Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters Read Free Book Online

Seth?"
    "Blue," he answered. "I'll be goalie, unless you want to."
    He was addressing me, but Kirsten piped up, "You go ahead." She snatched the last blue helmet out of my hand. "I'll be your guard, Seth." She winked at him and tossed me her red helmet.
    Did she do that on purpose to irk me? Sometimes…
    Seth crooked a finger my way.
    "What?" I selected a hockey stick from the rental rack.
    "Come here."
    I obeyed. He smooched my face between his ski gloves. "Good luck," he said. "You're going to need it."
    I kissed him, then dug a skate blade into his boot.
    The face-off was won by the red team and we jockeyed the puck up ice. The other five players on my team were decent skaters; I'd seen most of them around or played with them before. Coop, one of Seth's friends, was a wing on my team. He acknowledged me with a grunt. The only other girl with a red helmet pulled up beside me, pivoted to skate backward, and said, "Hi. I'm Dayna."
    "Holland." We touched gloves.
    She reversed direction and charged off toward the net. Wow. With those thighs, she had to be a speed skater.
    We blew a scoring pop, but only because Coop and this other guy on our team hogged the puck. "Over here," I heard Dayna yell more than once, but they wouldn't relinquish control.
    Kirsten intercepted a drop pass between Coop and his buddy and sped off toward our goal. Crap.
    I caught up with her in the zone and stole the puck back. Took a wide arc and stick-handled the puck down the side, then saw Dayna hailing me and flip-passed the puck over. Coop caught it in the air and hand-passed it to his buddy.
    "Dammit," Dayna snarled under her breath as she scraped up beside me. "I had a clear shot."
    "I know." We rolled our eyes.
    The game went back and forth for the next twenty minutes or so until everyone was pretty wiped. The score was five to four, in favour of the blue team. "Time out," Seth called. The lodge had sent over a vat of hot apple cider and the players swarmed it. I needed to adjust my sock where it was bunching up at the heel. Dayna plopped down next to me on the bench.
    "We're taking out Beavis and Butthead," she said. "We'd be up by at least three goals if it wasn't for those jockey jerks."
    "No shit," I said. They were totally dominating play.
    "If I can ever get the puck, I'm pretty sure I can smoke the redhead."
    That was Kirsten. "Okay. I'll do what I can to draw her off. She's got a bad left knee," I told Dayna. "If you can catch her coming around on that side, she doesn't have a quick recovery."
    "Yeah?" Dayna's eyes gleamed. "Cool." She crossed one ankle over a knee and cleared her skate blade. "You're a good player," she said. "You on a team?"
    "No. I've been playing in rec league since I was like six. You're a great player. Where do you skate?"
    "Andersen Rink, at 104th and Sheridan?"
    I knew it. Nodded.
    "You come here a lot?" Dayna eyed me over her stick.
    Before I could answer, Seth skated up with two styrofoam cups of hot cider. "Here, babe." He handed one to me. Noticing Dayna, he offered her the other. What a guy.
    "No, thanks," she said, smiling. "You go ahead."
    The cider was steaming and spicy and I held it to my face to warm and drift up my nose. Dayna stood, stamped her skates on the ice, and sped off.
    I wondered about her. No, I didn't. I knew.
    In the second half Dayna bided her time. The hockey jocks not only wouldn't pass, they were hooking and stick checking all over the place. There's no checking in open hockey. Everyone knows that.
    A crowd was gathering at the edge and someone called, "You guys about done? We wanna play."
    Coop shouted, "One more minute!" He whizzed past me. We were still down a goal. In a blur Dayna bulleted out from behind a blue player and split a seam up the middle. She drove toward Coop's back and body-checked him so hard he went flying. Dayna stole the puck from him and sprinted up the side.
    I zipped in behind her. Kirsten passed me by, heading for Dayna, but Dayna crisscrossed in front, almost