First Chapter: Halftime by Kim Findlay
Sebastien
Sophomore year is going to be so much better than freshman year. For starters, I’m entering the arena at Burlington University to watch the freshmen at their first on-ice practice. Last year, I was in the locker room sweating my balls off, wondering if I was going to make it or not.
I mean, I knew I should make it. I’d done well on my Junior A team back in Canada before earning a scholarship here, but sometimes my nerves got the best of me. When I was in a new situation, I was always afraid I wouldn’t be wanted.
This year, I wasn’t new. I spotted a bunch of the guys sitting a few rows up, so I headed to join them. I felt my phone buzz and pulled it out of my pocket as I climbed the steps. I smiled when I saw it was my girlfriend texting me a photo.
That’s another thing that’s going to be better than last year. This time last year, I didn’t know it, but I was about to lose my girlfriend. Faith had been a senior in high school. She’d wanted to break up when I left for college, but I’d convinced her long distance would work.
Long story short, it didn’t.
This year, it’s different. Holly and I started going out the end of our freshman year, and being a lot smarter, we took a break over the summer. We reconnected a few days ago and decided to get back together.
Much better way to handle things. I’m learning.
I sat down beside my teammates, still looking at the photos Holly sent me, and got some teasing from the guys. That was the other thing that was so much better this year. I knew these guys. After a year together, we’d bonded. We were family. I didn’t have any other family worth talking about.
“Is that Holly texting you?” Cooper, a junior defenseman, asked. He’d adopted me last year after the big breakup with my girlfriend. I’d needed somebody then, and he’d come through, in aces. I owed him.
I nodded, flipping between two photos Holly had sent me. She wanted to know which I liked better. Hell if I knew. I mean, the photos weren’t that clear, and she looked good in both of them.
“What’s she sending you photos for when she’s not naked?” Cooper leaned over my shoulder to look at the photos. I elbowed him. Cooper’s a player, the off-ice kind, so not really a guy to ask for advice on relationships.
“She wants to know which one I like.”
He shrugged. “Whichever one shows more skin.”
I shook my head, then took another look at the photos. Maybe he had a point.
Next thing, Holly sent me two more photos, and I was looking for a way to bail. I wasn’t Dr. Phil, but I could see a lot of ways this could go bad if I picked the wrong one.
I heard a whistle from Forts, our captain, and looked up. Our freshmen weren’t on the ice yet. The women had first dibs on the ice today. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the women’s team, because my ex, the one that broke up with me last September, played hockey. Nothing against the Moo U women hockey players, but I didn’t need the reminder.
The guys were watching one of the goalies on the ice. The women had wrapped up most of their practice, best I could tell, and were just shooting at the net. And the one player? The goalie?
Damn, she was good.
Really good.
Déjà vu good.
I didn’t know how to describe what was happening to me. My cheeks were warm, but my body was cold. My stomach was ready to hurl my lunch, and an unseen weight pressed down on me.
And through it all, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
I knew it was her without seeing the face hidden behind the mask or the name on the back of her jersey. I knew those moves, the way she slid across the crease, the quick flick of her blocker to deflect a shot. She was even better than she’d been a year ago. No wonder the guys were watching her. She didn’t play like a freshman goalie. She was confident and focused and…
And she hated me.
“Who’s that?” I heard Cooper say, and there was no doubt who he was talking about. There were six of us sitting there, and all six of us were watching her.
Just her.
“Dev.” I heard my mouth speaking but had no memory of making it happen. “Her jersey says Devereaux, right?”
I figured it out. I was dreaming. That was why I felt so weird. That was why my mouth was spitting out words when I hadn’t given it permission to. It was some weird dream, probably connected to this being close to the anniversary of our breakup. I waited it out, knowing I’d wake up long before I had to see her face. Sure, this dream felt almost real, but it couldn’t be, because Faith would never come to Burlington, not when she knew I was here.
Of course not.
The coach blew her whistle, and the goalie turned around, Devereaux written across the back of her jersey. Number thirty-one. Faith’s number.
Because in my dream, I hadn’t changed anything.
“Shit, Seb, you know her?”
Dream Cooper was surprised by this, as apparently were the rest of the guys on the team. But it was okay, I’d wake up soon.
“Yeah, she played in the same town as I did as a Junior.” Fortunately, dream me was smart enough not to say I knew her, as in naked knew her. Did not want to talk about that.
Instead, dream me rattled on about something else. “First practice on the Mav’s, we all tried to score on her. I think about two shots got in out of at least a hundred. She’s good.”
