Page 13 of The Obvious Check
Madison giggles like a kid when Stanley licks her cheek, pulling all of Dash’s attention away from me.
“And here you are worried about my focus. Your obsession with my sister is making it far too easy to whoop your ass.”
I skate around him, knocking my stick into the back of his legs. Dash stumbles but somehow manages to stay upright. Good for him. At least he’s getting better at refocusing. I skate away andgather up pucks, ready to whack them in my friends’ faces all in the name of practice.
As the rink calms and practice gets underway, Stanley sits obediently behind the boards with Madison, his tail wagging lazily as he watches us. It’s been twenty minutes, but his team mascot status has clearly been solidified.
I’m mid-drill with Erik, weaving around the cones while keeping the puck close to my stick like it’s on an invisible leash. The sound of skates cutting into the ice echoes loudly in the empty arena, mixing with the occasional bark of encouragement from our mascot. The crisp scent of ice and cold metal fills my nostrils as I push harder, focusing on my speed and control. I can feel the burn in my legs as I accelerate, but when we reach the end of the drill, Erik beats me by a fraction of a second.
“Looks like you’re slowing down, Bright,” Erik says with a smirk, skating backward as he twirls his stick in one hand. His breath fogs up briefly in the cold air before disappearing.
“Yeah, or you’re getting faster.” I skate behind him, catching up easily.
“Nope. It’s all you. My times are the same. So that leads me to wonder, what are you going to do about it?”
“About slowing down?” I ask, confused. Erik has this smug look on his face, and I’m not sure if he’s constipated or he thinks he’s got one up on me solely because he beat me in one drill exercise. “Nothing?”
He tuts. “That’s loser mentality bullshit. A winner would be looking at ways to improve and do things that might make them better.”
I raise an eyebrow, still breathing hard. “Where are you going with this?”
“Savannah,” he says, his smirk widening into something more mischievous. “I think you should talk to her.”
I stop skating, planting my stick into the ice as I stare at him. “Savannah?”
“Yeah, she’ll give you a lot of motivation,andpeople who are in happy relationships usually have better relationships with their friends. Theirbestfriends, to be precise.”
“Are you talking about Dash?”
“Yes. Maybe you and Dash will act normally again once you’ve started dating Savannah.”
My brows cross as I think about it all. Erik’s suggesting I try to date Savannah to improve my relationship with Dash?
“Wait a minute. How do you even know about Savannah?”
He opens his arms wide in an exaggerated gesture. “I know everything,” he cackles dramatically. When I keep staring, waiting for him to elaborate, he drops his arms and shrugs. “Okay, fine. I overheard Scotty and Dash talking about it yesterday.”
I glance over at Scotty and Dash, who are huddled near the boards. Scotty’s face is flaming red, clearly wishing for a sinkhole to open up and swallow him whole. Meanwhile, Dash looks grumpy as fuck, but that’s his default setting since birth. His arms are crossed tightly over his chest, I’m surprised he hasn’t cut off his own circulation, and he’s deliberately avoiding eye contact.
“You’ve been talking to people about my situation?” I ask Dash, my voice calm with an edge to it that I don’t bother to conceal. Fucking hilarious. There he was, up on his high horse lecturing me about Stanley, when he was going behind my back, gossiping about me like we’re on that stupid show Erik watches,The Baseball Bachelor.
Dash opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, Scotty raises a hand. “Look, it was me,” he admits. “I asked what was going on with you because I don’t want the tension between the two of you to ruin the team dynamic. We’ve got a hard schedulein front of us, and the last thing we need is unresolved drama messing with our game.”
“Tension?” I echo, frowning as I look around. “I don’t think we have tension.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Erik says, his stick resting against his shoulder as he gives me an unimpressed look.
I glance around at the rest of the team, opening up the question. “Do we have tension?”
Brooks scratches his beard, suddenly finding it far more interesting than this conversation. Alex looks confused, but that guy’s always too nice for confrontation. He shrugs helplessly, looking at the others, hoping someone else will speak up. Henry doesn’t say a word, which isn’t surprising considering our history.
“You’re all going to make me answer, aren’t you?” Erik says, flat-lipped and annoyed. He gestures with his stick, pointing at me and then Dash. “Yes. The tension is ridiculous. We can’t have any of our usual meet-ups because you don’t want to see our grumpy goalie in fear he might grumble about your sister.”
“Hey,” Dash grumbles… unsurprisingly.
Erik turns to Dash, who’s looking over at Madison. Thankfully, she’s too hung up on Stanley to notice this conversation. “Don’t even try to deny it, Bridges. You’re like a growling, prowling polar bear with a thorn in its paw. It’s why you’re fucking gold for the team. This”—Erik gestures between us with a disgusted flick of his wrist—“whole angry tension thing is killing team morale. Especially during lunch when all I want to do is shovel lasagna into my face without sitting through the world’s most awkward silence or talk about why you two can’t see eye to eye. You’re teammates. You need to suck up your differences for the rest of us before Coach notices and makes us all skate suicides until we puke.”
I look around, and the lack of eye contact is telling. They all agree. It’s just that Erik is the only one willing to say it. I rub the back of my neck, feeling a mix of irritation and guilt. I hadn’t realized it was affecting everyone else that much. The cold bite of the rink suddenly feels sharper, cutting through the haze of my thoughts.
