Winging It by Cate Cameron Read Free Book Online Page B

well placed for the playoffs, but every game still counted. And of course the scouts were always watching. Even if they weren’t there in person, they’d check out the stats and the highlight reels. We weren’t in the big league yet, but we were in the last step before we got there, and the pressure was pretty high.
    So I shouldn’t have been looking up into the stands during the pregame skate, worrying about why Nat’s seat was still empty. And I shouldn’t have headed back to the locker room wondering if I’d get busted if I tried to pull out my phone to send her a quick text. No, none of that should have been in my brain. Hockey, hockey, hockey. That was what I needed to think about.
    And I almost made it. I wasn’t starting that game, so I went straight to the bench for the anthem, and I managed to keep myself from craning my neck around to check Nat’s seat. But Winslow was on the ice, and I saw him look up, grin, and then look back down at me with an exaggerated eye bulge.
    Well, damn. I had to look, and when I did? Nat was there, sitting right next to Dia, Winslow’s girlfriend, and Nat looked…she looked like herself, but somehow a bit more . Like, she always had long brown hair, but usually she had it pulled back, and that night it was loose, falling kind of wavy over her shoulders and around her face. And her eyes were always deep and intense and her skin always looked healthy, but somehow she seemed to have a little extra glow to her right then. I don’t know. It was hard to describe, but I knew she looked beautiful.
    She saw me looking and waved, and I smiled back, and then one of the trainers whacked my helmet and told me to get my mind back on the game, so I made myself turn around. The game. Right. Hockey. On it.
    It got a little easier to concentrate once I was actually on the ice, especially since a defenseman from the other team was chirping and slapping at me whenever he got the chance. I used my energy to stay cool and didn’t have time to look up into the stands.
    Except the next time I got off the ice, I realized Tyler MacDonald was watching me a bit too closely. Which made no sense—other players got after us all the time, and he knew I wasn’t a hothead. Unless…
    I turned around again, and it all came clear. Nat was still in her seat, and Dia was still beside her. But Scott was there, too, crouched down beside Nat, giving her his best fuck-me smile.
    I felt like every muscle in my body went onto high alert. Scott was moving in, Nat was smiling back at him, welcoming him…and I was stuck on the other side of a Plexiglas wall, watching it all happen.
    “Focus on your game,” I heard Tyler say from beside me. “Besides, he’s your cousin, right? He’s just being friendly.” I guess my silence made it clear I wasn’t convinced, because after a pause Tyler said, “You don’t need to trust him—you just need to trust her. Who cares if she’s talking to someone else, as long as she’s leaving with you?”
    I turned back to stare at the ice. Nat wasn’t leaving with me. She was going to her own game, and she hadn’t seemed too enthusiastic about the idea of me going over to meet her there. Maybe she was hoping Scott would show up instead.
    Damn it, I’d signed up for this. I’d agreed to Nat’s stupid plan, I’d lied to my teammates to set up her story, I’d kissed her in the damn driveway—
    Someone slapped my back, and I realized it was a line change. I kicked my legs over the board out of force of habit, made it onto the ice in time to catch up to the play, and took a pass from Christiansen without even thinking about it. I’d made it about one step before I saw the blur approaching from the corner of my eye and just managed to drop the puck back to Winslow before I got hit, hard into the boards. The same damn defenseman who’d been chirping at me before.
    “Late hit, you dumb fuck,” I yelled at him as we pulled ourselves back to our feet. It was technically true,