Faceoff: St. Cloud Hockey Series, page 1
Copyright © 2024 by Mari Loyal. All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction created without use of AI technology for either text or cover art. The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
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CONTENTS
Heat Level and Content Warnings
1. MAX
2. LUZ
3. MAX
4. LUZ
5. MAX
6. LUZ
7. MAX
8. LUZ
9. MAX
10. LUZ
11. MAX
12. LUZ
13. MAX
14. LUZ
15. MAX
16. LUZ
17. MAX
18. LUZ
19. MAX
20. LUZ
21. MAX
22. LUZ
23. MAX
24. LUZ
25. MAX
26. LUZ
27. MAX
28. LUZ
29. MAX
30. LUZ
31. MAX
32. LUZ
33. MAX
34. LUZ
35. MAX
36. LUZ
37. MAX
38. LUZ
Epilogue
Glossary of Spanish Vocabs
Acknowledgments
About the Author
This one is for the girlies
who were told they couldn’t
and so they did,
and made everyone
eat their words.
HEAT LEVEL AND CONTENT WARNINGS
Before reading this book, I really encourage you to first read this section to determine whether it’s the right fit for your personal circumstances.
This book is closed door, which means there is innuendo, kisses are descriptive, and characters don’t shy away from their attraction. However, there are no on-the-page explicit scenes.
There is mild to moderate use of cuss words, particularly in emotional moments. However, there is no use of f-bombs, religious blasphemies, or known ableist terms.
This book depicts difficult family dynamics including an antagonistic relative to the male main character who verbally abuses him and turns violent once, as well as somewhat neglectful parents.
The characters are college freshmen and are depicted drinking alcohol at a private party.
If any of these topics are troublesome for you, please protect yourself and read a book that better suits your situation.
Visit my website mariloyal.com for general content warnings that apply to all my books.
CHAPTER 1
MAX
Ionly feel alive when I’m on the ice. Life is a hazy dream, a succession of disconnected scenes I have to go through to get to moments like this.
As I stand before the door to the arena, my heart pounds at a mid-game rhythm. It can’t be explained by the minimal effort of suiting up for my first training session. A cocktail of excitement and nerves swirls in my gut, and I try shaking it off by stretching my neck and shoulders. Orientation at St. Cloud University was meh, but this moment—an hour before my first training session as a newly minted St. Cloud Thunder Bolt—feels like a big freaking deal.
“This is it,” I say to myself. The start of my whole future. No presh.
I push the door open and take the first steps into the corridor. The cold seeps through the air, and I breathe it in. Smells like home. And there’s nothing better than being the first in to the new digs. That’s why I’m here an hour before it will be teeming with guys—to get a feel for the space I’ll be living in for the next four years.
A sound stops me. Someone’s skating already.
Whatever. Let’s not attach some bad omen to this. Second on the ice isn’t bad. The other guy may value solitude as much as I do and leave me alone for a while. I stomp all the way down the corridor. The glare of the overhead lights makes me squint until I’m all the way out of the shadows.
My plans are derailed once more when the dude turns out to be skating up a storm. He dashes from one goal to the other like an arrow. Slush rains on the boards as he brakes to turn and skate behind the goal, then back out to the other side. He’s doing edge work as he goes, shifting backward and forward every time he crosses a line.
Going hard like this, on my own, was precisely what I wanted to do. And I still intend to do it. I push the door open with my knee and step onto the ice anyway. I may be used to being pushed aside in my private life, but not here. On the ice, I am king.
I glide over to center ice to warm up my ankles. The guy does some figure skating move that would get him a ten in the Olympics. If he plans to pull crap like that during a game, he’s going to get eaten alive by the opponent. And he’ll have it coming.
A cross between a snort and a laugh escapes from my chest. The echo across the quiet arena grinds him to a halt.
The way he squares up his shoulders screams hostility louder than words, but I don’t know who he’s trying to shake when he’s pocket-sized. If I were a D-man, I’d be pissed about having Tinker Bell here on the team. With guys my size and larger, he’ll be a liability no matter how fast he can skirt away.
I catch him approaching from the corner of my eye, but I keep stretching in silence. I make a point of whistling as innocently as possible.
“Was that a laugh?” Lil dude has a weird voice, too high pitched. Don’t tell me he’s a child.
Through the helmet’s visor, I catch a scowl so deep it scrunches up his nose and lifts up his lip. Which is surrounded by the smoothest face I’ve seen since middle school. I do a double take.
Uh, correction. Tinker Bell is a she.
“What the—You’re a girl?” The question spews out of my mouth before I can think better of how it sounds.
She tosses her stick and gloves onto the ice in one motion. “Yeah, you got a problem with that, you jerk?”
