After a beautifully executed play on our part, I got possession of the puck and barreled for Mendez like a freight train. One of their sophomore defensemen swooped in, trying to stop me. He put up a good fight, but with a quick toe drag, I transitioned from forehand to backhand and fooled him into attacking the wrong side. His confusion gave me a window to pass to Dallas, who was wide open in front of the net.
Dallas caught the pass and faked a shot, convincing Mendez he was aiming for the bottom corner, but then he shifted toward his backhand side while pulling the puck laterally. Dallas, who had some of the best hands in the division, moved so quickly that Mendez couldn’t recover in time. No goalie could have. Dallas sank the puck deep into the opposite corner, evening out the score.
The buzzer was music to my ears.
“Nice one.” I gave Dallas a fist bump as we skated back to our bench.
“It’s a start,” he said, “but now we have to demolish them.”
As the second period began, we emerged fired up and ready to battle. Evening out the score had reinvigorated us and had shaken Callingwood’s confidence.
Strangely, after being whistle-happy in the first, the refs were letting more and more slide. Infractions piled up without being called. Subtly at first, but it became increasingly blatant as the game went on. Hit, hook, slash, spear, trip. Nothing.
Miller went off script and split the lines, separating me from Dallas. But maybe he knew what he was doing, because Dallas sank another goal past Mendez on his first shift without me. Then I added to the score with a goal of my own shortly after, a slapshot that brought the score to three-one.
With each goal, the Bulldogs looked incrementally more defeated.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving team.
I watched from the bench while Dallas assumed possession of the puck and brought it up the side, looking for an opportunity to pass to Martin in front of the net. Hope surged through me as Dallas wound up and shot it over to Martin. Four-one would look great up on the board.
Martin took a quick wrist shot that bounced off Mendez’s glove. A nice attempt, but no dice.
A good five seconds after Dallas executed the pass, Luke skated up and checked him from behind. Hard. Dallas crashed into the boards, shoulder first, and bounced off before falling onto the ice.
I nearly snapped my stick in two.
That dirty motherfucking Morrison.
My gaze cut to the refs, and I waited for them to call it, but they didn’t. What the fuck? The hit was so blatant, there was no way none of them saw it. Clearly interference, at a minimum, and possibly boarding if Dallas was injured.
Chest tight, I watched Dallas stand and shake himself off, then slowly skate to the net. He seemed mostly unharmed by the cheap hit, but that wasn’t the point. In addition to the official rules and regulations of the game, there were a number of unwritten rules that were implicitly understood—a major one being, we didn’t take dirty hits on clean players. And if we did, we expected to answer for it.
I was coming for those answers.
Minutes crept by without penalties, even though infractions were flying left and right from both sides. The tension between the teams was at an all-time high. We were dangerously close to a full-on line brawl.
Luke’s game was less garbage than usual, which meant the Bulldogs were putting up a decent fight. But it also gave me opportunities to hit him every time he had the puck, and I took full advantage. I’d checked him three times since the second period began, though none were the devastating collision I’d been aiming for. Even though we were ahead, I wouldn’t be satisfied until I flattened him.
Thirteen minutes in, I made a fourth hit on Morrison—a nice shoulder-check into the boards. He bounced into the glass but remained upright, steadying himself. Then he threw his arms up, whining to the officials about “boarding” and pointing at me. The ref closest to us shook his head and waved him off.
Luke skated back up to where I was positioned, like he was going to cover me. “Cheap hit,” he spat.
“You’d know about those.” I looked away, clamping down on the ever-present urge to ragdoll him. I couldn’t punch him outright, no matter how much I wanted to.
“Fuck you.”
Knowing it would piss him off more than engaging, I laughed. “No thanks.”
Before I turned to skate away, I knocked Luke’s stick from his hand. It clattered to the ice as I started for our bench. Petty? Sure. Better than beating his ass like I wanted to and getting ejected from the game, though. He shouted something I couldn’t decipher, but I didn’t look back.
Four line changes later, the score was still stuck at three-one. Bulldogs were moments from losing their shit, taking cheap hits left and right on our smallest, least confrontational players. One of our freshmen, a gangly kid, left the game missing a tooth after a run-in with Paul, and still the Bulldogs received no consequence for drawing blood.
Despite my attempts to remain calm, my leash was dangerously close to snapping. Even Dallas was pissed off, and it took a lot to get him worked up emotionally during a game. An all-out fight was imminent.
I was in the offensive zone when Paul grabbed the puck and wound up, taking a shot on Ty. Ty successfully deflected it, and the puck bounced off his pads, ricocheting out of the crease. Penner turned on a dime and skated right for it. From the other side of the ice, Morrison switched directions and headed for the net.
Morrison didn’t have a chance in hell of beating Penner to the puck. He knew it too. But what he was doing was obvious—he was taking a run at our goalie.
The lowest of the low moves.
Apparently, their new motto was if you can’t beat ’em, cheat.
Much as I tried, I couldn’t cross the ice in time. I watched it happen like it was in slow motion. Morrison sped to the net and made a half-assed attempt to stop inches before he hit the crease. He slammed into Ty, bringing him down as he toppled over.
I waited for a penalty call that didn’t come. He was going to get away with it.
Not on my watch.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 51
OceanofPDF.com
BAD BLOOD
Bailey
I hadn’t wanted to take my eyes off the game, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I’d rushed to the bathroom and couldn’t have been gone for more than two minutes. But when I returned, every member of both teams on the ice was involved in a massive altercation. They yelled and pointed and gestured at each other while the referees stood in the middle, holding players back.
One of those players was Chase. He and Luke were having words—again. Other guys sniped back and forth, not all that worked up, but Chase’s face was twisted in anger, and he was gesturing wildly.
Heart racing, I hurried down the stairs and sank back into my seat beside Siobhan. I tried to time my bathroom break with Chase’s shift change, but apparently, I’d fallen short.
“What happened?” I grabbed my half of the blue and purple plaid blanket we huddled under together for warmth, covering my legs with it.
Shiv nodded to the scrum. “Your ex took a run at Ty.”
My stomach clenched. Of course he did.
“Is Ty okay?” I asked, eyes still glued to Chase. My chest was tight, my breath shallow. What would he do? There was no way he’d let Luke get away with lowbrow action like that.
The ref leaned in and said something to him. Chase shook his head and responded with what looked like a no.
“Yeah, he got knocked for a loop, but he seems fine.” She pointed to the far corner of the ice, where Ty was trash talking Mendez.
Goalies answered to other goalies, but Mendez was soft-spoken and probably not to blame for anything. While some of the players were amped up and reveling in the chaos, Mendez was mostly still and speaking calmly, like he just wanted to get back in the net.
My gaze snapped back to Chase, whose movements weren’t quite so irate. He was still yelling at Luke, but the referee wasn’t straining to hold him back anymore.
“But it’s the principle at this point,” Siobhan added, pulling her hands into the sleeves of her red Falcons hoodie.
“It really is,” I agreed with a nod.