“Not just at work.” I glare at him.
“I’m still your big bro. I’m going to look out for you,” Pierre argues.
I flip him off, sit down, and grab some bacon that he slides onto a plate in front of me.
5
FISH
Collette St. Pierre can skate.
Not the way media people skate, gripping the boards, shuffling like baby deer, one fall away from a lawsuit. She came out this morning in borrowed skates with a camera in one hand and glided past me at full stride like she’d been doing it her whole life.Which she has.She’s a St. Pierre after all, of course she can skate. But knowing that and watching her cut across the ice filming Bouch’s drill with one hand while dodging Nelly’s terrible crossovers is something else entirely. She moves like she belongs out here. Confident. Easy. Not trying to prove anything, just doing her job and looking …
“Fish! You planning on joining practice, or you just gonna stand there?” Coach yells out across the ice, grabbing everyone’s attention.
Coach. Right. I push off and fall into the drill. Evan slides up beside me and doesn’t say anything, which is worse than if he did.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing.” He smirks.
“Then stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” he asks.
“Like you can read my mind,” I tell him, annoyance rushing over my body because Evan is my best friend on the team. He puts up with my antics mainly because he doesn’t say much.
“Because I can read your mind.” He passes me the puck. “And whatever you were thinking about needs to stop.”
I shoot wide on purpose just to annoy him. He swears at me in Russian. “Wasn’t thinking anything.” Evan glares at me, knowing I’m full of shit. “Fine, but it’s not what you think.”
“That you have a death wish?” He raises a brow.
“I’m not an idiot. She just surprised me that she could skate, that’s all. You don’t normally see the content girls on the ice,” I explain to him.
“Because they can’t skate.”
“Exactly.”
“You know who her brothers are, don’t you?”
“No shit,” I grumble.
“And she’s French-Canadian too.” I know all this. “Of course she can skate.”
I roll my eyes at him. “I was just saying I’m surprised, that’s all.” Getting annoyed, he just raises a brow at me and continues skating.
After practice,she’s waiting at the tunnel with the mic. Quick social hits, thirty-second answers, keep it fun, move on. She’s already done Nelly and Bouch by the time I come through.
“Fish.” She points the mic at me. “What sport would you play if you were more athletic?”
I still. “What did you say?”
“Football, golf, basketball?”
“If I was more athletic?” I repeat her question because I am fucking athletic, I’m a hockey player.
“Yeah,” she says in all seriousness.