Kiss And Make Up: My Ex Is The Hockey Captain

Arabella's POV

The first thing I checked that morning was my name tag.

ARABELLA HAYES

SPORTS MEDICINE VOLUNTEER

I traced the laminated card with my thumb and smiled.

How ridiculous was it that this plastic tag meant so much to me?

Three applications.

Two interviews.

One first-aid certification.

And months of hearing about the impossibility of getting selected to join the medical volunteers' team for the university's game days.

There were twelve spots.

Twelve.

At the university, it seemed as if half of the pre-med students were already doctors while having no idea how to do a proper blood pressure measurement.

And today, somehow, I got one of those twelve spots.

My first volunteer assignment.

The championship game.

I looked into the mirror one more time, fixed my ponytail, and glanced at the clock.

Late again.

"Great."

I grabbed my bag and rushed out.

As soon as I entered the arena, it seemed like everyone on campus had congregated there.

Students filled the entrance area wearing their team jerseys, waving flags, carrying placards and shouting slogans. The university's colors dominated everywhere. There were posters all over the walls with pictures of either individual players and the words:

ONE GAME. ONE CHANCE. ONE CHAMPION.

I pushed through the crowd and showed my volunteer badge to security.

"Medical team?"

"Yes."

He looked at my badge. "Your first game?"

"Yes."

"Good luck."

I wasn't sure whether he wished me good luck or the whole team.

Once inside, the sounds became unbearable.

The rink shone under the lights of the arena, surrounded by thousands of excited spectators.

I had never thought of how people could be so obsessed with hockey.

I had a

Well, perhaps, in these four months of trying to become one of the medical volunteers, I've proved myself to be no better.

"Arabella!"

I turned around.

One of the senior volunteers, Mia, beckoned me.

"You're with us today. Follow Dr. Miller, don't move without permission to the ice."

"I won't."

"And if someone gets hurt?"

"Don't panic, follow the protocol, alert the athletic trainer, and assist as required."

"Good. You studied."

"I have been studying obsessively."

"I can see that."

She gave me gloves. "And congratulations."

"For what?"

"For this assignment."

I looked at the rink. "It's just a volunteer shift."

"No." She shook her head. "It's the championship. It's huge to be assigned to the bench-side medical team as a first-year."

I knew that.

Which is why my stomach was doing somersaults all morning.

I needed this assignment not only for my CV.

The deadline of the scholarship application was in six weeks, and my grades weren't enough for me to compete with hundreds of other pre-med students.

Clinical exposure.

Community service.

Leadership.

Relevant volunteer experience.

These words I had been repeating almost every day to myself.

This was my opportunity to show that I deserved that scholarship as much as anyone else.

A roar exploded in the arena.

I looked up.

Players started to skate onto the ice and the crowd went wild.

I couldn't help but smile.

The atmosphere had a happy, contagious feel. Players after players skated onto the ice, slapping their gloves against the boards.

Finally, the captain came out.

The reaction was immediate.

People stood.

Girls screamed.

Someone from behind me even shrieked his name.

I rolled my eyes. "Do they always act like that?" I asked.

Pamela laughed. "You'll get used to it."

I looked towards the rink.

The captain was tall, strong-looking, and extremely confident. He wore a helmet that covered most of his face, but still, I could see the distinct lines of his jaw as he was talking to one of his teammates.

He raised his stick.

Another explosion of cheers from the crowd.

"What's his name?" I asked.

Pamela looked at me like I'd announced I didn't know anything about oxygen. "You don't know that?"

"No."

She laughed. "That's our captain."

"I figured that out."

"Maxwell..."

The referee blew the whistle and the game started, she turned her focus to the game.

During the next forty minutes, I forgot about everything except for the rink.

They were playing incredibly fast. The players collided against the boards. Their sticks collided. The puck flew so fast that I lost track of it several times.

And the captain?

He was everywhere.

He scored once during the first period.

Then again during the second one.

By the third period, the whole arena was shaking.

"Come on!" Pamela shouted.

I laughed.

Seems like I've begun to get the game.

The score was equal with less than four minutes to go.

The captain took possession. He skated across the ice with incredible speed.

One defender.

Another defender.

