned. “How many more years do I have? In hockey, I mean?”

My chest constricted, imagining a team without Vlad.

“We need to get the cup first,” I encouraged.

“Maybe we will, maybe we won’t, but one day I’d like to work with teenagers, not babies,