I Lost a Bet to My Hockey Rival, Now I Wear His Number novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Cut Lip

The stick came up in the second period and opened Nash's lip.

He felt it before he saw the blood, a hot sharp line.

Then the ice was red in a neat spatter near the faceoff dot.

The whistle blew.

Across the circle, Gaspard Lachapelle was standing with his stick held out in front of him.

"High stick," the referee said. "Two minutes."

"Accident," Gaspard said, to the referee, in a voice made of cold iron.

Nash looked at his face and knew it was true.

He also knew that Gaspard had gone the color of paper.

"I'm fine," Nash said, spitting blood on the ice. "Take your penalty, Captain."

He went off to the trainer's room with a towel on his mouth.

The crowd cheered him all the way down the tunnel, nearly every one of them in the white-and-navy 29 now.

Forty-one days.

The pavement kiss in Montreal had hit twenty million views by Christmas.

Bernie Costigan had taken it better than Nash had any right to expect.

She had stared at her screen for a full minute and said, "Cab, in the snow," in a faint voice.

Then she had called a meeting with the sponsors.

The official story was that the two stars had developed a surprising friendship through the charity.

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