Chapter 27
Calder
Practice goes badly. Not catastrophically. Worse, sloppily. Missed passes, late reactions, tiny mistakes that normally never happen twice with me. Coach blows the whistle halfway through a defensive drill after I completely miss coverage on a rotation I've run hundreds of times before.
"Hayes."
Sharp. Warning underneath it.
I reset immediately.
"Again."
The word comes out clipped enough that the rookie winger beside me visibly stiffens.
The drill restarts. I overcorrect, push harder, hit harder, move faster, and still not right.
Everything feels half a second delayed lately.
Not physically. Mentally. Like part of my attention keeps drifting somewhere I can't fully drag it back from anymore.
We finish practice with conditioning skates. By the end my lungs burn hard enough to taste blood. It still doesn't quiet anything underneath my ribs.
The locker room afterward feels too loud, tape ripping, music playing, guys talking over each other while sweat and melted ice water drip across the concrete floor.
Normally I can exist inside this kind of noise without thinking about it.
Today every sound grates. One of the younger guys drops something metal near my locker.
The crack against the floor snaps through my skull hard enough that irritation flashes through me.
"For fuck's sake."
Tape ripping stops for a second. The rookie mutters a quick apology without looking at me directly. Guilt follows. Because the reaction was too much. Again. I sit heavily in front of my locker and start peeling tape off my wrists harder than necessary.
Nobody says anything for a minute.
Then: "You gonna bite somebody's head off or tell us what's actually wrong with you?"
The voice comes from across the room. Maddox. Assistant captain. Been on the team almost as long as me. I don't look up.
"Nothing's wrong."
The lie dies instantly. A few guys exchange glances. Maddox snorts once.
"Bullshit."
"Drop it."
"See, that's exactly what we're talking about."
My jaw tightens. Conversations thin out around the room now, not dramatic, just attention narrowing, because everybody already knows what this is about. Nobody's said it directly until now.
Maddox leans back against the stall beside his locker.
"You've been miserable for weeks."
"I'm fine."
Nobody even pretends to believe it this time.
"Dude," one of the defensemen says carefully, "you look like you haven't slept since playoffs started."
I laugh once under my breath. No humor in it.
"I'm training."
"No," Maddox says flatly. "You're grinding yourself into the floor because apparently having feelings scared the shit out of you."
The words slam through me hard enough that my entire body stills. Even the music suddenly feels too loud, everybody waiting because apparently they've all been holding this conversation back for weeks.
I finally look up.
"What exactly do you want from me?"
Maddox folds his arms.
"I want to know why the hell you're acting like she ruined your life when everybody in this room watched you become happier with her."
The sentence collides hard against my chest. Sharp enough that I physically stop breathing for half a second. Around the room, nobody argues with him. That part unsettles me most.
"It wasn't that simple," I say finally.
Maddox raises an eyebrow.
"That's your defense?"
I shove my gear into my bag harder than necessary.
"You saw the media attention."
"So?"
"So it was becoming a problem."
The words come out sharper now, more certain, because this part still feels true inside my head, the articles, the interviews, the speculation, every public moment getting turned into headlines and narratives before either of us could breathe through them properly.
One of the younger guys leans back against the counter nearby.
"You mean the same media attention literally every athlete deals with?"
"It's different."
"How?"
I exhale hard through my nose trying to force the frustration back down. Because explaining this suddenly feels impossible.
"It affects focus," I say flatly. "It changes how people look at you. At both of you."
Maddox stares at me for a second. Then: "So you dumped her because people noticed you were in love?" The bluntness of it slams into me like a body check. I look away immediately.
"Don't put it like that."
"That's literally what happened."
"No," I snap. "What happened is things got complicated."
Nobody laughs this time. Because apparently everybody hears it now. The wording. The management language. Complicated. Like Arabella became some difficult external variable instead of a person.
"You didn't see what it was turning into," I say more tightly. "The scrutiny. The visibility. It stopped being private."
Maddox doesn't move. "And?"
"And it affects people."
"Yeah," he says slowly. "Usually because they care."
The response cuts deeper than it should. I push forward before the feeling can settle properly. "She was heading to Worlds. I was heading into playoffs. It was becoming too much."
