I was going to have fried Eagle for dinner.

With a roar and strength I didn't know I had in me I tore through the ice in a second as the Eagle rolled himself away from Dean. I did not imagine the smirk that crossed his face, and that gave me all the fuel I needed to wipe it with my fists. I dropped my gloves.

He didn't see me coming. Nobody did. Maybe I was too small and they didn't consider me a target. I fell on the little shit like a hailstorm and started pummeling him. The surprise element didn't last long. He was stronger and started rolling over as soon as I'd landed three solid hits on his smug face. I didn't know how to fight on the ground, but I was already devising ways to keep inflicting damage when I was pulled away. I struggled against my captor and realized it was captors, and they were wearing black.

"Calm down, Bernal!" I recognized Shane's voice in my ear but there was a delay in between my hearing comprehension and the muscles of my body that kept flailing around, trying to hit the target.

It took him and someone else to haul me off. I tried to turn and see if Dean was fine. The fall had looked really bad and weird even before the Eagle fell on him. I wondered if he'd been hurt before that. I wondered if he'd been hurt by the Eagle.

But of one thing I was sure. I had been the one to hurt the Eagle.

They put me in small bench and it took me a few seconds of my fresh and limited hockey knowledge to realize I was in the penalty box. A referee came by and confirmed as such. Two minutes for fighting, he said. He also added that I was lucky they'd decided not to suspend me.

I didn't care much for what the man was saying as I stood up and tried to look out the ice. There were a lot of people in a bit of melee in the middle, but it didn't look bad enough that I'd get company in the box. A loud banged exploded next to me and I jumped as I realized I was right next to the Eagles' bench. What the fuck? Did they put me in the wrong box on purpose?

One of the dipshits from the opposite team ran his thumb across his beefy neck and I rolled my eyes.

"Hey, teddy bear," another said with a sneer. "How are you feeling now that your pretty boy's down?"

I whipped around back to the ice. Coach Gauthier was helping Dean skate off the ice. Our Captain was looking down at his foot, and his skate looked off. I sucked in all the air in the box as the Eagles started laughing. I exploded onto my feet and banged against the glass pane.

"Fuck off!" I shouted.

It was the longest two minutes of my life. Two minutes where we suddenly went from being in the lead to trailing behind 2-1. Sitting there surrounded by glass as my team fought off the onslaught of Eagles, while we were down our key player and one extra man, while I was completely useless, brought me back to a state of mind I'd never wanted to reprise. To a moment where I was also alone in a cage of steel and glass. Afraid. Defenseless.

I squeezed my elbows and drew my knees up, trying to remind myself that I was not there, in that car. That I was definitely not weak anymore. That I was there because I was aggressive like the rest of them, because I knew how to take care of myself and others. And then I remembered that I was supposed to be there to take care of Dean.

That thought helped to take me out of my mind. When the two minutes were over I skated to our bench, where I found the rest of the team that wasn't playing sitting around Dean and Assistant Coach Gauthier. The man was kneeling down, testing Dean's ankle.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

Dean looked up and the frown cleared off his face like it was a reflex. "I'm fine, I keep telling them so."

"I just have to make sure," Gauthier said. He was a lanky man with a spot of bald on the crown of his head. He looked down his long nose as he twisted Dean's foot this way and that. When he was satisfied by Dean's calm response, he stood up and nodded. "He's good to lace back up."

There was a scramble in the bench as one of the guys rushed in with a duffel bag that he must have taken from the locker room. "Spares," the guy said, dropping the bag in front of Dean. He picked it up and pulled a new pair of skates out. As he put them on I sat on the bench and picked up his old skate, the one that had looked weird. The entire portion where the blade wedged into the front of the boot had come off, as if he'd been skating through rapidly drying cement and had gotten the blade stuck in it, even as his body propelled forward. The rest of the boot looked fairly normal. What the hell?

There was a deafening uproar in the crowd as the Eagles scored another goal. Everybody in the Bears bench ignored the commotion as our Captain rose and grabbed his stick.

"Hyde, are you sure?" Coach asked above me.

Dean nodded. "I'm good, coach. Trust me."

They stared at each other for a moment longer, as though Coach was expecting to whiff out a lie out of our Captain with the power of his stare alone. But Dean was calmed, if anything I'd have said he looked more focused even than when the game started. With a jerk of his head Coach allowed him to join the fray, and Dean skated off without a hitch. Every Bear in the arena, and most likely every Eagle as well, turned to look at him as he made his way out onto the ice.

In retrospective, we all played very well. I'd say the highlight of my play had been the first period and the fact that I managed not to skate across the ice with my ass. My teammates gave it their best and our Captain was a beacon of light for all of us.

Yet we still lost.

A whopping 4-3.

I hated every second as we skated off the arena into the locker room submerged by a wave of heckling and name calling. I hated that I hadn't been able to prevent the outcome, that somehow I didn't guess that Dean's skate would break and make the team careen into chaos. I felt the prickling of tears start to well in my eyes and I blinked them away. Boys were not supposed to cry, right?

"You okay?" Pace was the first to break the silence in the locker room.

Dean had been facing his locker, where he'd dropped his jersey and was starting to remove his pads. When he realized the question was to him he grunted. "Pissed, more like."