At most, she’s five-six to my six-three. Her fists ball up like an enforcer about to throw down, but they couldn’t hurt a fly. I have to bite my lips to keep from laughing again.
“You can’t possibly think you’ll fight me.”
“I don’t think—I will. Someone clearly needs to teach your smug face a lesson.” She pushes the sleeves of her jersey up. “And no one who makes fun of me lives to tell the tale.”
I lean on one foot, using the stick like a cane. This is considerably more amusing than if she’d turned out to be a guy who beat me to the punch.
“Oh yeah? Can you even reach my face?”
To her credit, she makes an attempt to swing at me. It has no chance of landing when she has to stretch far out of her range to even get close. The second fist I catch in my left glove.
“You may want to introduce yourself with your mouth and not your fist, Tinker Bell,” I say with a chuckle.
She splutters for a second. “Tinker—excuse me?”
At least the shock made her drop the bravado, and with that, her guard goes all the way down. And she’s frozen. The ice is finally mine.
I go from zero to a hundred in a second, taking up the whole span of the two hundred feet like she did earlier. Every cell of my body roars to life. This is what I wanted, to breathe in the icy air until it burns my lungs. To push my muscles until I break a sweat. That’s how you break the ice, pun intended.
“What did you call me?”
I startle when I catch her beside me, keeping pace. Her breathing is more labored, but not to the point that would make me think she’s about to keel over.
Small but mighty, huh?
“Tinker Bell.” I slow down and switch backward to my skates’ outside edges, sort of like she did earlier. “You know, because you looked like a tiny fairy figure skating out here.” To emphasize the point, I make a twirl, hands up like a ballerina.
“I have a name, and it is definitely not Tinker Bell. But surely yours must be Big Turd on a Stick.”
I shrug. “At least I’m big.”
“Good thing this isn’t a game, because I can do this.” With that, she raises her stick as if it’s a sword.
“Hold up.” I raise a gloved hand as a thought suddenly hits me harder than her stick would have. “This can’t mean you’re on the team, right?”
“Of course I’m on the damn team.”
“No, no.” I shake my head. “I didn’t sign up for some co-ed team that is supposed to be about warm and fuzzies.”
“And what makes you think I did?” She snorts, sizing me up from head to toe. “Besides, if we were on a team together, I’d trip you. Breaking all your teeth is a sure way to shut you up.”
&nbs
She grinds her teeth, and every word comes out with a period attached to it. “I am not Tinker Bell. My name is Luz Rodriguez, and you best remember that.”
“Luz means light, right?” I ask, pulling from my high school Spanish class. “And Tinker Bell is all shiny, so if I make that association…” I pause and grin so wide my face hurts. “Don’t worry,” I continue, wheezing with the effort not to crack up. “I will never forget your name, Tinker Bell.”
Her body tenses from the bottom up, as if it were being filled with lava about to erupt from her mouth. I skate away before the explosion.
A different kind of noise fills the arena up. Voices draw closer and finally spill onto the ice with the bodies they belong to. A bunch of guys and girls wrestle around for space, as though there isn’t enough square footage. Someone shoves someone else, who knocks into a third person, who retaliates by pushing back.
“Get out of the way, meathead, before I clean the floor with your face.” A different girl is the author of that line of poetry.
“Why don’t you go home and play with your Barbie, princess?” some guy responds, adding in baby noises.
More and more people drop onto the ice. Too many to be from the same team. And, according to the giant clock overhead, a good forty minutes too early for practice. Clearly, there are two teams here. I just have to find mine and send Tinker Bell off to her figure skating squad.
My lungs expand to capacity, taking in air I then release slowly. So much for catching a quiet skate, staking ownership of the place, working up a sweat.
Tinker Bell heads over to the fray, and from what little I know of her, I don’t think it’s to pour water on the fire but to stoke it. I pick up the pace and get there before her. I don’t know any of these people, but I grab the first guy I find from the collar of his jersey and drag him back. Before he gets testy, I wedge my stick between him and the girl he’s been heckling.
Someone does the same with the girl, holding her back. Instead of exploding like I expected, Tinker Bell helps pluck the girls from among the boys until there’s a clear line between.
I count the girls in front of me. Eighteen. Which means there are seventeen dudes behind me if they’re all early.
“Guess you were right, Tinker Bell. We’re not on the same team.”
The glare she tosses my way reminds me that she’s still a volcano about to blow up. Her dark eyes promise murder if I breathe another word.
“I see you’ve all met each other,” says a new voice from behind.
I turn, and from among a wall of heads, I catch yet more people stepping on to the ice. At the helm is the guy who scouted me, Glen Green, who is supposed to be the head coach of the St. Cloud Thunder Bolts. There’s a cohort of people behind him, men and women, too many to be the staff of one team alone.