The arguments sound thinner out loud than they do inside my head. I hate that. One teammate frowns slightly.
"Too much for who?"
I don't answer fast enough. Because the truth arrives before I can reshape it. Me. Not Arabella. Me. I look back down at my gear instead.
"It was distracting."
The second the word leaves my mouth, something sour pulls tight in my chest. Because suddenly I hear Arabella standing outside the restaurant again: You think being in love is.
I shove it away. This wasn't irrational.
It wasn't cruel. I was trying to protect something before it became unsustainable.
"That's not insane," I say quieter now. "You let yourself get too emotionally wrapped up in something during a season like this and eventually it starts affecting everything."
Nobody interrupts. Not agreeing. Waiting.
"I couldn't think straight anymore," I admit roughly. "Every article mattered. Every public appearance mattered. Every conversation became about visibility and scrutiny and whether somebody was going to turn us into another story."
I can feel them watching me now, not judgment exactly. Recognition. Like they're finally hearing the actual shape of it.
"I was trying to control it before it got worse."
There. The truth underneath all of it. Control. Not lack of love. Not lack of wanting her. The opposite. Maddox studies me for a long second. Then quietly: "You really think loving somebody is the thing that wrecked you?"
The question settles quietly between us.
Still devastating. Because the horrible part is that some piece of me still does believe it.
That's why I made the choice at all. Maddox stares at me for a long moment after I stop talking.
Not angry. Worse. Disappointed. Then he laughs once quietly and drags a hand over his jaw. "Jesus Christ."
The words fall flat in the locker room. Irritation spikes.
"What?"
"You actually believe this."
The statement cuts deeper than if he'd mocked me. Because there's genuine disbelief underneath it.
"You weren't in the relationship."
"No," Maddox says. "But we were around you." Nobody moves around him now. Nobody interrupting. Nobody leaving. Because apparently everybody already knows where this conversation is going except me.
"You wanna know what we saw?"
I say nothing. He keeps going anyway.
"We saw you actually relax for the first time in years."
The sentence settles strangely. Before I can respond, another teammate cuts in from across the room.
"You smiled more."
Somebody else: "You stopped acting like everything was life or death all the time."
"You stopped staying after losses just to punish yourself with extra conditioning."
The comments start coming from different corners of the room. Not attacking. Matter-of-fact. Like they're all describing something obvious. I stare at them feeling increasingly off-balance. Because none of this matches the narrative I've spent weeks building inside my own head.
"She made you easier to be around," one of the defensemen says bluntly. A few guys nod. The reaction unsettles me more than the words themselves.
Maddox folds his arms. "You were steadier with her."
"No," I say. "I was distracted."
"Bullshit." The response comes so fast it nearly cuts me off completely. "You think we couldn't tell the difference between distracted and happy?"
A helmet drops somewhere near the benches and nobody reacts. Happy. The word cuts deeper than it should. Because I never once framed it that way inside my own head. I framed it as attachment. Dependence. Loss of control. Not happiness.
Maddox watches me carefully now. "Do you know how bad things had to get before the team started missing your girlfriend?
" A few guys laugh quietly under their breath, not cruelly, almost fond.
The sound lands. Because Arabella mattered here too.
Not officially. Not loudly. But enough that people noticed when she disappeared from my life.
"She grounded you," somebody says. Another teammate nods toward me. "You sleepwalk through everything now." The comment punches straight through me because it's true. The mechanical routines. The exhaustion. The emptiness sitting underneath every win lately.
Maddox steps closer. "And honestly? The worst part is the way you talk about her."
My jaw tightens. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"You talk about her like she was some issue you had to contain."
The sentence drives straight into my sternum. My entire body goes still.
"Complicated. Distraction. Headlines. Exposure." Maddox shakes his head slowly. "She was a person, man. Not a fucking injury report."
Nobody says a word after that. Because suddenly every conversation I had with Arabella outside the restaurant comes crashing violently back into my head. I'm trying to protect this. Fix it. Manage it. Smaller. Safer. Controlled. Something gives way hard inside my chest. I hear myself clearly.