Dream Cooper got a glint in his eye, and I knew he was about to get up to some stupid shit. Cooper was the biggest contributor to our kitty. We threw in money when we did something we shouldn’t and gave it to a charity at the end of the year. Good thing this was just a dream.
“Really?” Dream Cooper wasn’t giving up on the idea. Real Cooper was just the same.
“Yeah, she played on the guys’ teams until she wasn’t allowed to anymore.”
Cooper turned to the rest of my dream teammates and said, “Let’s go guys. The freshmen need to see if they can do better than Seb’s sorry-ass Junior team.”
They all agreed, got up, and headed down to the ice. Dream me stayed put, waiting to wake up. It was definitely time for this to be over. My phone buzzed again, and I saw Holly had sent more pictures. I looked at them, wondering why I was so interested in women’s fashion in a dream. And it had to be a dream, right?
I shook my head. Down by the ice, Cooper called Faith. She skated over and tugged off her helmet. Sweaty hair surrounded her face, and the long blond braid fell down her shoulder. She pulled her arm over her forehead, wiping off the sweat. Like she did every damn time. And the bubble I’d created by telling myself this was a dream popped.
My hands started to shake. The phone buzzed again, but now I felt like I really was about to hurl. I found my feet and headed away from the ice, away from my teammates, away from her. I came to in the hallway, leaning against the wall like I’d fall down if I tried to stand up straight. I breathed in and out, concentrating on keeping my food inside me.
What the everlasting fuck?
Faith was here? Why the hell would she be here? She knew this was where I’d gotten a scholarship. This was my school.
Shit. Sophomore year had just gone to shit.
* * *
Faith
Not every day was a good day. Some days, I couldn’t stop a beachball coming at my net. I didn’t have many of those days. I was good. So good that I’d been offered scholarships to a lot of schools. I’d had choices. My dad and I had gone over all of them, making up a pro and con list. The biggest pro was getting ice time.
I was a goalie. When my team was on the ice, there were five skaters and one goaltender. A team would normally run four forward lines and three pair of defensemen every game. That meant eighteen or more skaters would play in a game, and only one goalie. The backup goalie would only come in if the starter let in a slew of goals or got hurt. Bottom line? There weren’t a lot of goalies on a team’s roster, and they didn’t all get to play.
It was important that I had the chance to be in net for games. I was going to play hockey professionally, so I needed to show what I could do while I was at college. Dad and I looked at a lot more than team records and facilities. We checked out what the rosters were like, how deep they were with goalies both playing and ready to play.
The best shot to play was at Burlington University, known as Moo U. Moo U’s starting goalie had graduated last year. Her backup, Claire Anderson, was a rising senior, and this was her last year playing. They didn’t have any other goalies ready to start. Of course, the biggest con about Burlington was my ex. I knew he must be playing here this year, that is unless my darkest wishes had come true and he’d lost a leg or something. I’d been careful not to hear or see anything about him.
Bitter much? Yeah, I was.
I couldn’t tell my dad I didn’t want to go to Burlington because my ex had cheated on me. That wasn’t a topic we discussed in our house.
And hell, I wasn’t going to let my ex decide my future. I needed to put my hockey career first. That meant ignoring anything to do with him and taking care of myself. I’d been ignoring him for a year. I could keep it up. So I’d taken the offer from Burlington.
I’d been here on campus for a couple of days now. I was learning my way around, getting to know my roommate, and had seen no signs of my ex. So far, so good.
Today was our first practice. It was just the freshmen on the ice, though I had noticed some people sitting watching us. I knew some of them had to be some of my upper-class teammates. I was looking forward to meeting them, but first I needed to impress them with my skills.
If I could show them I was the goalie they needed, they’d be predisposed to like me.
Women playing hockey did not get all the perks and advantages that the guys got. We had to play for the love of the game, and we were all fiercely competitive. We had to be, or we’d all give up.
Fortunately, I was having one of my best days. First, we did some drills. Most of those were for the skaters. We goalies had different needs and did a lot of exercises and practice on our own. There was another freshman goalie here, but it soon became blindingly obvious I was better. I had to be. If I was going to be a professional, I had to be better than everyone. Because I didn’t want to play with women. I wanted to play with men.
My favorite part of the rookie exhibition was at the end, when the skaters took shots, and the other goalie and I did our best to stop them. This was what I lived for. And today everything was going well. The puck had slowed down, and I saw everything coming. I knew it would be harder with the rest of the team, with the better, more-experienced players, but for now, I let my mind go into my zone.
There was nothing but me and the puck. It was a battle I’d been fighting as long as I could remember. And today I was winning.
