I Seduced His Rival: Now the Hockey Star Wants Me novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Rink Two

"Don't open it here," Luc said.

"Why not?"

"Because the big one will read it over your shoulder and do a voice." He closed my hands around it. "By yourself. Please."

I went through the gate at the end of the rink and down the back hall to the Zamboni bay.

It was cold and dark in there and smelled like diesel and wet rubber.

The Zamboni sat in its stall.

I climbed up and sat in the driver's seat, where he sat every night at eleven, and opened the card.

The handwriting was the same blocky pencil as the letter. Pen this time. He'd pressed so hard it came through the back.

"You're the first thing I look for on the ice.

You know my name. It's Luc.

I'm the guy at the far end on the Zamboni at eleven p.m.

If you ever want someone to skate with, I'm not hard to find.

Luc Thibodeau, number 7.

P.S. I can't draw. You knew that."

I read it twice.

Then I sat on the Zamboni in the dark with the card against my chest, and I didn't cry, and then I did.

When I came back out, the big roommate was standing on a chair doing a speech about the pasta.

Luc was at the head table watching the gate.

He saw my face.

He didn't ask.

He just pushed my chair out for me with his foot.

The plywood came up the next day.

Thursday night at eleven the Barn was empty, and the ice was a mess of scuffs from forty tables and two hundred chairs.

I sat on the Saints bench in his St. Brendan's jacket and watched him resurface it.

Slow laps. The water going down in a long steaming sheet. The rink going from gray to black glass behind him.

He didn't have his headphones in.

Every time he came around the near end, he looked at me.

When he was done, he parked the Zamboni in its stall and came back out across the wet ice in his sneakers.

He didn't slip.

"Show-off," I said.

"Zamboni guys." He sat down next to me on the bench. "We know where the dry spots are."

"Zamboni guys stick together," I said.

He looked at me.

"I read your card."

"I know you did."

"Every word," I said. "You're the first thing I look for too."

He didn't say anything.

I swung my leg over him and straddled him on the bench.

His hands went to my hips like it was automatic.

"There's a dry spot right here," I said.

"That's the bench."

"I know."

I kissed him.

Slow at first, then not slow.

My fingers went to the string of his sweatpants and pulled.

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