Thin Ice

If you want, I'd be more than happy to re-break your nose

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Excuse the mistakes

Dedicated to Annabellove. She was one of the winners of the stupid cupid oneshot

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“Take it down, Dane! Take it!”

Dane caught the pass from Alec and started skating up center ice and out of our zone. Both Alec and Greg, the other wing on their line, went up with him, and Owen and I brought up the rear. However, just as Dane crossed the red line, he was once again stripped of the puck by one of the opposing team’s wings.

“Crap,” I muttered, and I immediately shifted my weight and pivoted on my skates so that I was going backwards. I was a fast skater going either direction, but this team we were playing was probably the best we’d faced so far. We were a goal ahead, but that could change at any moment.

Currently, the game was a battle between the offense. Tony was off today, as was the other team’s goalie, and some easy goals were going in. That said, everyone else was on the ball, and this game had turned into an all out war. Each team had more than five penalties, and this period, which was the last, had gotten pretty dirty.

Unfortunately, because I was girl, I had become much more of a target. I was used to getting checked because I played a physical sport, but the cheap shots when the referees weren’t looking were getting pretty old. I’d managed to avoid a penalty, but that didn’t stop me from hitting right back. I was pretty good at timing, and I’d even gotten a slap on the back from Coach Hannover. He told me straight up he was glad I wasn’t taking shit from this team.

If you hadn’t guessed, my relationship with Coach Hannover had gotten much better along with my team relationships. He played me regularly now, and sometimes, Owen and I would be the starting defensive pair. Of course, he was still hard on me, but now I knew it was because he wanted to help me get better, not just to run me ragged.

Also, Dane and I were doing our best to keep our relationship, whatever stage it was at, a secret. I could tell that it bothered him that I didn’t want anyone on the team knowing, but Dane understood. That said, he’d taken me to an old movie theater for a midnight showing of Rocky Horror, which was my all-time favorite movie. We’d held hands, but there wasn’t a kiss at the end of the night. I’d wanted one, but I also didn’t want to rush something that was delicate to begin with.

“Kelsey! Watch the back door!”

The sound of Owen yelling a command tore me from my thoughts, and I immediately skated around the net and came up next to the wing waiting for a pass so that I was between him and the net. I tied his stick up in mine and started shoving him closer to the boards and farther away from Tony.

He started swearing at me with the usual names of “bitch” and comments like “get back in the kitchen” or “get off my ice”. I was so used to it at this point that nothing he was saying bothered me, and I just narrowed my eyes as I focused on the play.

Owen passed the puck up to Greg, who only had time to turn around and look up before he was checked cleanly into the boards. Then, the other team’s wing took the puck and passed it up the boards to the defenseman waiting at the point.

“Shot!” I yelled as he wound up, and a second later, the defenseman let the puck lose.

I shoved the player I had tied up with all the force I could muster, throwing him off his balance and getting him away from the net. A moment later, my head snapped around to see the puck bounce off of Tony’s blocker and hit the ice. As he dropped down to cover it, I turned to face out at the incoming players.