26. Rowan
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Rowan
I’m officially back on the ice.
Finally.
The boards creak under my skates like they’re greeting me with suspicion, not warmth. Like they remember me, but aren’t sure I still belong here.
The sound echoes up into the rafters, familiar and sharp, setting something loose in my chest that I’ve been trying to hold still for weeks.
The first few laps feel almost good. Almost. My leg burns, but it holds. My lungs pull tight, but they keep up. My blades bite into the surface just like they used to.
It should be a victory, just being here, should feel like something. But it doesn’t. Not really. It’s all motion. All noise. Muscle memory with no heartbeat behind it.
The ice is different when your head’s full of ghosts.
Every corner I round feels slower than it should. My stride’s just slightly off, too cautious, too heavy. There’s no rhythm in my body, no fire sparking up my spine the way it used to.
It’s like trying to play a song I once knew by heart with fingers that don’t feel like mine anymore.
The guys give me shoulder taps and half hugs, rough welcomes like they’re trying to jolt me back to life. I hear the usual, “Glad to have you back,” and “Looking good out there, man,” but their eyes say something different.
Their eyes say they’re watching. Measuring. Wondering if I’m still the same player I was before the injury… before everything fell apart.
I push harder, trying to lose the doubt in sweat and speed. Harder strides. Sharper turns. More force than finesse.
I throw myself into the drills like I can punish the hesitation out of my body, but it clings to me like a second skin.
Coach shouts instructions, and I chase them like they’re the last thing tethering me to who I was.
But there’s no edge. No teeth in my game.
I should feel alive out here, should feel like I’m burning through the ice, but all I feel is the void where she should be.
Jinx .
She’s not here.
Not in the stands, smirking with that half-assed supportive look she wore like armor. Not pressed up to the glass, shouting sarcastic nonsense just loud enough to make me crack a grin during drills. Not in the quiet space between whistles, where I always felt her watching even when she pretended she wasn’t.
Now it’s just silence.
A blank stretch of plexiglass. A missing piece in the rhythm of my world.
Thomas skates up beside me, trailing a figure eight into the ice like he doesn’t know how to say what he needs to say. He glances over, eyes tight, jaw tighter.
The wind of our movement roars in my ears until he finally mutters, “You doin’ okay?”
I shrug. It’s the best I can offer. Anything more would break open the ache I’ve been duct-taping together for weeks.
Anything more and I’m afraid I’ll shatter.
He nods like he understands. Like he’s skating through the same fog.
We’re all broken in the same direction now.
Coach’s whistle cuts through the air like a blade. “Davis! Boyd! If you’re not here to work, get the hell off my ice!”
Thomas flinches. I don’t. I barely blink. Just meet his eyes for half a second before we split off, him left, me right, diving into whatever drill Coach starts barking at us next.
My body moves. I push into turns, drop into my stance, flick pucks toward the net like I’m on autopilot. Like maybe if I can just go fast enough, hard enough, long enough, I’ll outrun the parts of me that still miss her.
The ones that wake me up at night, thinking I heard her voice. The ones that feel her in the space beside me every time I reach for a towel, a hoodie, a breath.
I chase the burn in my legs like it owes me something.
I chase the fire in my lungs like penance.
But there’s no catharsis waiting for me at the end of the sprint. No peace in the muscle ache or the cold.
Just that same blank stretch of glass.
And a silence that feels permanent.
Practice ends, but the numbness doesn’t last. Adrenaline drains out like blood in water, leaving everything aching in its wake.
I’m toweling off in the locker room, trying to ignore the low-simmering argument Thomas and Bruno are having over whose gear stinks more, when an assistant sticks his head through the door.
“Davis. Boyd. Varga. Coach wants to see you. Now.”
Three names. One tone.
Sharp. Unforgiving.
We all freeze.
The air goes thick, too thick to breathe right. There’s a pause where none of us move, like we’re waiting for someone to say it’s a joke.
Then Bruno huffs and yanks a hoodie over his damp shoulders like it’s a shield. Thomas punches the locker beside him, hard enough that his knuckles go red, then grabs his water bottle without a word.
We know what this is about. We don’t need to ask.
The three of us file into Coach’s office like it’s a courtroom. It’s small and too warm and smells like burnt coffee and tension.
Coach doesn’t offer chairs. Doesn’t ask us to sit. He just leans back behind his desk, arms crossed, jaw tight, eyes hard.
“You three,” he says slowly, in a low growl, “are the spine of this team.”
Then he leans forward, each word cutting sharper than the last.
