Chapter 8 RAFE
RAFE
Practice is supposed to be clean today. Before a game like this, everyone should be razor-sharp, locked in, focused on drills, because Leonardo doesn’t tolerate sloppy ice and the bets on tonight are higher than usual.
The compound feels it — the tension, the hunger, the pressure.
Even the fucking air is tight. Everyone is dialed into the rhythm of it: Misha hitting like a freight train, Kai skating with that detached surgeon’s precision, Finn spinning circles around the forwards just to piss them off, Luca chirping anything that breathes. It should feel like a machine humming.
But it doesn’t.
Because Julian is skating like he left half his brain in bed. He’s not high — I know that look. He’s not withdrawing — I know that one too. He’s not manic, not jittery, not wired.
He’s… empty.
His stride is perfect. His edges clean. His stick-handling sharp.
But there is nothing behind his eyes. No fire, no fury, no sarcasm, no reckless spark.
He’s moving on autopilot, like his body remembers what to do but his mind is three steps out of sync.
He goes through every motion like someone wound him up and pushed him onto the ice without checking if the soul was still inside the shell.
And that pisses me off more than anything he’s done so far.
Julian Reaver is a lot of things — mouthy, high, suicidal, a goddamn problem — but he’s never blank.
I’ve seen him half-dead from withdrawal and he still managed to spit at me.
I’ve seen him high enough to fight Finn, Luca, and the boards at the same time, and he still lit the entire rink on fire with his presence.
But this? This quiet, disconnected skating? This nothingness?
It feels wrong. Wrong in a way I can’t ignore.
I watch him cut across center ice, flawless form and no soul, and it grates under my skin until my fingers tighten on the stick so hard the tape bites into my glove.
He doesn’t react to Finn chirping loud enough to shake the rafters.
He doesn’t snap back at Luca’s digs. He doesn’t flinch when Bishop throws a puck into the boards next to him just to get a rise.
Julian just keeps skating. Head down, expression flat, breathing steady. Like he’s not here.
Kai glances at him too. That’s how I know it’s serious — Kai rarely gives a shit about anything that isn’t bleeding. He watches Julian skate a full lap with that calculating, unreadable look, then skates over to me at the crease.
“He’s not high,” Kai says.
“No shit.”
“And he’s not in withdrawal.”
I shoot another glance at Julian, who is staring at the far wall like it owes him money. “So what the fuck is he?”
Kai shrugs, but there’s a flicker of something in his eyes — curiosity, maybe irritation. “Whatever it is, it’s not chemical.”
Great. Fantastic.
Because if it’s not chemical, then Julian did something dumb. Or remembered something dumb. Or is thinking about something dumb. And there’s nothing harder to fix on this ice than a player’s head being somewhere it shouldn’t be.
Especially his.
We run another drill. The pace speeds up.
Passes get sharper, shots harder, the whole team pushing toward game intensity.
A puck gets chipped high toward Julian’s side, and he doesn’t even track it.
It hits the ice next to him with a sharp crack and he doesn’t twitch.
Luca actually stops skating, eyebrows pulling together because even he knows something’s wrong.
Julian skates right past him without a word.
I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek, past irritation, past annoyance — this is dangerous.
If he plays like this tonight, he’s going to get his skull split open.
If he checks out during a game, I won’t be able to protect him.
If he drifts off mid-play, there’s no fucking guarantee he gets back up.
And if that happens, Leonardo won’t give a shit that Julian Reaver used to be NHL royalty. He’ll just tally up another corpse.
I step out of the crease.
Julian’s along the half-wall now, doing passing drills automatically, not looking at the puck, not looking at the player he’s exchanging with, not looking anywhere. He’s skating like he’s dreaming with his eyes open.
I skate straight toward him until I’m close enough to grab him, and I do — a fist in the front of his jersey, dragging him out of the drill so fast Finn yelps behind us when he almost collides with Bishop.
Julian barely reacts. His head tips back a little, eyes finding mine slowly, like it takes effort to focus. That’s what makes my jaw clench. He looks at me like he’s waking up underwater.
“Where the fuck are you?” I snap.
His eyes flicker. Just once. Then the lights go out again.
“Don’t do that,” I warn, tightening my grip until the fabric creaks. “Don’t disappear on me.”
Nothing. Not a flinch. Not a spark. Not even that irritated little eyebrow raise he gives me when he’s deciding whether to fight or smart-mouth. His face is blank.
