The rink smelled like sweat, rubber, and adrenaline. As always.
It was the kind of scent that never really left you — part nostalgia, part madness, and all hockey.
It was the kind of scent that made me feel alive.
I’d missed feeling this way.
The scrape of blades on ice. The sharp sting of cold air in my lungs. The echo of laughter bouncing off the rink.
I’d missed feeling alive from all of it.
And, if I was being honest, I’d stopped feeling alive from it because I’d been missing Skylar.
It had been a few days since everything with Skylar finally… settled. And by “settled,” I meant “exploded into chaos and somehow ended in confessions, kisses and hugs.
Somehow, we’d found our calm in the middle of it all. She was okay. I was okay.
We were okay. God, we were so okay.
Coach
