behind the camera - fake dating sports romance (wlw)

Chapter Two

MILLIE

There's a kind of silence that lives in the breath before the puck drops.

Not in the arena. No, the arena is thunder. A roar that climbs the walls and rattles the boards, fists pounding glass, music screaming from the speakers, voices blending into one solid wall of noise. But inside my head?

Silence.
Stillness.
Focus, so sharp it could slice bone.

I bend at the knees, knuckles tight around my stick, heart a calm, patient thud in my chest. Across from me, their center shifts her weight, lips pressed thin. She's good. Not good enough.

The ref raises his arm. I inhale.
The puck hits the ice. I don't think. I move.

Skates rip into frozen ground, the cold biting at my face, my lungs burning with the sudden burst of speed. My stick is already there-fast, sure, ruthless-guiding the puck beneath me as I push forward like a shot fired from a gun. A defender shadows me. I feel her breath at my neck, the cut of her blade too close behind.

I cut left-hard. She stumbles. I don't. Too slow.
They're always too slow.

The ice sings under me, every muscle in my body alive, electric. This is the only place I breathe right. This is the only place I feel like myself-out here, in the blur of speed and sweat, where instinct overrides thought. Where the noise in my head drowns under the clean, fierce rhythm of go, go, go.

I spot her-Tash, my left wing-cutting through the slot, a wall of defenders collapsing around her. I don't call for it. I don't have to. We've done this a hundred times, a thousand. She knows where I am. She drops it behind her, a clean, soft pass across the blue line.

I'm there.

I don't stop.

One stride, two, and then-snap.

My stick cracks forward. The puck screams off the blade and slams into the back of the net.

Goal light flashes red.
The horn blares.
The arena detonates.

My fist slams the air, and I circle behind the net, teammates crashing into me in a frenzy of shouts and helmet taps. I let them. I soak it in. But I don't smile yet. Not really.

Because it's not about the goal. It's about the hunt.

3-1. Third period. Six minutes left. The bench is vibrating, coaches yelling out lines, the glass behind me rattling with the thunder of the crowd. But all I hear is the thud of my pulse and the glide of my skates as I line back up at center ice.

Because I'm not done. Not until they remember my name when they close their eyes tonight. Not until they feel it tomorrow in their ribs. Not until they know-I am Amelia Bennett. And I don't miss.

Coach calls out a shift, but I wave him off. He knows better than to argue. My jaw is tight, my mouthguard shoved half out between my teeth as I skate into position. Across from me, their center waits. A little older. A little hesitant. She's trying to psych herself up. I can see it in the way she adjusts her gloves, how she won't quite meet my eyes.

I grin at her, all teeth. "Try not to embarrass yourself, sweetheart."

She narrows her eyes, "Fuck you, Bennett."

I snort. Good. I like it when they fight back.

The puck drops.

I explode.

Everything falls away-sound, weight, worry, names, headlines. My body takes over, a perfectly tuned machine, brutal and graceful, born on blades and raised on this very ice. My mothers carved this path before me-one in skates, one in the studio-and I followed with fists and grit and open fire in my chest.