Chapter 5

FIVE

Logan

I'm alone on the ice when Annie jumps out and joins me. I shoot the puck at the empty net, then skate toward her. It's our first "skating lesson."

We've encountered each other a few times over the last couple of weeks, since the day I crashed into her and knocked her phone out of her hand. And each time, I've met with cool aloofness. It wouldn't bother me, except I've seen her interact with the other guys with easy joking and smiles. Clearly, it's just me she hates.

I glide closer, holding my stick in both hands. "This is bullshit."

She blinks. "Excuse me?"

"I don't need to learn how to skate," I grit out. "Why am I here?"

Her jaw tightens "You think I want you here?" She leans closer to spit out the words in a low voice. "Get over yourself, Loco."

We glare at each other.

She glances up at the box where Coach Shipton is watching us and sucks in a long, slow breath. "Look, I get it," she says quietly. "You know how to skate. That's not what this is about. It's about getting better ."

My back teeth grind together.

" Easier ," she adds emphatically.

"I'm gonna talk to Coach."

She appears unfazed. "You can talk to him if you like. He and I and Viktor made the decisions about these coaching sessions together."

I feel like bashing my stick over the boards.

"I see you're frustrated." She keeps her voice low as the other guys appear and jump onto the ice. "I'm only asking that you keep an open mind and give it a shot." She lifts a hand in greeting to the others and pushes back on her blades. "Morning, guys!"

We're all in full gear, skating leisurely around. Annie's in her Bears track suit and hockey skates, wearing pink mitts. Jesus.

She gathers us near the boards before starting.

"Okay, guys, you're the lucky ones who get the first session!" She gives us a cheeky grin. "But don't worry, you're not the only ones! I want to say a couple of things because we haven't worked together before. I am not here to teach you how to skate. You all know how to skate. You play in the NHL. I'm here to make things easier for you. And yeah, it might be a little hard learning some new things and doing things differently, but I get results and I promise you if you work with me, your skating will be easier and better."

None of us say a word.

"I know some of you are skeptical about what a figure skater can teach you." Her gaze slides over and collides with mine. My eyebrows draw together as I meet her eyes. "Figure skating is a very technical sport. Every turn you do is marked—your entry to a turn, your exit from a turn, whether it's an inside edge or an outside edge. Speed and execution are so precise and so technical. That kind of technical ability really can help hockey players. At the end of the day, it's not figure skating, it's just skating ."

The rookies, Adam Wong and Garret Brickards, nod.

"We're going to work on basic elements. Forward and backward skating, crossovers, your edges, and your turning. First let's warm up and do a lap. Let's go!"

We all take off skating, me bringing up the rear with a decided lack of enthusiasm.

"Faster!" she yells.

With an eye roll, I pick up the pace.

Annie joins us and then my eyes widen as she sails past us. My legs are pumping hard. Hers are barely moving. And she's flying by me. What the fuck.

After a turn around the rink, she comes to a halt with an aggressive two-foot hockey stop and grins at us. "Okay, great! Come on over here." She moves over to a faceoff ring and starts skating backwards around it, demonstrating what she wants us to do. "Starting with backward crossovers. Keep your body lined up over the line on the ice. Your knee, hip, and shoulders should all be in line…" She uses a hand to draw an imaginary line up the side of my body. "And we're going to start with little half swizzles, so with your outside leg pump…out…and in. Out…and in." She shows us. "Make sure you're looking back but not turning your body. Okay, go!"

We get in a line and follow her, then she glides away from the ring to watch.

I don't fucking want to do this. It's infantile and pointless. "Too easy," I mutter.

"Back in Peewee again," Jake the Snake says with an eye roll.

"We never even did this in Peewee hockey," I reply. "Jesus, we're not kids."

Annie shoots us a tight, cold smile. It's a little terrifying.

She skates over to Jake. "Hold on. The key is body alignment. Your alignment is off. And that means the entire kinetic chain of movement is off." She corrects his posture. "Knee, hip, and shoulder all in line…like this."

He scowls.

She corrects me, too, and I can't stop my scowl.

We circle one more time, then she stops us and has us go the other direction, progressing to lifting one foot, then moving on to crossovers. I heave a sigh.

"No need for speed!" Annie calls to me as I get going faster. "This is about being steady and aligned."

I shoot her a black look.

"Okay, watch me again." She joins us on the circle. "See how I'm really reaching with my inside leg? And then sweeping under…" She does it again, and again, then gets us doing it, once again with impatient looks from all of us.

