Mila waved me off then sank next to me on the bed. “Maxim makes like a zillion dollars a year.” I rolled my eyes at that, and she laughed. “What? He signed a crazy ass contract with the Reapers and besides that, he has tons of endorsements. He could buy four houses like this and still not feel the hit to his bank account if he wanted.”
I shook my head, amazed at the life Maxim led. Not that he didn’t work his ass for it, because he did. He absolutely deserved everything he had.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said, slightly exasperated with me.
“I’m going to miss you,” I said, leaning against her shoulder. She’d traveled for months at a time before, but it never got any easier.
Mila squeezed me. “Me too,” she said. “But we’re almost done and then it’ll be non-stop leveling up for us when we launch the gallery.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and smiled at her. “Five more months.”
She grinned at me as she rose from the bed, heading toward the door. “Make sure to have a little fun while you’re living the good life on my brother’s dime,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “Rack up his grocery bill for sure. It’ll be good for him to take care of someone other than himself for a change.”
“I’m going to do my best to stay out of his way,” I said.
“You probably won’t see him much,” she said. “But if you do see him, it couldn’t hurt the cause.”
My lips popped open as she waggled her eyebrows at me. “Mila!” I chided her, but laughed when she winked with so much exaggeration she looked ridiculous.
“Just saying,” she said, then flashed me a genuine smile. “Love you.”
“Love you,” I said, managing to keep the tears at bay as I watched my best friend leave.
The silence of the house quickly engulfed me and I took a deep breath. If I was being honest with myself, this place felt oddly familiar and comforting, like coming home after being away for a long time. Which was ridiculous, since I’d never even set foot here before, and I wasn’t even paying rent.
I wasn’t one for charity, but this would help us in ways nothing else could. And, of course, I’d make sure I wouldn’t get in Maxim’s way, regardless of Mila’s teasing, and I’d cook and clean and do all the things a proper roommate should do...
Roommates.
I was officially Maxim Zolotov’s roommate.
The same Maxim Zolotov I’d been hopelessly in love with for years now.
What could possibly go wrong?
3
MAXIM
The noise of the crowd swelled around me as I took center ice for the puck drop against Chicago. Usually this was the moment where my pre-game nausea took a backseat to the adrenaline, and yet here I was, fighting back the bile rising in my throat.
I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him.
My father was somewhere in this rink, ready to catalog every mistake I made so he could list off my faults one by one in the name of making me a better player.
“What did I tell you would happen if you didn’t get the puck up off the ice?” Dad handed me my stick and dumped the bag of pucks onto our backyard rink.
“But Dad, I scored! I had eight goals today!” I shivered in my hoodie. It was only three degrees out here according to the thermometer on the deck.
“Five of which were through the five hole. Now remind me, Maxim. What did I tell you would happen if you didn’t get the puck up off the ice when you shot?” He didn’t bother arching an eyebrow at me. His face was unreadable as ever.
“Dad, it’s almost midnight,” David said from the edge of the rink, wearing his worried-big-brother face and a thick coat.
Midnight. And I was so tired. We’d played three games today to win the President’s Day tournament, and my arms and legs felt like jello.
“I wasn’t asking you, David,” Dad snapped.
“He’s only ten.” But David wasn’t. He was fifteen and so much bigger…and better.
“What. Did. I. Say?” Dad ignored David’s plea.
“A hundred shots for every one that wasn’t lifted off the ice,” I repeated, my shoulders drooping. There was no getting out of this. There never was.
“Seems like you owe me a hundred shots, Maxim. Every single one of them had better be airborne.” Dad turned his back on me and walked off the ice, steadier on his feet than I could ever dream of being, and I had my skates on. “And if I see you taking one shot for him, he’ll start all over,” he warned David before walking the shoveled path back to the house where our mother waited with Mila.
“I fucking hate when he has a bye weekend,” David muttered, skating out onto the ice.