That’s when the heat hits the back of my neck — a slow, poisonous burn. “Reaver,” I say, dragging him closer until I can feel his breath on my jaw, “look at me.”
He does. Barely. There’s a flicker of recognition — not much, not enough — but it’s more than before. The problem is… it dies immediately.
I don’t know what set him off. I don’t know what memory or nightmare or thought hollowed him out. But I do know one thing: He cannot skate like this. Not in practice. Not in a game. Not in front of Leonardo. Not if he wants to live.
I bring my mouth closer to his ear, voice a low growl meant only for him. “I’m not asking again,” I say. “Wake the fuck up.”
His eyelashes tremble, his jaw shifts. A second of life. A second of presence. A second of something that’s actually Julian—And then it vanishes again.
I feel the snap inside myself when it happens. A quiet, vicious thing. Because whatever stole his fire, whatever ripped the fight out of him, whatever dragged him out of his own fucking body… I will rip its throat out when I find it.
But right now I have a ghost wearing Julian’s skin, and I’m not letting that slide.
Finn calls it first — slapping his stick against the boards and yelling, “We’re done here! Go hit a wall, stretch, bleed, whatever gets your dick hard — this was dogshit!”
No one argues.
Everyone’s been watching Julian spiral for over an hour now, and no one wants to be in his path when it finally detonates — or mine, if I get to him first. The rest of the team drags off the ice, steam rising off bruised skin, sweat dripping into scowls.
Bishop’s already got a cut above his eyebrow.
Misha looks like he’s one bad joke away from homicide.
Julian skates off slow, head down, like he has nowhere to be.
I don’t talk to anyone. I follow.
He peels off his gloves, pulls off his helmet.
Hair a mess. Neck red. He still doesn’t look at me.
Doesn’t acknowledge that I’m tracking him down the corridor between the rink and the weight room, across the caged hallway near the cold showers, through the concrete arch that leads back to the private lockers.
Doesn’t look until I grab him by the collar and slam him backward into the wall so hard it knocks the breath out of his lungs. The thud echoes down the hallway like a fucking gunshot.
His head hits steel. His breath punches out of him, eyes flaring wide—finally—and that’s when I see it. A flicker. Not rage, or panic, or pain. Arousal.
Jesus fucking Christ.
His pupils dilate like I hit a switch. He shoves at me on instinct—weak, unfocused—and then snarls, “Fuck is your problem?”
I slam him back again. “Don’t be weak again.”
His breath catches in his throat like that did more damage than the wall. I don’t mean it gentle. Because I need him angry. I need him clawing. I need him alive. Not this blank, drifting shell skating on autopilot like he forgot he was born for war.
Julian lets out a breathless, sharp laugh — the kind that sounds like it should be attached to a sob but won’t admit it.
“Oh yeah? You miss the part where I made half the team piss themselves last week or—" he grabs a fistful of my hoodie like he thinks he can drag me, “—you just like it when I bite?”
I grab his jaw. My fingers dig in, controlling the angle of his face, forcing his head back against the wall. His pulse jumps under my thumb. “Shut your mouth, junkie.”
He bares his teeth, grins against my grip. “Touchy. What happened, huh? You run out of people to choke so you came looking for me?”
“You think I won’t?” I tighten my grip, shove my forearm against his chest to pin him still.
Julian’s breath hitches — still not scared. “Oh, I know you will,” he hisses, head tipping just enough to get closer, lips curling. “You just haven’t figured out yet if you want to kill me or fuck me.”
I slam him back again — shoulder this time — teeth clenched.
He groans. And fucking smiles. Goddamn smile like he’s winning something, like he thinks if he baits me hard enough, I’ll snap and give him whatever twisted fix he’s chasing today.
“You wanna fight me, golden boy?” I ask, voice low, deadly.
He licks his bottom lip. It’s split. Probably from the stick he caught to the chin earlier. “Only if you promise to bleed.”
“You couldn’t make me bleed if I gave you a weapon and a ten-minute head start.”
He smirks, but there’s a hesitation underneath it now. Just a flicker. The cracks showing. “Maybe not today,” he mutters.
I go still, because that wasn’t venom. That wasn’t one of his usual jabs meant to slice open a nerve and yank until I react. That wasn’t fire. That was hollow.
And that’s when I realize it — even his fight is weak today.
He’s mouthing off because it’s all he knows.
He’s grabbing at me because he doesn’t know where else to anchor.
He’s not trying to win. He’s trying not to vanish.
And the second I see it — the second I realize this isn’t defiance, it’s desperation — the fury shifts.