“And lately? You’ve been goddamn spineless.”
Bruno flinches like he’s been slapped. Thomas drops his gaze to the floor, jaw ticking. I just bite down on the inside of my cheek and take it.
The words hurt because they’re not wrong.
Coach lets the silence stretch, lets it hurt. Let's squirm in it. Then he mutters, “What the hell is in the water around here?”
More silence. The kind that buzzes in your bones.
Finally, I break. “It’s about Jinx.”
Bruno nods stiffly. “She left. Didn’t explain why.”
“She ghosted us,” Thomas mutters, biting the words off like they taste bad. “Not even a real goodbye. Just… silence.”
Coach sighs and drags a hand down his face. “Goddamn it. I didn’t want this to happen. I wasn’t trying to end anything… just calm the storm before it got bigger.”
“Then maybe you should’ve let us handle it,” I say, my voice sharper than I mean it to be.
Coach’s eyes flash. “You think I wanted to talk to the press about which one of you is in her bed? You think I enjoy putting out fires every time a reporter gets wind of your drama?” He slams a hand on the desk, and we all flinch. “I was trying to protect you . All of you. Including her.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” Bruno mutters. “Damage is done.”
Thomas leans back, arms crossed tight over his chest like he’s holding himself together with pressure alone. “She’s not coming back. Not for us. Not for the team. Said she’s going back to school, starting over. Said she’s done.”
Coach’s jaw clenches. “I didn’t think… I thought she just needed space. I didn’t think we’d lose her.”
No one speaks. The truth hangs there like smoke, thick and choking.
Then Coach’s tone shifts, softens just a little. “Listen. I know you’re hurting. I do. But we’ve got a championship game in a week. Seven days. That’s it. No more maybes. No more distractions. I need you here.”
His voice sharpens again, eyes hard as steel. “You want to fall apart? Fine. But not on my ice. You show up like this again, heads half in the game, I’ll bench every one of you. I don’t care how much the press screams.”
Thomas’s head snaps up. “You’d bench us? All three of us?”
“If I have to,” Coach says, dead serious. “Because the way you’re playing? You’re already gone.”
I swallow hard. My heart pounds like a drum in my throat. “We’re trying.”
Coach levels his gaze at me. “Try harder.”
Bruno curses under his breath, low and bitter. Thomas exhales through his nose like he’s trying not to explode. I just stare at the floor again, every muscle locked up tight.
Coach softens, just slightly. “I didn’t want it to go like this. But we’ve got one shot. One week. You pull yourselves together, or we lose it all. Not just the title. Everything we’ve built this year.”
His voice drops, quieter but no less heavy. “I’m not asking you to stop hurting. I’m asking you to play through it. Can you do that?”
We all nod. Slowly. Quietly. Like soldiers in a war they didn’t sign up for.
Coach leans back again, finally looking like the weight’s getting to him, too. “Alright. Go get cleaned up. And figure it out. Because when that puck drops next week? You either show up as the team you were, or you don’t bother showing up at all.”
We file out in silence. Nothing feels fixed.
But now we know just how close we are to losing everything.
And how fast it’s slipping away.
We walk out of Coach’s office in silence, our footsteps echoing down the concrete tunnel like a countdown clock we can’t stop. The air between us is thick, weighed down by everything we didn’t say. Everything we can’t fix.
It feels like we’re walking away from more than a conversation. Like we just left a funeral we didn’t know we were attending.
Bruno breaks the silence first, his voice low and rough. “Well. That’s that, huh?”
Thomas lets out a humorless laugh, sharp and brittle. “No more checking our phones every five seconds. No more late-night what-ifs. No more hoping she’ll just… show up.”
I drag a hand down my face. “It’s hockey now. That’s all we’ve got left.”
Bruno nods, jaw clenched like he’s trying not to spit glass. “Back to basics. Wake up. Work. Bleed if you have to. Just… grind.”
Thomas swipes a hand through his hair, restless, angry. “We lost her. And maybe we deserved to. But I’m not losing this season, too. I won’t.”
We stop at the end of the tunnel, just short of the light pouring in from the empty rink beyond. The ice is quiet. Pristine. Waiting.
I look at it like it might give something back. Like it might fill the space she left behind.
But it doesn’t.
There’s no miracle. No fix. Just three guys standing in the wreckage of something they didn’t know how to hold onto.
We all nod. Quiet, grim, resigned.
Jinx is gone. Whatever strange, bright, chaotic thing we had with her… It’s over.
So we do the only thing left to do.
We lace up. We dig in. We shut everything else out.
What other choice do we have?