"Good, use that for the rest of the season," Coach Martel cut in. He put his hands on his hips and drew in a deep breath. "Stop skulking around like kids who didn't get what they wanted. Start thinking about what you're going to do better next game."

I looked at Dean's broken skate by his bag and tucked my tongue against my cheek. Well, for starters we needed to go shopping in Calgary again.

One by one the boys started filing into the shower stalls with their towels wrapped around their waists or hanging around their necks, and more and more I kept getting weird looks because I was still full decked in my sweaty uniform and pads.

Oh my fucking goodness. I had forgotten to factor in that I couldn't just refuse to shower before traveling back on a school bus full of boys in favor of showering at home. I thought I started having a panic attack then, but that was nothing compared to what happened next.

Dean Hyde. Buck naked. In front of me.

God damn it, he was wearing a towel around his waist and I'd never been so disappointed in my life.

But at the same time, I did not deserve the free show. I was a liar. An imposter. I was a hungry and thirsty girl pretending to be a fully fledged boy. I was betraying everybody's trust by being there. I'd be in a world of trouble when my secret came out. I also really wanted the knot at his waist to come loose under the force of my stare. No! I couldn't stare! That'd be weird. Boys didn't stare at other boys.

I averted my eyes from him and looked down at the mess of tape and dirty clothes on the floor. At the steam rising from the shower stalls. At the sliver that the almost closed door left that let me know the coaches were chatting outside. Anywhere but at him.

But then he spoke and my traitorous eyes went back to him. He'd folded his arms across his wide chest and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. He had really nice shoulders. Well built. Solid muscle. I wondered if his skin was soft to the touch. It looked like it'd be.

"Charlie?"

I forced myself to look at his eyes, trying to ignore his raised eyebrow. "What? Sorry."

"Aren't you going to shower?" he asked.

"I, uh. Yes," I said, making a show of taking off my jersey and starting to work on my skates. "I got distracted."

"By what?"

I looked up, narrowing my eyes. I didn't think I'd imagined the teasing tone in his voice.

"Your skate," I said, knowing that that would be the one topic that would distract him from the fact that I was blatantly lying. "I keep looking at it and it just seems weird that it broke like that all of a sudden."

He ran a hand through his damp hair and sighed. "I've never had a skate break like that before."

I looked at my skates, now discarded on the floor. They looked sturdy. I couldn't wrap my head around the possibility that the blade would just come off like that.

"Anyway," he said. "Hurry up, we won't wait for you all night."

Said this he turned around and headed for the stalls. My eyes trailed down to his thick thighs and calves, and the towel did very little to hide the fact he had a perfect butt. The kind you could only get with a thousand squats per week. I slapped my face lightly, just so that I could refocus on reality. If I was going to fantasize about him, it better be later. Not while I had precious limited time to figure out what the hell I should do.

As I tossed all my pads where they fell and picked up my duffel bag to get clean clothes out, I realized that I hadn't packed a towel or toiletries because I simply had not expected to play.

I deflated and leaned against the locker. Laughter bubbled up my throat and I didn't know if it was because I was losing my mind or if I was suddenly relieved that life had given me a convenient solution.

I almost felt bad for the guys, because I was the only one who rode all the way back to Silver Grove smelling like a wet dog. A fact which all of them made sure to complain about, loud and repeatedly, for the entire duration of the trip. As expected of this kind of outcome, I was sitting by myself all the way at the back of the bus. I debated whether I'd be able to get away with this again on the next away game. Or if I should just pretend I had diarrhea and skip it altogether.

A few of the brave ones made their way to the back to let me know I did okay for a total noob. One of them was Pace who finished off his speech by saying, "I'm surprised someone as little as you can hit that hard or smell this bad."

It just made me grin. "Thank you."

When we made it back to Silver Grove I found myself not feeling quite as shitty as I'd felt after the game. The bus parked by the school entrance and as the doors opened we were welcomed by loud clapping. Not as loud as it'd be if we'd won, I figured, but hearty enough to let us know the town was still behind us. As we descended the bus someone shouted a good job, a few joined in a chorus of go Bears, go and someone else kept repeating the words next time.

My feet hit the pavement last. The first few of my team mates I saw to the left were being greeted by their family or friends, I didn't know. I swung my eyes around until they landed on Dean, who stood frozen in the middle of the semi circle created by the town's folk. No one was saying anything in particular to him, so it struck me as odd. Until I walked closer and saw that the tension in his body was directed at a man directly across from him. A man who looked exactly like I'd imagine an older version of Dean would look. His dad, I figured. And by the looks on their faces theirs wasn't a relationship that was much better than my dad's and mine.

And then I saw my dad.

Standing right next to Dean's, clenching and unclenching his fists as though he wanted to wrap his fingers around my neck.

My body moved behind Dean on reflex.

This caught his attention. And our dads. They looked at each other and froze.

"You," my dad said with surprising venom.

Dean's dad asked, "What the fuck are you doing here?"

Dean and I looked at each other. I thought the confusion I felt would be mirrored on his face, but instead he seemed as though he knew exactly what was going on and he was just fed up with it.

If only someone could explain to me what the hell was going on, then maybe I wouldn't feel so bad about my impending murder.