Ice between us

PROLOGUE

Josh hadn't thought about Kai Reyes in three years. That was the story he told himself, anyway.

It wasn't true. He thought about him more than he'd like to admit, usually late at night, usually after a bad game, usually when he let his guard down enough to remember what it felt like to have someone actually push him. Not the way his current teammates pushed him, all deference and "yes, Captain." The way Kai used to push him. Reckless. Relentless. Like he genuinely didn't care that Josh was supposed to be the best player on the ice.

They'd been fifteen when it started, two kids from rival programs who kept getting matched up at the same summer camps and regional tournaments until the rivalry stopped being about the teams and started being about them. Who could skate faster. Who could take a harder hit and get up first. Who could make the other one lose his temper on camera, because a temper on camera meant a suspension, and a suspension meant the coaches noticed, and being noticed for the wrong reasons was the one thing Josh couldn't stand.

Kai never seemed to care about being noticed for the wrong reasons. That was the thing that used to drive Josh crazy. He'd take a bad penalty just to make a point, skate a full shift with blood on his lip like it was nothing, grin at Josh across the faceoff circle like the whole world was a joke only the two of them were in on.

Josh hated him. That was what he told the coaches, told his teammates, told himself in the shower after games when his hands wouldn't stop shaking from adrenaline that had nowhere else to go.

He hadn't hated him. Not really. He just hadn't had another word for it yet.

There'd been a night, the summer before junior year, that Josh still didn't let himself think about in full. A back field behind the rink, empty except for the two of them, the kind of dark that made things feel like they didn't count. He remembered Kai's hand fisting in his jacket. He remembered not pulling away. He remembered the sound of his own heartbeat louder than anything either of them said.

He remembered, three weeks later, hearing secondhand that Kai had transferred. No call. No text. No explanation that ever reached him. Just an empty spot on the opposing bench the next time their teams played, and a silence that had lasted so long Josh had eventually convinced himself it didn't matter anymore.

So when the athletic director called an emergency team meeting to announce the merger — budget cuts, program consolidation, congratulations, you're all one team now — Josh sat in the back row and thought about lineup changes, about practice schedules, about anything except the possibility that this could mean what some small, stupid part of him was already hoping it meant.

Until the locker room door opened, and there he was.

Older. Broader through the shoulders. A new scar through one eyebrow that hadn't been there before. Same stupid grin, though, like he already knew exactly how this was going to go.

"Callahan," Kai said, tossing his bag onto the bench like he owned the place. "Miss me?"

Josh didn't answer. He wasn't sure what would come out if he did — three years of silence, or something a lot more dangerous than that.