Playing to Win

“Stalking me, Sloane,” she asked.

“I showed up first every time today. Maybe you’re stalking me.” Coach blew his whistle and we both took off. Jordan had to be at least six inches shorter than me, but she was fast. We reached the goal line within nano seconds of each other, slid into a hockey stop, turning quickly to go back.

Once we’d all returned to the start, Coach blew his whistle again and we skated backward.

“Why would I want to do that?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

Why indeed? I knew a lot of girls found me attractive. I didn’t miss the way Jordan’s eyes widened when I got out of my car this morning. I liked the idea of her being attracted to me.

“You tell me,” I said, giving her my best smolder.

Her mouth dropped open before she could catch herself. She schooled her features into a bored mask. “Does that really work for you?”

I winked. “All the time, gorgeous.” I hadn’t meant to add that last part, it just slipped out.

She made a disgusted sound and I laughed.

“Something funny, Sloane?” Coach yelled over the noise of everyone’s skates.

“No, sir!”

Crap.

As my coach and Jordan’s dad, I did not want to be on Coach Parks’s bad side. Putting my head down, I focused on skating. After a few seconds, I glanced over at Jordan. She caught me. I widened my eyes with a grin. Instead of smiling back, she scowled and it occurred to me, for some reason, I cared.

Coach blew his whistle again. And again. Back and forth, we completed warmups, skating forward, backward, forward again but jumping the lines, then with the puck. Jordan skated as though she had something to prove. With her shorter legs, she had to work harder to keep pace with me and I wondered if she’d done any speed training. My dad could be a bit of a fanatic. He sent me to every kind of training for speed, strength, agility. He even made me do yoga.

Little did he know I had no intention of pursuing hockey after high school. His dreams of me playing at the next level were just that, dreams. I’d play by his rules until I graduated, but then I had every intention of following in my mother’s footsteps straight to microphone. All without worrying about my dad and what he wanted.

I didn’t hate hockey. I’d been playing long as I could remember. The hockey stick felt like an extension of my arm. Like a basketball player dribbling the ball, handling the puck required skill, practice. And like basketball players, some had better skills than others.

Jordan knew what she was doing.

“You’re good,” I murmured just loud enough for her to hear as we crossed the line.

She shot me a dirty look. “For a girl, you mean.”

I shook my head. “I’d never say that.”

Girl or not, she had to be good to play for Kevin Parks even if she was his daughter. He didn’t have the winningest record in the state for nothing.

We were teammates and I hated that we’d gotten off on the wrong foot. That meant we needed a truce.

“Hey, I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t know that was your spot. And at lunch, too. Can’t you cut the new guy some slack?” We’d just finished the last of the skating drills. Around us, everyone breathed hard. If you didn’t sweat off five pounds at hockey practice, you weren’t doing it right.

Jordan bent slightly at her waist, sucking air. She lifted her head, settling her gaze on me. Her eyes moved from the top of my head, over my face, down my neck and shoulders until they stopped.

Her eyes flew to mine.

“You’re left handed.”

I glanced at the offending hand before meeting her blue-eyed gaze again. “Yeah. So?”

“I’m left handed.”

I’d noticed, but still didn’t understand what she was getting at.

“Don’t you get it?” She clenched her jaw, shaking her head just a little. “How many left-handed players do you think there are on this team, genius?”

Frowning, I wondered where she was going with this. “Not many.”

“That’s right. Not many. Only three including you and me.”

She slung the words like mud and they hit me, splattered across my face. There were two left handed positions on the ice at a time.