Page 10 of In the Crease

“Within twelve hours.”

She shook her head, but she was smiling—the easy one she’d had ready at the airport—and I rinsed my mug and left the kitchen before I could do something stupid like stand there thinking about the fact that she looked like she already belonged in it.

Which I wasn’t thinking.

Clearly.

Chapter Four

Maren

The apartment told me things about Ryan Lindqvist before he said a word.

Ryan’s half told me everything. Books shelved by subject, film notebooks with their edges lined up, the throw on the couch folded rather than left. The kitchen clean not because anyone was watching but because disorder hadn’t occurred to him. Or maybe he was a neat freak. I was pretty sure he just found comfort in order. Everything about him suggested someone who had figured out a long time ago exactly who he was. Griffin’s half, of course, was a total shitstorm. Gear bag on the floor, shoes by the door with no system whatsoever. I recognized both immediately.

I fixed my hair and retouched my mascara, taking considerably longer than I needed to in Ryan Lindqvist’s very organized, very good-smelling bathroom. It’s possible that I sniffed his cologne on the counter more than once, and then after catching myself in the mirror, put it down and finished getting ready.

When I came out, he was at the kitchen window with a mug of the tea he’d made for us both, looking at the parking lot. He was polite. He’d made me tea, left me a towel I hadn’t asked for in his bathroom. He was standing there with his shoulders set and I noticed he was broader across the shoulders than he’d seemed in any photo or on any ice, and I stared down at the tea.

We talked while Griffin was still at practice and it was easier than I’d expected. A door already open. He talked about the pond with warmth that came through the understatement. The way he answered my questions—really answered them, like he’d actually considered them—made me want to ask six more before he finished the first one.

He was tall in a way the roster photo hadn’t conveyed. It showed the jaw. But there were other things about him I tried not to clock but couldn’t stop myself. Definitely not the way he’d handed me the moose hat without making a thing of it and somehow had been the most quietly attractive gesture I’d witnessed in my eighteen years on this earth.

I was going to be sensible. He was Griffin’s best friend. He was going to the NHL in four months. This was a weekend.

Griffin’s arrival saved me from myself. I let him pick me up and set me down and tease me about the boots and I was glad he was there. Ryan had simply shifted, two steps back, arms crossed, easy.

Sal’s was everything Griffin had promised. The bread basket alone justified flying north in February. I ate most of it while Griffin made introductions—Petey, who stood when I arrived already certain the night was going his way; Jensen, quiet and watchful, content to let other people do the talking; Davo, who put his phone away when I walked in, caught and visibly aware of it; and Hartley, a freshman who called Griffin “sir” once by accident and spent the rest of dinner visibly angled away from the moment.

I sat across from Ryan.

Petey had a neutral zone trap theory. He’d been developing it for, based on the confidence with which he presented it, about his entire life. I let him go for three minutes and then said, “The problem is you’re assuming the weak-side winger holds his lane, but if he’s a step slow on the backcheck, the whole structure collapses and you’ve handed them the middle for nothing.”

Petey stared at me wide eyed.

“I grew up watching hockey. And, I mean, Griffin talks,” I said.

“That’s—yeah. That’s a really good point.”

Jensen refilled my water glass four times over dinner without a word about it.

Across the table, Ryan caught my eye and the corner of his mouth moved before he looked back down at his plate. He went back to his pasta, and I looked back at Petey and told myself I was not tracking Ryan’s expressions from across a dinner table.

I was absolutely tracking Ryan’s expressions from across a dinner table.

He was attractive in a quiet way. Not the first thing I noticed necessarily, then suddenly the only thing. Sandy-blond hair he’d pushed back off his face at some point during dinner. Blue-gray eyes that were more intent than warm until something struck him as funny, and then both. The scar through his left eyebrow I had absolutely tried to stop noticing. The way he sat—still, settled, taking up exactly the space he needed and no more. He didn’t fidget at all. He was stone still. The way the younger guys angled toward him without it seeming deliberate, the way people moved toward warmth. The occasional dry line that landed and disappeared before anyone could react to it.

His hands were big. I noticed when he reached for his water glass and immediately started thinking about what they'd feel like before I picked up my drink and took a large gulp.

I caught his eye once. Half a second. The recognition passing between us was immediate. We’re both doing this. Then my pulse kicked up hard and I looked back at Petey.

I was going to need to be so much more careful than I’d been in the truck. When we were alone on the drive, I’d let myself just notice things. The way he answered questions. The way he drove with one hand and didn’t fill silences he didn’t seem to need to fill. The way he smelled, which was heavenly, and I’d noticed right away and then spent the next thirty miles pretending I hadn’t. That was the truck. Contained. Forty minutes, one direction, no witnesses. Just me and him.

Dinner was an hour and a half with his teammates watching and my brother six feet away.

Time to drag my attention back to everyone else.

I turned back to Petey and went back to dismantling his trap theory.