The crowd was jumping from their seats.

So did I.

He shot.

The puck flew into the goal.

The arena exploded.

The crowd screamed.

His teammates ran to him.

For a brief second, he was standing with his stick raised up, surrounded by his teammates.

And then the opposing player crashed into him from the back.

Hard.

The captain's body crashed against the boards.

The sound made my stomach drop.

Everything changed instantly.

The medical team moved.

I followed.

"Arabella, stay with me!"

I grabbed the medical kit and skated onto the ice.

The captain wasn't moving.

My heartbeat increased.

The athletic trainer dropped down next to him.

"Give us some space." I knelt down next to him, ready to assist. "Can you hear me?"

The captain groaned in reply.

"Good. Don't move."

The trainer tried to open his helmet.

"Easy," I said.

He raised his head slightly.

I moved forward. "Sir, can you tell me your name?"

He didn't respond.

The trainer repeated the question while the player opened his eyes and looked into mine.

Everything inside me stopped.

The noise faded.

The arena disappeared.

The years between us disappeared.

I knew these eyes.

I didn't need to see his face to recognize those eyes. I even knew the smile he hadn't even shown me yet.

There were a thousand places where I could have met him again.

Coffee shop.

Grocery store.

Random street.

Anywhere except here.

Anytime except now.

His eyes widened. "Arabella?"

I froze.

Maxwell?

His eyes fell upon my name tag.

ARABELLA HAYES.

He removed his helmet himself and I saw as his face changed.

Confusion.

Disbelief.

And something very dangerously close to hope. "You're divorced?"

I looked at him.

"Divorced?"

Maxwell's POV

If I had admitted that I had imagined seeing Arabella Hayes again in the last four years exactly zero times.

That was a lie.

I had imagined this a hundred times.

Sometimes she was standing in the middle of the crowded room and was looking at me with these same eyes.

Sometimes she was angry.

Sometimes she was crying.

Sometimes, especially these pathetic versions, which I've been imagining at four in the morning, she ran into my arms and told me that she had been waiting for me.

I always woke up before she could say the rest.

But I had never imagined meeting her kneeling on the hockey rink.

Especially not in her medical volunteers' uniform.

The championship game was supposed to be the biggest event of my life. The final game as a captain.

Scouts were sitting in the stands.

My father was somewhere among the crowd.

I have scored two goals.

We were seconds away from winning.

Everything was perfect.

Until one hit had thrown me into the boards.

Now I was looking at the only person capable of making me forget about my injury.

Arabella.

She was different.

Of course, she was different.

four years could change a person.

Her hair was longer than I remembered and was tied in a neat ponytail. She had lost her childish softness. There was something in the way she held herself that I hadn't seen when we were eighteen.

But her eyes were the same.

God.

These eyes.

For four years, I had been trying to hate them.

I failed.

"Sir?"

Somebody was calling me.

I blinked.

It was the athletic trainer who was looking down at me. "Can you tell me where you are?"

"At the rink."

"Good."

My gaze returned to Arabella. She hadn't moved an inch, she looked at me just like I felt right now.

surprised.

I wonder if she's going to run.

I wouldn't blame her.

Then I noticed her badge hanging from her neck.

ARABELLA HAYES.

Hayes.

Something inside of me tightened.

She had kept the name.

I don't know why it affected me so much.

Maybe because four years ago, I was sitting in my father's study with a wedding invitation spread out on the table in front of me.

The invitation had her name written next to another man's.

My father pushed it to me.

"I paid her to stay away from you," he said. "Her family needed money. She accepted."

I hadn't believed him.

Not at first.

But then he showed me the invitation card, which was the announcement of her engagement to someone else.

I had asked her that we get married before I go to school, she had told me NO. Only to see that she was getting married to another person.

I was angry, devastated even.

She shouldn't have done that to me, she knew how much I loved her.

She knew how I felt about her.

Everything was organized perfectly to have nothing left for me to say.

I called her.

She didn't pick up.

Then I called again.

No response.

I had waited until midnight.

Again, no response.

The next morning, I left for university.

I spent the first year blaming her for her choice.

Second year pretending it didn't bother me.

Third year, almost convincing myself about it.

