Breaking The Ice [bxb]

Chapter Eleven [Liam]

"Again," Helga huffs. Again.

"You did it wrong! Where is your head?" My coach demands in exasperation as Chloe and I skate to the edge of the rink.

"Sorry," I murmur.

"Don't be sorry. Do it right."

Chloe gives me a pointed sideways glance as we skate away from the side boards. "This is kind of a tricky lift. I'd very much appreciate it if you focused so I don't crack my head on the ice," she murmurs.

I flash her a cocky smile. "Have I ever let you down?"

A single eyebrow arches on her face. "Once," she quips with a troubling lack of hesitation. "And it hurt like hell."

Well, yeah, fine. But that was many years ago, we had just started practicing big lifts and it's kind of mean of her to bring it up.

We repeat the movement for our coach to see. Helga huffs and puffs and complains about all the things we're doing wrong, then orders us to "Do it right!" She eventually gives up and calls it a night. By the time she does, most other skaters have already gone home. 

Mack left with Natalie and Gus thirty minutes ago, twisting her nose at the idea of waiting indefinitely for us. Our practices have stretched farther and farther into the later hours of the evening, after I started working at my father's resort. These days, if I don't work after school, I work after practice. So I either follow up an afternoon practice with an evening shift, or an afternoon shift with an evening practice.

It's been fun.

"Do you have a ride home?" I ask Chloe as I accompany her to the side of the rink. 

Her eyebrows furrow as she takes a seat on the bench to unstrap her skates. "Aren't you going home now?" She asks.

"I was thinking about staying till closing time."

Her reaction is as expressive as I'd expect from Chloe and there are no follow-up questions. "I'll ask Helga for a ride," she says.

I grimace. Helga's old, green Bug is scary enough as it is, worn and cranky and in serious need of nearly a decade worth of postponed inspections. Pair it with Helga's driving skills and add snow-covered roads to the mix and you've got yourself the perfect death trap. 

But I guess it's better than walking back to Brunson alone at night.

It has only been a week since my dad forced me to work for him, but I can already feel it affect my physical form. Before, I lived for the rink. If I wasn't in school or with my friends, I was on the ice. Chloe and I often had independent training sessions without Helga and I had a habit of spending as much time on the rink as was physically possible. I've accustomed both my skating partner and my coach to always be at the top of my game. 

For this past week, however, I've been either too busy or too tired to put in extra hours.

Today was a particularly slow day at The Lodge, though, so I still feel fully energized even after my practice. Which makes it as good a time as any to get some extra practice in.

Perhaps even better than any other time...

I would be lying if I said I didn't notice one particular hockey player who stayed behind on his side of the Arenas.

I can hear the sound of his skates scraping across the ice, meshed with the quick rhythmic clatter of his stick as he runs some kind of drill through a trail of low-hanging bars. It echoes all around the near-empty arena and I feel like I'm not alone, even though we're in separate rinks.