Meet Your Match (Kings of the Ice, #1)(60)

But my patience was wearing thin waiting for her to admit it was more.

“This might be the most I’ve ever seen something akin to distress on your face,” I said.

Maven let out a long sigh, tossing the ice on the coffee table beside her. She was on the ground next to the couch, balancing on her knees, and even sore as hell from the game and with a splitting headache from the hit, I still had a hard time not imagining what it would be like to stand and tower over her in that position, to stretch her throat and take both our minds off the game.

“How do you do it?” she asked, shaking her head. “I just watch you out there, and I’m groaning in pain. I mean, tonight, you got a stick to the face,” she said, gesturing to my injury. “But even on a regular night, you’re skating nonstop, getting thrown into the glass and the boards and onto the ice, taking elbows to the ribs…” Her eyes found mine. “It’s insane.”

“I told you,” I said with a shrug. “I’m the mayhem.”

She rolled her eyes on a smile, but it fell flat when her eyes skated over my cut. “Does it hurt?”

“A little,” I confessed. “But not too bad. This is pretty minor.”

“Minor?!”

“Nowhere near getting a couple teeth shattered,” I said, tapping my veneers with my pointer finger. “I’m sure Livia could tell you all about that.”

She grimaced, waving her hand. “I’ve heard enough of her gruesome stories to last a lifetime.” Maven watched me a moment before hesitantly reaching out, her cool fingertip gliding over the scar on my eyebrow. “And this?”

“Ah,” I said, mirroring her touch once she’d pulled back. I missed that touch as soon as it was gone, longing to reach out and snag her hand and hold it in my own. “I wish I had an epic hockey story to back this one up, but sadly, it happened off the ice.”

“Fall off the monkey bars?”

“Took a steel-toe boot to the face, actually.”

Maven’s jaw dropped. “What?!”

“Senior year of high school. Picked a fight with a guy who was three years older and about a hundred pounds heavier than me. All muscle.”

“Let me guess — over a girl?”

“You see right through me.”

She chuckled, shaking her head. “Why am I not surprised? Did he steal your date to prom or something?”

“He got drunk and decided to use one of our cheerleaders as a punching bag because she was his girlfriend at the time.”

The color drained from Maven’s face.

I shrugged. “I didn’t care if I was younger or smaller than he was. And I got a scar, but he got the lesson of a lifetime.”

“Did he press charges?”

“Against a high-schooler who kicked his ass?” I scoffed. “He was too embarrassed. Limped off like the coward he was and left my friend alone, which was all I wanted.”

I thought I saw a new level of respect in her eyes as she watched me like I was a brain bender puzzle she couldn’t quite figure out.

“What?” I asked when she didn’t say anything.

“It’s hard for me to picture.”

“Me beating someone’s ass? Come on, Mave, give me some credit. You see me do it nightly on the ice.”

I thought I saw her cheeks redden at the shortening of her name. I made a mental note to do it again.

“I just mean… I can’t picture you in that scenario. I pegged you for a more… posh school environment.”

“Believe me when I say, prep schools have more drama than public ones. When everyone has money, and everyone thinks money is power… it can feel like living in a fantasy world, one where the rules don’t apply.”

She huffed out a laugh at that, her eyes on the floor like she was thinking about her own past instead of mine now. I saw the ghosts dancing in her eyes.

“I will say, I think wearing my scar is easier than bearing the hidden ones you have to live with.”

She stilled, her next breath paused in her chest for a moment before she looked at me.

I wanted to ask her more about her ex, about the fucking bastard responsible for all the barbed-wire-lined walls she stood so shakingly behind. He’d hurt her. That much she’d admitted. But it was deeper than what she’d let on, little remnants of him sticking to her like shrapnel from an explosion.

Suddenly, her phone vibrated, the screen lighting up and breaking through the darkness in the room.

She swiped it off the table, sighing a bit before she glided her thumb over the screen and fired off a message.

“What’s up?”

“Reya is asking for an update.” She looked at me like she was ashamed of what she was going to say next. “Everyone wants to know you’re okay.”

I maneuvered myself to sit up straighter on the couch. “Well, let’s give the people what they want.”

“Really?”

I shrugged like it was no big deal, giving her a wink.

She cared about her job, about what people thought of her. Maybe if I showed her I cared about it, too, I could break out of the box she’d put me in in her mind. I thought about what Livia said when I’d called her, before she’d told me where Maven was on her date.

You’ve got a long road ahead of you to earn her trust.