Page 109 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
He hands me the water. I don’t look at the box.
Coach waves us in.
“Get it together,” King Con says as he tosses a leg over the boards and hops back on the ice. I follow.
Third shift. I wind up in the penalty box after boarding an opposing winger. Two minutes in the box watching my team try to fight off the power play.
Fourth shift, I get hit back. The boards come up hard.
My shoulder hits the glass, and my helmet cracks back against the boards above the door, and the puck is gone. I stand against the boards for a second longer than I should, getting my bearings, while their winger celebrates the takeaway and Coach’s clipboard comes down on the bench with a sound like a gavel.
Not a dirty hit. A completely clean, perfectly read check on a distracted defenseman who was not looking at a box seat but maybe thinking about it instead of his zone coverage.
I peel myself off the boards. Shake it out. Skate to the bench.
Coach looks at me for a long, specific second. The look that has been building all period. Then he nods once—we’ll talk later—and turns back to the ice.
I sit.
Conrad chuckles as he takes his seat beside me again. I know what he’s going to say.
“I’ll get it together.”
Conrad raises a brow, smirking. He nods toward the box. “You’d better. Look who showed up.”
I look up.
Four women.
Blue Ox sweater, hair piled in a messy bun that seems to tumble down around her face, eyes searching the ice. Looking for me.
Everly’s gaze finds mine. And I can’t help it, something inside me short-circuits, losing all cool. I wink at her.
“All right, all right, lover boy. Do you think you could play some real hockey for us now?” Con says. “’Cause we’re in.”
EVERLY
I really thought I was going to miss the game.
Frankly, it was a possibility I don’t know how to come to terms with after sitting for the last thirty-seven minutes in a complete traffic standstill on 35E.
All I could think was, greatest romantic moment of my life—Beckett waiting for me to show up—and I’m stuck in traffic.
Ha ha, God. You got me.
For your benefit, let’s replay the quiet unraveling of my heart.
Okay, maybe not so quiet. But there I am, in the car, and I turn on the radio as we inch forward another foot and then go back to a full stop. The announcer’s voice fills the car, and my head drops to the steering wheel.
“—and we are underway here at the Xcel Energy Center, folks. What a night to be a Blue Ox fan—” I turn the volume up, my heart breaking a little. No, a lot. “—puck drops, and it’s Benson with the first touch! He feeds it up to Kingston on the right side. Kingston cycling low, looking for Vasquez—oh, and that’s a clean takeaway by number twenty-two. Vasquez is not happy about that?—”
I start to look at the shoulder, wondering what the fine is for driving in the ditch.
“—Blue Ox regroup at the line, Benson back at the point—he fires, Vasquez tips it—oh, just wide, and I mean just, folks. That puck kissed the post on the way by?—”
The car in front of me moves four feet. And all I can think is, I should have left yesterday, right after getting his letter.
“—Now here’s something interesting, color me curious, because Benson has been off tonight. Not bad, but there’s a hesitation we don’t usually see from him, a half-beat delay on his reads—you catching that, Dave?”