The whistle blew, and the shots stopped coming. I stood straight, flipped up my visor, and turned to suck some water through the straw in one of the bottles I’d left on the net. I was coming back to reality now, my body coated in sweat, my muscles vibrating from released tension. This was the closest I’d been to a game in weeks, and I was buzzing, still ready to go. The rest of the players had already started toward the locker rooms. I gathered my stuff and started to follow them when I heard someone shouting my name.
“Devereaux!”
I hadn’t expected someone to call me out like that. My coach had called on me during practice, but this was a male voice, not Coach Cray’s. I hadn’t been here at school long enough to get to know anyone not connected with my team. Maybe it was bizarre, but I only knew women on campus so far.
It was definitely me they were calling though. There were five guys down near the ice, and it wasn’t hard to figure out they were hockey players. They were big and fit, built the way they needed to be to play my sport. Plus, they had that air of confidence that the men’s teams swaggered around with. Moo U didn’t have a football team, and the hockey team was the jock royalty on campus. The men’s hockey team, of course. My roommate had already checked them out and told me more than enough about them. I knew the rookies for the men’s team were next on the ice, so these guys were obviously here to check out the new blood, just like the women had been here to watch me.
Not gonna lie, for a minute, I checked every face, making sure none of them were my ex. I hated that I reacted that way, but I hadn’t completely gotten over him. At least, not to the point of not caring about him. Maybe I should break my own rule and check whether he was still here, or if he’d managed to get dengue fever. Or leprosy. When none of the faces were familiar, I relaxed and skated over to see what these guys wanted.
I tugged off my helmet. I knew my face would be flushed and my hair would be sticking to me with sweat, but I didn’t let that bother me. I had no romantic interest in any of them. I’d promised myself not to date an athlete and gone against that once. I wouldn’t again. I shook out my hair, wiped my face, and waited to hear what they wanted. Best case, they’d tell me I’d played well, because damn it, I had. Worst case, smack talk. I could handle both.
“Hello, ladies. How can I help you?”
I might as well start the ball rolling. I’d played with boys before. I didn’t need them to like me, but I did need them to respect me. And in the locker room, trash talking could earn respect.
“Cute,” said a tall blond. He appeared to be the leader of the group, and I took note. He was leaning against the boards, confidence oozing out his pores. That was fine. I was just as confident.
“I hear you think you’re pretty good.”
I could work with this. I shook my head. “Nah, I know I’m great.” I gave them my widest smile.
Blondie smirked. One of the other guys looked shocked. I focused on Blondie.
“I also hear you think you can take on men.”
A snort from behind him let me know they’d caught Blondie’s double entendre. Again, nothing I hadn’t handled before. It was a challenge to see what I could take.
“Are you asking me for a date, Blondie, or do you want to play hockey?”
He ran his gaze over me, so I did the same to him. He wasn’t going to see much. I was covered with pads. I could verify that he was fit and had money to spend on clothes, but the appraisal was a gesture, not interest on my part.
No athletes. Especially not hockey players. Assuming any offered.
Blondie crossed his arms and cocked his head. “Think any of these freshman or rookies can score on you?”
A couple of guys had made it onto the ice. I was the only one from the women’s team still around.
I ignored the look on his face, the smirky do-you-get-what-I’m-suggesting look.
“They won’t be able to get the puck past me, unless they’re very, very lucky. And I don’t think any of them are that lucky today.”
A big grin creased his face. “Okay, then let’s do it.”
I blinked. “Seriously?”
He stood up. “Unless you’re just talk?”
I jerked my head at the male coach who’d just stepped onto the ice. “If he’s okay with it, then bring it.”
Blondie called out, and the coach skated over. Not hard to see that Blondie had some clout on the men’s team. I wondered if he was a senior or junior.
“Hey, Coach Garfunkle. Can we have a little fun here? Devereaux here is pretty good. Maybe the new guys can give her some more practice and see if they can get the puck past her?”
I thought there was a good chance the coach would blow off the idea immediately, but instead, he looked at Blondie, then at me, and then stared out over the ice at who knew what.
“Sure, Coop.” He nodded. “We’ve got a few minutes before we need to get started here.”
I took another gulp of water before putting my helmet back on. “Watch and learn, ladies!” I taunted as I skated back to the net.
I could talk a good game with any of the teammates I’d had, boy or girl, and the ones I’d played against. That was part of the whole scenario. But unless it was a bad day, I could back it up. And today was a good day. These guys, dressed for the first time as the Moo U team, were anxious to look good for their coach and teammates. They’d brought their A game. But I had an A-plus game going.
