Page 6 of Checking from Behind

I stared at the screen and thought for a moment. The jaw, his shoulders, the way his t-shirt had stretched across his chest. His thick dark hair, blue eyes, and his height and body filling my doorframe.

Lillah: Looks really don't matter. He is an asshole. Goodnight Mila.

Mila: Sleep tight. Give Cooper a hug and tell him I love him. Oh and from your non-answer I will take it that he is hot and you just don’t want to admit that to yourself yet.

I giggled then set my phone down and looked up at the ceiling. I watched the fan spin slowly, circulating the warm air around the room. I heard a car door shut somewhere outside, and then everything went quiet.

I let out a sigh. My body was still holding the tension from earlier. I could feel it in my shoulders and my jaw, and there was a space between my shoulder blades that wouldn't release. My therapist had told me it was hyper-vigilance, my body's security system always scanning for threats, on high alert because it had spent three straight years learning that home was not safe.

My home was safe now. No one had a key aside from me, and no one was going to come through my door at midnight smelling like smoke and booze and wake me up to tell me I'd put the dishes away wrong.

I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow. Cooper shifted at the foot of the bed, rolled onto his side and rested his body against mine, letting me know he was here. I put my hand on him, gently petting him.

No matter how hard I tried I couldn't forget the way the guy from next door looked at me. It wasn't anger, more frustration. He'd expected me to fold, and when I hadn't, he didn't know what to do with that. Apparently, no one had told him no before. I'd said no and left him standing on my porch with nothing.

I wasn't folding for anyone anymore.

I'd spent enough time folding into myself, making myself smaller to fit inside a life that was never and would never be mine. I folded my opinions, my voice, my instincts and tucked them away so Brett wouldn't have to deal with the full version of myself. When I stood up straight and took the space I was owed, I had promised myself I'd never go back.

Some angry neighbor with dog shit on his shoes would not change anything.

I pulled the blanket around me and closed my eyes. Cooper let out a sigh and snuggled against me.

CHAPTER THREE

MARSHALL

Two weeks had flown by in a flash. This morning was my first practice, and it was everything I'd been afraid it would be.

We hit the ice at six thirty in the morning, and by six thirty-two I understood what Jeremy meant about Coach Briggs. The man stood behind the bench in a team pullover and black track pants, arms crossed, watching every single player as if he were grading an exam in real time. When he spoke, the entire rink went quiet because everyone knew that if you missed what he said, it wasn’t getting it repeated.

"Hayes. You're on line two with Ashford and Thatcher for the first drill set. I want to see what you can do."

I lined up at center ice and took a breath, inhaling the cold rink air.

The ice felt different here. Faster, somehow. Maybe it was the maintenance crew, or the quality of the surface, or the fact that every guy on this rink was faster than anyone I'd ever played with. The passes were harder, positioning was tighter, and the guys closed gaps before I'd even finished reading the play. In college, you could wind up, pick your spot, let it go. Here, the window opened and shut in the blink of an eye. If you weren't ready the moment it appeared, it was gone.

Thankfully, I was fast. I'd always been fast. My feet found the rhythm within the first five minutes: crossovers, stops, starts, the edge work that had been drilled into my muscle memory since I was sixteen. By the time we ran the second drill, I was keeping pace. At this level, keeping pace with these guys on day one was enough for me.

Jeremy fed me a pass at the blue line during a four-on-four rush. I caught it in stride, and one-timed it toward the top corner of the net. The sound of the puck hitting the back of the net carried through the rink, that clean pop of vulcanized rubber against mesh that never got old, no matter how many times you heard it. Ryan didn't even move. He was set for a low shot, and I'd gone high, and the puck was past him before he could adjust.

"Nice shot, rookie," Ryan called from the crease, tapping his stick on the ice.

I skated back to the line and tried not to let my face show how hard my heart was hammering. Adrenaline coursed through my body. This was it, the thing I'd been chasing since I was five years old on the frozen pond outside of Sheridan with my cousin Dylan and my brother, while my father stood on the banks yelling at the three of us to keep our heads up.

We ran drills for ninety minutes. Breakouts, power play rotations, penalty kill positioning, neutral zone forechecks, and a battle drill at the end that was legalized assault in a ten-foot circle. By the end, my legs were burning. I'd pushed myself hard enough today. My lungs burned and my chest ached from sucking cold rink air in for too long. As awful as it sounds, I'd missed it.

"One last drill guys. Hayes, you're up. One on one board battle with Aiden Callaway." Coach Briggs shouted.

I looked over at Callaway. He was the left defenseman, six-three, two-twenty, and built like a wall. Thatcher dumped the puck into the corner, and we both went for it, and for three seconds, it was nothing but elbows and the sound of blades tearing ice. He pinned me against the boards with his forearm across my chest, his weight shifting into me. I dug my skates in, pivoted under his arm, and came out with the puck on my backhand.

He grinned. "Quick," he said, just as the whistle blew and the lights went off signaling the end of practice.

Coach Briggs was standing in the tunnel between the rink and the locker room, clipboard in one hand, reading glasses pushed up on his forehead. He didn't smile as I approached, but he nodded.

"Good first skate, Hayes. Don't let it go to your head."

"Yes, sir."