By fourth year, I was almost okay with it.

Almost.

Then she stood in front of me alive and beautiful in my fourth year. Wearing the same surname. My heart started beating furiously.

Perhaps the wedding never happened.

Perhaps she broke it off.

Perhaps the man was gone.

Perhaps...

I stopped myself.

Hope was dangerous.

I learned that the hard way.

"Are you experiencing dizziness?" the trainer asked.

I barely listened to him.

Arabella was looking at me still.

This wasn't the look of love.

It wasn't even hatred.

This look was far more dangerous.

Confusion.

Like she has no idea why I'm looking at her in this way.

Like she has no idea what I have been thinking about for four years.

"Can you sit up?" the trainer asked.

I nodded.

He helped me to do that.

My gaze didn't leave her.

She looked at my medical chart.

Just to avoid looking at me.

Typical Arabella.

When we were kids, she used to hide behind the books every time she was nervous.

She still does.

Only now was the book a clipboard.

I almost smiled.

Almost.

Then she finally looked at me again, the four years had disappeared. I could see the girl who sneaked into my yard after midnight.

The girl who stole my hoodies, claiming that they smelled better than hers.

The girl who promised to wait for me.

The girl I've been loving long before I understood what love was.

The girl who had chosen another man.

My throat tightened. "Arabella?"

She froze.

my gaze fall on her name tag.

ARABELLA HAYES.

My face changed.

Confusion.

Disbelief.

And something very dangerously close to hope. "You're divorced?"

She looked at me.

"Divorced?"

Arabella's POV

"Divorced?" The words escaped my lips before I could stop them.

He looked at me.

For a second, neither of us said a thing.

Then the athletic trainer placed himself between us. "Easy. Don't move your neck."

I blinked, coming back to myself.

The rink.

The championship.

The first game for me.

And then him.

I forced myself to tear my eyes away from his face and focus on the assignment in front of me. "What's the level of his pain?" I asked.

"Around six," the athletic trainer responded.

"Numbness?"

He shook his head.

"Dizziness?"

"No."

"Vision problems?"

"No."

I nodded and grabbed the medical kit.

My hands were steady. At least they looked like that. Inside, however, I was falling to pieces.

four years.

four years of convincing myself that the boy I once loved was nothing more than a painful memory. And now I was kneeling next to him, applying pressure to the gash above his eyebrow.

His blood smeared across the white cloth.

"Hold still," I mumbled.

His eyes didn't move away from my face.

I tried to make them stop and failed miserably.

As soon as my fingers brushed his skin, memories rushed into my head. His hand clutching mine beneath the old oak tree, his thumb drawing circles on my knuckles, pressing his forehead to mine and whispering that I was the only person he needed. His warmth surrounded me when he'd hugged me close.

The idiotic smile he'd give every single time I'd complain about being cold because he knew I was stealing his jacket.

I pressed the gauze tighter.

He winced.

"I'm sorry."

The corner of his mouth curved upward. "You're not."

I shot him a glare.

Of course, he knew me so well.

His eyes were fixed on mine. There was something in them.

Something I recognized.

Something that made my chest hurt.

I tore my gaze away from him.

Don't.

I couldn't afford it.

Not here.

Not now.

Not with him.

"Look forward," I mumbled.

"I am."

I frowned, he was staring at me. I knew what he meant.

My heart skipped.

I hated that it could still do that because of him.

"Look at the athletic trainer," I mumbled.

"I prefer looking at you."

I froze.

Half a second of silence stretched around us.

Then I reminded myself who I was.

I pulled my hand away from his forehead. "Your concussion seems to be more serious than we thought," I said.

He smiled.

That smile.

God.

I hated that smile.

I hated that some tiny part of me still recognized it before my brain could remind me why I shouldn't.

"I'm fine," he said.

"You just got thrown into the boards."

"And survived."

"Unfortunately."

His smile disappeared.

I instantly regretted the words, although they were true but his eyes changed. The playfulness was gone, replaced by something quieter.

Some sort of pain.

Or perhaps I was imagining things.

I turned back to the cut.

"We'll need band aids to cover it up. It should be fine with just that and some other clean-ups," the athletic trainer said after a closer examination. "We'll take him to the sports medicine clinic."