"Come on guys, enough with the attitude!" She laughs, making it a joke. But not really. "Okay, Adam…make sure you're pushing with that outside edge…there…yes, like that. Do it again…" She watches until satisfied, then moves to guide me. "Let's practice a spiral..."

"What the fuck? I'm not doing any spins."

"No, not a spin, a spiral. Hold yourself on one foot…keep that leg up…lean in a little…like that." I glide on one foot. And fuck me, I wobble. Just a bit. "Exactly. Practice doing those."

She moves to the other guys and gives them some one-on-one pointers. "Slide that outside foot across horizontally," she tells Garret. "Like this." She slows the motion to show him what she means. "Heel turns in aaaand…slide across. You got it!"

She watches us more, then says, "Okay. Let's focus on really reaching with that inside leg…really reach! That's where your power comes from. Reach! Reach! Yeah!" After a few minutes where I'm not really reaching, she stops us. "Okay, did you feel that? Did you feel the power when you focused on that inside leg?"

"Yeah!" Adam says. "I did."

Jake and I give him a cynical look.

Annie glares challengingly at us. "You didn't feel it?'

I shrug.

Her lips thin. "Okay, when figure skaters head into a jump, we skate backward. Mostly. Watch."

She heads across the ice then skates back toward us, backward, lengthening her stride, getting low, and then propels herself off her inside edge, makes one full rotation in the air, and lands smoothly. In fucking hockey skates.

When she sees our expressions, she looks like she's trying not to laugh. I hurriedly school my features into unimpressed boredom.

"See when I was going backward…can you picture Kingston Bang lining someone up for a filthy open-ice hit?"

We all bark out out surprised laughs. Yeah, I can see it.

She grins. "Let's practice it again. Imagine that's what you're doing."

I see some of the other guys waiting to come on the ice. It's time for our regular practice. Thank God.

It's hard to believe a pretty little blonde with long pink fingernails and pink lip gloss and pink mitts is going to teach us how to skate. We're hockey players, for fuck's sake.

But she's already set us on our asses when she lapped us skating. Jesus, it didn't even look like she was trying hard. Then she jumped in the air and twirled, landing on one foot so gracefully it kind of made my heart stutter. What the fuck.

But still, figure skating is entirely different from a hockey game. And I still don't want to be here, no matter how sexy the coach is.

And there it is again…she's a coach.

"Deeper knee bends, Garret!" she calls. "Yeah!" She pumps her fists in the air, appearing genuinely delighted at his performance.

"Okay, we're done for today," Annie tells us. "If you have some extra time to practice those backward crossovers, that would be great. I'll see how you're doing on Thursday. Thanks, guys!"

Annie glides away effortlessly, greeting the other guys as she leaves. They all swarm onto the ice. As I skate past the bench, Coach waves me down. "Logan!" He jerks his head, signalling me to come over. I stop at the board and look at him inquiringly.

I'm sweating.

I always sweat, but today I'm really sweating.

"Look, I was watching you out there."

I smile. Yeah, I saw him about halfway through the session. He's going to tell me I don't need to worry about this.

Keeping his voice low, he says, "I need you to have a better attitude about this. It's not respectful to Annie, and it's not respectful to your teammates to be rolling your eyes and making smart ass comments."

I freeze and stare at him. Then heat flows up my neck and into my face. "Uh…"

"Nobody's going to take this seriously if our veteran players don't. Those rookies out there are looking to you as an example."

I swallow.

"You told us you have goals this year. That you want to play better, get more minutes. This is a way for you to do that and you didn't look like you even gave a shit. Did you mean what you said?"

"Yeah," I croak out, my face burning.

"Because talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. Hold on, I can probably think of a few more clichés."

I try for a smile.

"It's true though. We're looking to see how you follow up those words with actions." He pauses and meets my eyes. "Got it?"

I nod. "Yeah." My voice rasps again. "I got it."

"Good." He slaps the dasher board. "Okay, guys let's go!"

I skate over to join the boys gathered around Viktor who's got a white board out.

Shit.

I work to focus on what our assistant coach is telling us, trying to shut out my anger. Bad enough that I have to do these "skating lessons" never mind that Coach called me on my attitude. Yeah, I'm pissed.