“If you’d all followed instructions instead of arriving early, you’d have learned where you were supposed to go,” he says while folding his arms. “Strikes, off the ice. Bolts, with me.”
And he stays on the ice.
“But—” Tinker Bell complains, confirming she’s a Strike or whatever.
“Follow me,” a middle-aged woman says to her and the rest.
As she passes by, Tinker Bell stares daggers at me.
I wave a hand. I don’t join in the other guys’ taunting, but it does feel like I won the faceoff with her.
Or so I think.
CHAPTER 2
LUZ
It figures that Max Cassiano is a jerk. Being dubbed the next Sidney Crosby must have gotten to that huge head of his. Or was the next Sidney Crosby supposed to be his cousin?
Whatever.
Just before stepping off the ice, I pause and turn around. Anyone would think he just won a match with that shit-eating grin on his face. I slice the air before my neck with a hand, a clear declaration of war.
I’m the queen of the ice, not this Tinker Bell crap he keeps yapping about.
Somehow, I’ll find the way to make him fall to his knees before me. I don’t care that he’s poised for the world juniors or the draft. Or that he’s a massive wall of muscle and wildly talented. Or that his ridiculously good-looking face appears on the local news all the time. He will learn my name forward and backward. It will give him nightmares.
But first I need to understand what this travesty is.
I follow the rest of the team out of the arena and back into the locker room. Grumbles sound all around me, and I glean that we have one collective thought.
What the hell?
The head coach stops in the middle of the locker room. I recognize her because she was in my interview when I applied for the scholarship. She’s surrounded by three other women and one guy who must be part of her staff. A pretty big difference to the ten or so dudes who seem to be the men’s team staff.
“I’m Head Coach Elaine Young. Call me Coach Young.” Her voice is clear and void of any feeling. I can’t read her face either. She could be vibrating with excitement on the inside, like I am, or she could be raging, also like I am. “When I speak, you will yes, ma’am me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” we all say at once, loud and clear.
“Good. Now, take off your gear. We’re going to start with dryland training.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Except me. My big, fat mouth opens instead with “But why?”
Coach Young’s eyes zero in on me as if magnetically pulled by my voice. You could hear a pin drop with how quiet the whole room grows.
I know I’m messing up on my first day, but I’m nothing if not honest. So I take a step forward, puff up my chest with a breath, and more eloquently, ask, “Why do we have to get off the ice, and not them?”
Her eyes flash with thunder.
Hey, very apropos to the team name—the St. Cloud Thunder Strikes.
“Because I say so.” She sweeps sharp eyes across the roster. “If there are no further complaints, I’ll see you at the gym in five minutes.”
“Oh, shit,” I mutter as I do quick mental math. That’s not enough time to remove all my gear, put it in place, change my socks, and put on my sneakers.
I drop my gloves and stick, and right here, in the middle of the locker room, I start stripping at lightning speed. I’m not the only one with the same idea. Among muffled curses and squeals, my future teammates also scramble to divest themselves of all the layers.
The floor becomes a cemetery for jerseys, pads, and equipment. Who the hell knows which one belongs to whom anymore. All that matters is leaping over it to find my sneakers.
I run out of the locker room wearing the wrong socks, carrying the shoes in my hands, and in my underclothes. Somehow, I manage to be the first one in the gym. It’s brand new, and the machines still gleam, but I have no time to admire it. Hopping on one foot, I put on a sneaker and then the next as the rest of the team arrives. One of the other women has been watching the show from the mats.
“I’m Kaylee McDonald, your strength trainer. And for the next two hours, you will yes, ma’am me too.”
With the way her T-shirt hugs her biceps, I should’ve guessed. I dream of having definition like hers.
“Yes, ma’am.” This time I don’t screw up.
She gives us a grim smile. “Great, we’ll officially kick off this program with some light training.”
I learn very quickly what the definition of light is to this woman. No session that starts with burpees right out of the warm-up is going to be light.
Half an hour later, the girl beside me straight-up faints face down on the mat. I freeze until some disjointed voice barks that I should keep going. I continue the push-ups even as my neighbor’s drool reaches my hand. Or it could just be my own sweat pooling beneath me.
Coach McDonald leans over the unconscious girl to check her pulse. “She’s fine,” she tells someone behind her.
“Wake her up.” That I recognize as Coach Young’s voice above me. “No one said it’s time for a break.”
Mierda, I think to myself. Are we training for the Marines?
After Coach McDonald pats her face a few times, the girl comes back to the waking world. Her eyes are hazy as she pulls herself up and wipes the drool off her face.
