Keeping Casey (Keeping Him #1) - Amy Aislin Page 0,49

wincing when his left wrist protested. “It reminds me a lot of Maine.”

“Is that where you’re from?”

“Yeah. Small town called Lighthouse Bay.”

A bark of laughter from Roman. “No kidding. Small world.” At Ethan’s confused frown, he added, “That’s where Jeff Bellmoor’s from. Grew up there until he left for college.”

Wow. Small world indeed.

They shot pucks in relative silence for the next few minutes, until their stock was depleted. Roman again gathered them from inside the net, and they repeated the process all over again.

The Sport U Arena was massive. Ethan had never been intimidated by arenas before, but he didn’t think he’d ever played in one so large. Plus, banners proclaiming the Trailblazers to be Stanley Cup champions hung from the rafters.

He was on the ice with a Stanley Cup champion! He did a little dance in his skates. How cool was that?

“Have you ever coached kids?” Ethan asked as Roman retrieved the pucks for a third time.

“Some.” Roman passed the pucks to Ethan one by one, and Ethan lined them up at the blue line. “I actually prefer coaching older teenagers, though, or even the minors.”

Ethan stared at him. “You’ve coached in the minors?”

“Sort of?” Skating back to him, Roman scratched his chin. “I’ve shadowed the coaches of our AHL affiliate a few times. I guess I just prefer coaching people who are serious about the sport.”

“I’ve only ever coached camps for preteens.” Ethan played with a puck, tapping it back and forth. “From what Yano said, though, I’d be coaching littler kids at the Foundation’s summer camps. What’s something you wished every hockey newbie knew?”

“I can only go by my own experience and what I wish I’d known. And that’s that no two coaches are the same.”

Huh. That was an interesting bit of feedback.

“I had a tough time with one of my coaches when I was a teenager,” Roman said.

Ethan frowned at the net and sighed. “Me too.”

“Did you report him?”

“No. You?”

“No. But I should have.” The crack echoed throughout the arena as Roman sent a snapshot flying. “Did you tell your coaches about Britton?”

“No. Why would I?”

“That,” Roman said, pointing his stick at Ethan. “That right there. That’s something else I’d tell newbie players. That no player is a damn island. There’s a whole support network behind them to help. You have a problem with one of your teammates, you go to your coaches. Homophobia isn’t taken lightly in this sport anymore.”

Tell that to Coach Fallon.

Problem was, Britton was good. Really good. Ethan didn’t know what the consequences of homophobic language was—it was no doubt outlined in the NCAA rulebook he’d been given at the start of the season—but whatever it was would no doubt have Britton watching several games from the bench.

And the Mountaineers couldn’t afford to have one of their best players benched.

“It’s fine,” he said with a forced shrug. “I’ve got it under control.”

Roman was not impressed.

An hour later, he waved goodbye to Roman in the arena’s parking garage and got into his car, dropping his skates on the floor of the passenger side. The button pinned to his backpack on the seat glinted in the overhead light.

I dig you.

Sighing, he closed his eyes, hands clenching on the steering wheel. It sent a bolt up his left arm, forcing him to consciously relax his grip.

He had to get over Casey. He wasn’t Ethan’s to keep.

Digging his phone out of his bag, he found a text from Laura. HELP!!! She’d also included a screenshot of a word math problem.

Setting up the car’s hands-free system, he gave her a call, and she kept him distracted with seventh-grade math homework on the entire hour and twenty-minute drive back to Glen Hill.

Chapter Fourteen

For the first time in weeks, Casey attended one of the Wednesday evening Archeology Club events, a social held in one half of Glen Hill Hall’s ballroom. Music pumped through the speakers, and along one wall was a table filled with finger foods and bottled drinks.

As someone who’d always been more of an extrovert, it had occurred to him over the past couple of days that he still didn’t have friends of his own. He had Jasper, sure. And he got along with the other freshmen on his floor, but he wouldn’t knock on their doors and invite them to his room for pizza.

There were Theo and Brant, of course, which wasn’t a surprise—he and Ethan had always had the same taste in friends.

However, the entire point of joining the Archeology Club had been to meet