It’s not that no one could score—but almost no one did. I wasn’t perfect even on my best day, but only two pucks got past me, and one of those bounced off the post, hit my back, and went in. On more than fifty shots, that was acceptable.
I still wanted the other one back.
As much fun as it was, they did have a practice to run, so the coach whistled, the guys gathered around him, and I was left alone in the net. Again, I gathered up my stuff, pulled off the helmet, and prepared to skate over to the women’s locker room.
“Devereaux!” It was Blondie, Coop. “Not too shabby.”
I pulled my hand out of my glove and scratched my nose with my middle finger. I heard the guys laugh, and I skated off the ice with a smile.
Fifteen minutes later, I was in my coach’s office, and I wasn’t smiling.
“Why are you here, Ms. Devereaux?”
I’d been told to stop and see her before I left. I wasn’t sure what was up, but I’d knocked on her door as soon as I’d showered. No one wants to be on their coach’s bad side. She told me to come in and then glared at me. Apparently, she hadn’t asked to see me to say I’d done a good job in practice.
I wasn’t sure what answer she was looking for, so I went with my honest response. “I’m here to play hockey.”
She leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed. “With which team?”
Oh shit. I could only give one answer. “The women’s team.” Obviously.
“Then why were you on the ice with the men?”
I didn’t know this woman yet. I didn’t know if she had a sense of humor. I didn’t know if I was totally screwed. “It was a kind of joke.”
“A joke? Do you think our team here is a joke?”
Shit. Shit. Shit. “No, ma’am. It was something the Junior team did back home, a thing for the rookies. To show them that a woman could stop them, so they didn’t think—”
“I don’t know or care what you did ‘back home’. I’m worried about what you do here. I don’t need one of my players being a ‘joke’ for the men’s team. Maybe it’s different ‘back home’, but here, we’ve had to fight for everything we have in the women’s hockey program. I don’t need to lose ground because a freshman wants some attention from the boys.”
My mouth dropped open. Attention from the boys? Did she think I was desperate for them to like me? “With all due respect, ma’am, I didn’t want their attention. I wanted them to know that a woman can be just as good at hockey as they are.”
Coach’s eyes snapped with anger, and she leaned forward, an angry expression on her face. “Just as good at hockey? I don’t need an overconfident freshman on a mission to show the world she’s just as good at hockey as the men. I need team players, players who want to be here, who want to play women’s hockey. Yes, Ms. Devereaux, I know you’ve played with the boys. And I know who your father is. And I don’t give a flying…fig. If you’re playing here only because there isn’t a ‘boys’ team that will sign you, you can pack your duffle and go. I have no room for divas and egos on this team. You’re good, Ms. Deveraux, but if you’re not a team player, you’re no good to me. If you come back to our next practice, I expect a better attitude. Think it over. And close the door on your way out.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
By the time Coach was done ripping me a new one, the rest of my teammates were gone. I packed up to leave, feeling like I’d just tanked my entire future.
Fuck!
I wondered how she’d found out I was playing with the guys. I wondered if one of my teammates had seen me and told her. Did the whole team hate me now, or just my coach? How could I fix this? When I’d had trouble with teammates before, there’d been an easy solution. Play better. Because when a team was winning games, everything tended to go more smoothly. But now, if I played well, was everyone going to think I was just doing it to show the guys I was as good as they were? Because I wished I was playing with them?
Truthfully, to reach my goals, I couldn’t be as good as the guys, I had to be better. And I couldn’t do that unless I played.
Fuck.
I wished I had someone to talk to, but I didn’t know my teammates yet, and they might already hate me. Obviously, talking to my coach was out. I wasn’t calling my parents. I didn’t need my dad interfering. I slammed out of the locker room, mood a complete 180 from when I’d left the ice a half hour ago. I was blinking back tears, because I could not be the emotional girl as well as the show-off.
I was tired and upset and angry and ready for this day to be over already. I wasn’t looking where I was going and ran into someone. A tall, hard, masculine someone, because it was just that perfect a day. I muttered sorry and stepped to the side, wanting nothing more than to get to my room where I didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing me while I tried to come to grips with what had just happened.
“Faith?”
I froze. This could not be happening, not today. Did I torture some orphans in a past life, or kill kittens? I knew that voice. It belonged to the one person I didn’t want to see ever again.
“Faith?” He said it again, so staring at the ground was apparently not going to make either of us disappear.
I drew in a long breath and slowly raised my head.
It was him. Seb, the cheater. He looked shocked, like I was the last person he’d expected to see.