Chapter 5
five
CADEN
Despite being exhausted after a full day of travel, I’d declined the captain’s well-intentioned beer offering.
I knew it probably made me look like an asshole since I’d just arrived.
However, the stress of meeting new people, combined with my scathing inner voice courtesy of my father, had my skin feeling like it was damn near ready to rip itself from my body if I didn’t get out of there right then.
So, I’d made some lame excuse about working the day’s travel out of my muscles when Hawkins handed me his key to the practice arena across the street, telling me where I could find the conditioning room.
I’d been so desperate to get out of any more conversation in that moment that I’d accepted his keys with a grateful nod before rushing to my new room to dump out my suitcase for a pair of sweatpants and my skates.
After jogging down the apartment building stairwell, I jaywalked my way across the street to the practice arena.
Damn, the Hammerheads really lived and worked all up in each other’s business, eh?
That was going to be a massive change for me.
I was used to being at least one bus ride away from the rink, having always gravitated to renting a room with other post-secondary students rather than rooming with my teammates
Making my way down the dimly lit side alley beside the building, I tried Hawk’s key in the first unmarked door I came across. Once inside, I made my way to the rink rather than the weight room.
A quick tie of my laces, and I was marring the freshly Zambonied ice with my skates that needed sharpening.
I didn’t know how long I’d been skating for, but I’d been desperately trying to zone out with the repetition of my back-and-forth motion across the rink.
It must have been a while, as I was drenched in sweat and I could feel the cold arena air seeping through the damp fabric of my T-shirt.
Even if my father had beaten every positive feeling I had toward hockey out of me, I had an uncanny ability to essentially check out of my own brain once I stepped foot on the ice.
Yeah, because you spent your formative years with Frank Kelly screaming how worthless you were as your rink-side soundtrack.
Bile made its way into my throat before I could swallow it back down. Fuck, that shit burned. Thoughts of my dad had escalated to making me physically ill—such was the weight of his presence in my life.
That’s what you get for punishing yourself on an empty stomach, idiot.
The bang of a heavy arena door pulled me out of my self-hatred spiral before I could sink too deeply into my own head.
I slowed my speed to a more leisurely pace, as if me ripping up the rink in the off-hours would somehow become less noticeable if my skates weren’t hitting the ice as hard.
Since I was trying to avoid notice, I didn’t dare look in the direction from which the booming sound had come.
Best-case scenario, it was a member of the maintenance staff who was too preoccupied with finishing their shift and couldn’t care less about some nobody hockey player on the ice. I’m sure they saw weirder shit in here than a late-afternoon skate.
Before I could consider the worst-case scenario, the telltale scraping noise of the players’ door being swung open and then the bang of it shutting set me on edge, but I schooled my expression and continued skating with my head down.
“Hey! Rookie!” A deep voice rumbled from behind me.
Ah, fuck.