I was officially flying on cloud nine today. After that panicky beginning, Battlescar13 and I had dominated round one of the tournament. We’d beat those seniors into the ground so bad that they’d feel that spanking for days. Unfortunately, I’d found out this morning that Michael and his gaming partner had also won their first round. We were all still in the game. Round two was on Tuesday evening, four days from now. After that, the finale.
And my big chance to show them all what I had.
But that happy thought was violently interrupted by the sudden collision of two hockey players into the plexiglass in front of me. I nearly jumped out of my thick puffer coat and knocked over my dad’s camera tripod. This was why I didn’t play sports. A mumbled line of curses left my mouth as I fixed it and squared the shot.
“You know, I wasn’t sure anyone could focus enough to daydream at a hockey game, but then I saw you,” Lexi said, coming up beside me. She handed me a hot chocolate and grinned. “What ya dreaming about? Gold and glory?”
“Always.” I took the steaming cup from her and sipped gratefully. She and Charlotte had both already heard the news about my big win yesterday. They were my secret cheerleaders, pushing me on toward the finish line “But also, I’m freezing, so what you might have taken for daydreaming was me slowly slipping into hypothermia.”
“I’m not sure how you could freeze when you’ve got such delicious eye candy.” She nodded toward the ice rink where the hockey game was getting underway. We were five minutes into the second period. “It’s a shame they have to wear all those pads and helmets, though.”
“Oh, really?” Zane came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. Lexi’s boyfriend had movie star good looks with a chiseled jawline, side-swept dirty blond hair, and a smile that made most girls swoon. He’d moved into town just at the start of the year to film a movie and never left. I was sure my best friend was a big part of that and I couldn’t blame him. She was pretty awesome.
Lexi grinned happily in Zane’s arms, her cheeks pink. “That’s why I like soccer more.”
“You’d better.” He nuzzled his face into her curls and then glanced up at the rink. “But then again, hockey is pretty great. I didn’t realize what I was missing out on until I moved to Rock Valley.”
“You were missing out on a lot of great things before you moved here,” Lexi shot back with a quirk of her eyebrows.
He grinned and wrapped his arms even tighter around her. “Sure was.”
I grimaced and turned my attention back to the ice. As happy as I was for my friend, that was enough PDA for me. I had work to do. Adjusting the tripod, I tried to make sure the sight through the len
s was getting all of the action on the rink. This was the only chance we had to film what we needed for our anatomy project.
It was a brutal game. Silver Lake was one of our biggest rivals—both in size and enthusiasm. They had a few hockey players that looked like they ate a bucket of protein powder for breakfast every morning. But none of them had anything on Gabriel. He was tougher than steel. Nothing could take him down. Still, I winced when Gabriel got pinned between two of the Silver Lake players on the other side of the ice. Reviewing this footage was going to be tough.
Gabriel would be lucky to make it through this game without adding a few more scars.
I chewed my bottom lip as I watched him reclaim the puck and make a run for the goal. There was still something there in my belly, like a deep-seeded live wire, that jolted every time I thought about him and our strange moment in detention yesterday. It would’ve been easier to bury, had he acted like the jerk I’d always painted him as.
But no, he had to go and try to be valiant and get me out of detention. And then, he had to be all...nice about it. Did he really mean it when he said he would’ve liked to see me beat his brother in the tournament? Or was that just something he said? A toss-away comment meant to lower my defenses around him. I was having a heck of a time deciding what was what. My bull crap meter was running haywire.
Gabriel just wasn’t who I thought he was.
“How was your time in detention?” Lexi moved beside me. Zane had left to go find their seats again. She eyed me over her cup of hot chocolate, as if she could read my mind. “You didn’t say much about it. Did you and Gabriel play nice?”
I made a move to adjust the camera, although it was already perfectly set and the recording light blinking. For some reason, I couldn’t look her in the eye. “Yeah. It was fine.”
“I’m surprised you guys could last that long in the same room together.” She giggled and blew some steam off of her drink. “You know, they say there’s a fine line between love and hate.”
An involuntary jerking motion of my arm pushed the camera out of focus. I glanced at Lexi in alarm, and then back to the camera. Was she serious? Why was she bringing that up? I’d always disliked the Corrigan brothers. Just because I spent detention together with one of them didn’t change anything.
Even if I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
“Can we just focus on the game?” I asked, readjusting the camera. “Honestly, I’m just ready for this whole thing to be over. The tournament, this project. Catfishing Gabriel...or whatever it is that I’m doing. Within a week, I’ll have that tournament trophy in my hand and an A in anatomy and I’ll never have to think about a Corrigan brother again.”
“Right.” Lexi raised a sculpted eyebrow. “Because why would you want to think about a guy who’s ripped, into the same stuff as you, and totally tried to get you out of detention? Charlotte spilled the deets, Bethy. A guy doesn’t just do that for anyone. He must like you.”
I snorted, my eyes glued to the players on the rink. “Trust me, guys like that don’t like girls like me.”
“Girls like you?” She huffed and put her hand on her hip. “You mean, totally gorgeous and doesn’t even know it? Scary smart and not willing to take crap from anyone?”
I glanced down at her with amusement. “Okay, I’ll own the last two, but you’re missing the target on the first. Guys like that like girls like you. Small, feminine, doesn’t tower over them in heels.”
She harrumphed so loudly it almost made me laugh. She just didn’t understand.
“And besides all of that,” I added quickly, cutting her off from starting a new rant, “it doesn’t even matter because Gabriel and I will always be enemies. Just you wait. As soon as he finds out it’s me on the other side of that computer screen, he’ll show his true colors. The final round of the tournament is at the club. In person. I won’t be able to hide as CurrerBFighting anymore. He’ll hate me, just like Michael. That was always the plan.”