Damage Control (Rookie Hawkeyes #6)

Chapter One

LUKA

The cold hits me the second I step onto the ice, sliding under my pads and settling in my chest. I take another breath, deeper this time.

I like the sting. I like what it reminds me of…

that this sport is unforgiving and you can’t fake anything out here.

It keeps players honest, and honesty is a trait I trust a hell of a lot more than people.

I dig in. Every push cuts deeper than the last. Every mistake is punished immediately with no mercy.

I build speed, legs pumping, lungs burning in a way that feels more like home than anywhere else I’ve ever been. The puck snaps to my stick, and I move it on instinct, firing it across the rink without looking.

After that, there’s no thinking. Just muscle memory.

That’s when everything gets quiet.

Not the rink. Not the bench. And certainly not the way Aleksi M?kelin’s mouth never shuts up, even when he’s skating like his life depends on it.

My head goes quiet, narrowed to three simple questions: Where is the puck?

Where are my teammates? What’s my next move?

Nothing else matters while I’m on the ice.

The rink doesn’t ask who I am.

It doesn’t care where I came from or what my last name means in certain circles in Moscow. It doesn’t care that my father’s reputation stretches longer than the list of men who’ve ever dared to tell him no.

Out here, effort is the only currency that matters.

"Three more months until the playoffs," Coach Haynes shouts from the bench. "You’re all going to have to be faster than that if you want a Stanley Cup."

We reset. Again and again until every guy on the Hawkeyes looks like he’s sweating out his sins.

Bottles are tossed to players and then back to the bench. Gloves are slapped against the boards. Exhausted laughter tries to sneak in between drills, but Haynes stomps it out as quickly as it starts.

I don’t stop moving.

Sweat slides down my spine beneath my pads.

My shoulder aches, an old injury screaming for tape and ice and mercy, but I push harder anyway.

It’s the kind of grit the player feels and the fan rarely sees.

We’re always pushing ourselves for longer shifts and faster recoveries.

Pushing ourselves past the breaking point, where almost everyone else would give up, but not us.

Because hockey is more than a sport. it’s more than a paycheck. It’s an identity. An identity that I found just in time- before my father tried to force his own agenda onto me.

There’s no coasting in pro hockey.

Not under Coach Ryker Haynes. And certainly not with the entire league watching us, wondering if we’re going to choke again like last year.

Bye-week looms—a two-week mid-season break in January for players. Which means that Haynes is pushing us as if the Cup is already on the line. Like this is the year he finally gets the thing he’s been chasing since he took this job.

He has a championship as a coach with Vancouver, but now he wants one with Seattle.

"You don’t wish your way into a Stanley Cup," he told us before we stepped on the ice, arms crossed and eyes serious. "You earn it long before April."

Haynes knows what it takes.

He’s a former Hawkeyes himself. He played back when the jerseys were heavier and the rules were looser. Then he got deported back to Canada before he could finish the season and was later given the coaching position in Vancouver that he’d always wanted.

Now he’s here with us, pushing for another year, hoping this is the season we bring it home.

With me, he rarely pushes, because he knows what I have.

Three Olympic seasons, three medals, and the reputation of never choking when the stakes are high. I’m solid under pressure. It’s one of the few useful things that my father instilled in me.

I don’t need motivation to do my part to get us to the playoffs. I just need room to make it happen.

"Popovich!" Hunter Reed calls from the blue line. "Are you trying to skate a hole through the ice or just showing off?"

I cut hard, steal the puck off his stick, and snap a shot past Olsen Bozeman before our goalie can react. The sound of it hitting the net is clean and satisfying.

"I don’t know, Reedman," I say as I glide past. "You seem more focused on me than on your own game. Maybe pick one."

Hunter laughs. "Asshole."

"Yeah. And I’ve earned every syllable."

The bench erupts with chirps and laughter that bounce around the rink as if it’s alive.

JP Dumont shouts something in French from the crease that I don’t bother translating, though I could.

I learned to speak six languages during my time at the all-boys prep school I was sent away to as a child.

Wolf whistles like he’s impressed, which catches my attention because Wolf is only impressed by three things—hard hits against opposing players, Scottie Easton’s daily caloric intake schedule, and, of course, himself.

Trey Hartley, our other left winger, skates by and bumps my shoulder on purpose, grinning like he always does when things get physical.