I throw myself into practice, skating my ass off, shooting hard, aggressively fighting for the puck in battle drills. My thoughts are circling at the back of my brain the whole time, but I blow off adrenaline physically and by the time we're done and I'm collapsed onto the bench in the locker room, my mind is quieter. I slowly take off my gear and let myself think, blanking out the guys yakking.

Earlier, I was pissed. Now I'm embarrassed. Maybe a little ashamed.

Under the spray of the shower, I can admit I felt insulted by the fact that I've been told I need to improve my skating. Resentful. I blamed Annie for that. And I acted juvenile.

I'm better than that.

Now the one I'm angry with is myself.

"Come on, Loco!" Cookie calls to me. "My grandma runs backwards faster than you move."

I flip him off and slam my locker shut. "I'm coming. Jesus. What's the rush?"

He and Millsy give me similar looks, with a raised eyebrow. They exchange glances.

"You seem crusty," Cookie says.

"Was your skating lesson that bad?" Millsy asks. "It sucks to have to learn to skate all over again."

I glare at him.

He laughs. "I get my lesson tomorrow. Come on, man. We all have stuff to learn." He slings an arm around my shoulders and herds me out of the locker room.

"How was it?" Cookie asks.

I shrug. "It was fine.

I don't tell them that Annie Bang skated circles around us. They'll see that for themselves. I also don't tell them that Coach gave me shit for being a dickhead. I'm definitely not letting on how shitty I feel. I'll sit with that a little longer until it doesn't sting so much.

Goddammit, I'm such an idiot.

I beat myself up the entire ride home, sitting in the back seat while the other guys yammer on about our season opener tomorrow night. Why am I even trying to do better? I'll never get more ice time. I'll never make the second line. Probably not even the third. If I don't even try, I won't feel so bad. I should keep playing the way I always have. But even that was never good enough for my dad.

* * *

I line up waiting for Murph to take the faceoff. I'm on a line with him and Burr—the third line. A step in the right direction.

Except…Brick is playing on the second line. The new guy. Coach is trying some new line combinations for our season opener, and he had to juggle things because Millsy's out tonight puking his guts out with some kind of flu bug, but I'm a little pissed that the new guy is playing with Cookie and Axe, who moved up from the third line as well to fill the holes left by Bergie and Red.

Sanders on the Condors' defense plants himself next to me and gives me a sneer. "You think you're as tough as your old man. You're not."

He's said shit like that before. It pisses me off. I don't know how that motherfucker knows what to say to get under my skin. It's his superpower, I guess.

I'm already irritated and I have to fight to ignore him.

Murph wins the faceoff and gets the puck right to me. I've got it on my blade and ready to shoot at the net, but before I can do it, Sanders knocks me off it and steals it. Asshole!

He passes to another Condor and they're off down the ice toward our end. Luckily Jammer and Nate are on them, keeping them to the outside, taking away a chance to shoot. Sanders has the puck again and I go at him, laying a hard hit on him against the boards.

The fans cheer.

Murph snaps up the puck and heads back toward their net and I start off after him when Sanders whacks his stick across my legs.

"Fuck!" My first instinct is to stop and go back at him. But somehow my second thought kicks in and I keep skating after Murph. The crowd is roaring for a penalty but the refs are fucking blind. Murph passes to Burr, who passes to me. I get it back to Murph now on the Condor's blue line, ready to go to the net, but as I do, a Condor player comes between us and intercepts the puck.

Fuck!

He grabs it and he's off, flying down the ice. I take off after him as do J-Bo and Barbie. I'm pushing so fucking hard but there's no way I can catch that guy. J-Bo is a fast skater and almost catches him, and Barbie's too late. I trip over the blue line (not really, fuck me, it just feels like it) sliding flat and uselessly on my chest as the Condor player shoots the puck and scores.

We lose the game three-one.

The mood in the room is gloomy after. I know from experience I can't beat myself up over a mistake, but it's hard not to. My turnover cost us the game. And I've never felt like such a shitty skater as when I tried to chase that Condors forward. My limbs feel heavy as I shower and change, and the sour taste in my mouth lingers.

Then I check my phone and see the texts from Dad.

You should have gone after that asshole Sanders. You gotta toughen up.

Guess I should have known he wouldn't like that, even though Sanders ended up taking a penalty. I know I did the right thing, but it sucks that Dad always has to criticize.

And another one.

Watch where you're passing!

Like I don't know that. My shoulders slump and my gut cramps. This one he's right about. I fucked up and I know it. Everyone knows it.