As soon as the words left his lips, his gaze grew sharper. "You're coming?"

I almost laughed. "It's my assignment."

"Right." His voice was low.

I hated that voice, I hated it because it still sounded familiar. The voice he used to say my name softly.

The voice he used to say he loved me.

The last time we'd spoken.

I swallowed.

"We need to get you off the ice."

He allowed the athletic trainer to help him get up. When he finally stood, he wobbled slightly. I instinctively reached for his arm.

The second my fingers touched him, I felt that.

This ridiculous familiarity. Like my body remembered him as if I'd not spent years teaching it not to.

I let him go immediately.

He looked at my hand.

Then at me.

He lingered on my eyes.

Too long.

Long enough for something to shift inside me. I broke the eye contact first.

Of course I did.

Because I was a coward.

Or maybe because I was smart.

I wasn't sure anymore.

We finally got to the medical area, and the athletic trainer took control there. She asked me to apply some cream on the wound.

I held the small tube and pressed out the cream from it to my index finger. My gaze met his as I applied it to his cut.

He kept looking at me while my gaze travelled from the cut to his eyes continuously.

I was only trying to ignore his eyes.

After I was done with that, I stayed because that was what I was supposed to do.

I prepared equipment.

Prepared supplies.

Collected his basic information.

Anything that kept my hands busy and eyes away from him. Yet I still felt him watching me. Every few minutes, I glanced at him.

And there he was.

Looking at me.

As if he were trying to remember me.

As if he were trying to find the girl he'd left behind.

I hated him for that.

Mostly because some part of me wanted him to remember.

The game resumed.

The athletic trainer released him to go back on the ice after the referee confirmed that he could join the game, and he returned to the bench and got back on the ice.

I watched from the medical area.

I shouldn't have, but I did. He played as if nothing had happened.

Quickly.

Focused.

Relentlessly.

The crowd chanted his name each time he touched the puck. I tried to remind myself that I was watching him because I was a part of the medical team.

Nothing else.

It wasn't because of him.

Absolutely not.

When the game finally ended, the whole arena burst into cheers.

They had won.

His teammates swarmed him.

He lifted his stick above his head.

Everyone was celebrating.

I clapped with everyone else on the medical team, but my smile felt wrong. I wasn't celebrating him.

I reminded myself.

I was celebrating the success of my first assignment.

That was all.

The rest of the night passed in a blur.

There were post-game assessments, equipment checks, report preparations, and enough chaos to make me forget for a while that my past had just crashed into my present.

By the time everything was over, my feet hurt.

My shoulders hurt.

My brain hurt.

My heart?

I wasn't going to dwell on that.

I took off the volunteer vest and collected my things.

The athletic trainer glanced at me. "You did great today."

I smiled. "Thank you."

"Especially since this was your first game."

"I'm glad I didn't embarrass myself."

"You didn't." She patted my shoulder.

"Go home and get some sleep. We'll see you next week."

I nodded and left.

The university's sports medicine clinic was located on the ground floor of the athletics building. During games, it was the main treatment area for players, but on regular days, it provided treatment for injuries, rehabilitation, and physical therapy.

I pushed through the glass doors and cool air hit me in the face.

I took a deep breath.

Finally.

It was over.

I could go home.

I could shower.

I could go to sleep.

I could pretend that today had never happened.

I took three steps along the walkway.

Then stopped.

Every muscle in my body froze.

Maxwell was standing under the lights near the entrance to the clinic, still in his team jacket. His hockey bag was lying next to him. His hair was wet, likely due to taking a shower and his hands were stuffed into his pockets.

And he was waiting.

For me.

I looked behind me, perhaps he was waiting for somebody else.

No one was there.

I looked back at him.

Maxwell's eyes found mine immediately and he took a step closer. "Arabella."

My stomach clenched.

I tightened my grip on my bag. "What are you doing here?"

He stopped a couple of feet away. For a second, he said nothing. Then his eyes wandered over my face.

There was no resentment there.

No bitterness.

Just a question.

A question he was waiting to ask for four years.

"I think we need to talk."

I stared at him.

Four years ago, I would've given anything to hear that.

Tonight, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to hear it.