"Save some gas for our last game this week," he mutters.

I don’t slow down.

I never do when things start pressing in around me.

Call it growing up with a second-generation Russian mob boss for a father who never allowed a bad day.

Call it playing under the Russian Olympic program, where one mistake didn’t just cost you ice time… it cost you worth, family honor, and pride.

Where being exceptional isn’t a choice. It’s a requirement.

And I learned young how to carry the crushing weight of that expectation as if it were nothing.

In a few days, I’ll be in Switzerland at my favorite resort in the Alps.

Fresh powder, crisp, clean air, and peace away from locker-room chirping and athletic-tape residue.

Maybe a warm snow bunny for the night. Someone I pick up on the slopes or at the bar.

No names, definitely no strings, and absolutely under no circumstances do I stay.

But today? Today I skate like I’m chasing something, not running from it.

The harder I push, the quieter everything gets, and that’s why I chose this.

I earned three Olympic medals. They weren’t inherited, or negotiated for, or bought with blood or favors with the Popovich name.

Gold, silver, and bronze. Proof that I made something of myself without bending the knee to anyone.

My father still hasn’t forgiven me for choosing hockey over the family dynasty. He called me a traitor when I told him I was staying with hockey instead of coming home. As if choosing my own life was the ultimate betrayal. As if carving my own path made me disloyal.

The memory flashes like a blindside hit, so I skate faster to outrun it—to outmaneuver its effects on my game. He doesn’t get to be here on this ice. Not his words, nor his disappointment. This rink is off-limits to the man whose love is conditional.

I bury the past under exertion, because the truth is that I don’t miss the life I left behind. If you can even call it a life.

The only person I’ve ever cared about enough to drag with me out of that world is my sister.

Katerina.

Everything else can burn.

Coach blows the whistle again. "Last drill!"

I dig in, finishing strong, muscles screaming as the buzzer finally sounds. Practice ends in a rush of breath. Everyone is just happy to still be standing up straight.

Relief settles into my bones, not satisfaction.

Satisfaction breeds overconfidence. Satisfaction makes you stop pushing.

Satisfaction makes you think you’ve arrived— that you’ve done enough.

Unfortunately, in professional sports, there’s no such thing as you’ve done enough.

There’s only working hard and working harder, because somewhere, someone hungrier is already outworking you and coming for your spot.

The locker room explodes the second we’re off the ice.

Music blares from someone’s speaker, echoing off the cement walls. Towels snap from somewhere near the showers. Voices and laughter overlap one another as the steam from the showers turns the locker room humid.

I strip off my gear the same way I do every time, like I’ve done a million times before.

Around me, the guys are already halfway gone mentally, drifting toward whatever lives they’re slipping back into outside the rink.

"Two weeks," Slade Matthews groans, stretching his arms over his head. "No drills. No curfews. No Haynes staring into my soul."

"You’ll miss him by day three," Scottie Easton, my teammate and now brother-in-law, says teasingly.

"I will not," Slade fires back. "I’ll be too busy using the break to knock up my wife. I have no other plans for two straight weeks than to keep her naked and in bed."

"Cap," Aleksi says, pulling a face. "Gross. That’s our boss."

Laughter ripples through the room for the few of us packing up our practice gear near our stalls.

This is Slade’s last season before retirement. He’s ready to be a stay-at-home dad while his wife, Penelope Matthews, continues to run the team as our GM. He wants another Stanley Cup before he goes, earning his second Cup win.

"So where are you headed, Popeye?" Wolf asks, dropping onto the bench across from me, a towel wrapped around his waist after coming back from the showers. "Same place as always? Off to commune with the mountains and scare tourists?"

"He’s the reason they put up those Yeti warning signs," JP says. "Big, silent, Russian glare that looks like he might eat you if you ask for directions."

"It’s Yeti season," Wolf says. "Every time you head off to Switzerland, there are three Yeti sightings and a missing German backpacker."

I don’t deny the fact that not everyone finds me pleasant to be around. I have a short attention span for incompetence, and I disappear from the real world during bye-week for a reason.

"Terrified skiers mean fewer people on the runs," I say, pulling a clean shirt from my gym bag.

"Skiing alone again?" Olsen adds. "Or are you finally bringing a friend?"