Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Silas
Coach Ryan's whistle cuts through the scrimmage for the third time in ten minutes. I skate to a stop, breathing hard, trying to figure out what I did wrong this time.
"Huxley!" Ryan's voice echoes across the ice. "You trying to put your own teammates in the hospital?"
The rest of the team circles back, looking between me and Ryan. Thorne rolls his eyes. Jett shakes his head like he saw this coming.
"Just playing my position," I call back.
"Your position isn't human wrecking ball." Ryan skates closer, his expression tight with frustration. "That's the third clean hit you've thrown in a scrimmage. Against your own guys. You keep playing like that and you're going to wind up hurt. Or worse, you're going to hurt someone who matters."
Heat crawls up my neck. "I'm an enforcer. That's what I do."
"No. What you do is protect your team. You’re demolishing them in practice." Ryan jerks his thumb toward the bench. "Take five. Cool off."
Skating to the bench feels like a punishment I don't deserve. My job is to be physical. Hit hard. Make the other team think twice about touching my guys. That's what enforcers do. That's what I've always done.
Ryan's right about one thing though. My hits are getting sloppier. More desperate, as if I’m trying to prove something with every single play.
My phone buzzes during cooldown. Enzo. I let it go to voicemail.
He'll want to know why I missed the endorsement meeting, why I'm not returning calls. The truth is that I don't care about another protein powder deal.
He calls again. I decline. Then a text pops up.
Enzo: We need to talk about your attitude problem.
I stare at the screen.
Enzo: Unless you want Page Six to hear about some interesting family financial issues?
The threat sits there in black and white. He's been doing this for years without ever saying it outright. My mother's crimes hang over my head while he keeps me in line.
The big endorsements would probably survive. Nike, Gatorade. The smaller deals would vanish, and he knows it.
Scout's voice echoes in my head. You can't let him hold that over you forever.
She's right. But knowing it and doing something about it are two different things.
I delete the message. One problem at a time.
Practice continues without me. Watching from the bench, I see what Ryan means. The scrimmage flows better when I'm not in it. Plays develop naturally instead of getting interrupted by my constant physicality. My teammates move with more confidence, not bracing for impact every time I'm near.
Watching them play without me pisses me off. It makes me feel useless.
When the final whistle blows, Ryan catches my eye and jerks his head toward his office. A one-on-one talk. Just what I fucking need.
His office is small and cluttered with game footage, playbooks, and empty coffee cups. Ryan drops into his chair and gestures for me to sit. I stay standing.
"You want to tell me what's going on?" Ryan leans back, studying me with that coach look that sees through bullshit.
"Nothing's going on. I'm playing my position."
"You're playing scared."
The words hit like a punch to the gut. "I'm not scared of anything."
"Not scared of getting hit. Scared of being irrelevant." Ryan picks up a pen, tapping it against his desk. "You think if you're not throwing your body around every single play, you don't have value. That's not how this works, Huxley."
My jaw clenches. "I'm an enforcer. If I'm not being physical, what's the point of me being on the ice?"
"To be smart. To be strategic. You protect your team when they actually need it, not every five seconds." Ryan sets the pen down. "You know what enforcers really do? They punish players. They send a message. But that message only works if you're selective about when you deliver it."
"So what, I'm supposed to just skate around and do nothing?"
"You're supposed to read the game. See when your guys need backup. Then you handle it." Ryan stands up, moving to the whiteboard covered in play diagrams. "Right now, you're using your body in every single play. That's not enforcing. That's just being reckless."
The word stings because it's true. Scout said something similar last week. Different context, but the same idea.
"Scout told me something." The words come out before I can stop them. "She said I don't have to meet every sensation with force."
Ryan's eyebrows rise. "Scout said that?"
"Yeah. We were talking about something else, but..." I shrug, feeling exposed. "Maybe it applies to hockey too."
"Smart woman." Ryan nods slowly. "She's right. You don't have to hit everything that moves. Save it for when it counts."
"What if I can't?" The admission wrenches out of my chest. "What if being physical is the only thing I know how to do?"
"Then you learn something new. Or you trust that the physical part works better when you're not exhausting yourself with constant contact.
" Ryan crosses his arms. "I want you to try something tomorrow night.
Go into the game with one rule: you don't hit unless your team needs you to.
Watch, wait, be patient. Can you do that? "
Everything in me wants to say no. I want to argue that my value comes from being the biggest, meanest presence on the ice. But Ryan's looking at me so sternly that I can’t say no without feeling like a disobedient schoolboy.
"One game," I say finally. "I'll try it for one game."
"That's all I'm asking." Ryan claps me on the shoulder. "Now get out of here. You look like hell."
The drive home feels longer than usual. My head's full of static, thoughts tangling over each other. Ryan could be wrong. What if holding back makes me useless? What if the team realizes they don't actually need me?
Scout's at the kitchen counter when I walk in, chopping vegetables for dinner. She's wearing one of my Havoc t-shirts that hangs to her thighs, her dark blonde curls piled on top of her head in a messy knot. Bare legs, bare feet, humming along to some song playing from her phone.
She's always so damn beautiful.
"Hey." She looks up, smiling. Then her smile fades. "Rough practice?"
"Something like that." I drop my bag by the door, moving to wash my hands at the sink. "Sorry. My head's a mess right now."
"Want to talk about it?" She slides closer, those green eyes soft with concern.
"Not really." I dry my hands, pulling her against me just to feel her solid and real. "I just need to watch some film tonight. There’s some shit I have to figure out."
"Okay." She doesn't push, just wraps her arms around my waist and holds on. "I'll make dinner. You do what you need to do."
That's the thing about Scout. Counter to what she believes about herself, she doesn't try to fix everything. She just lets me be whatever I need to be while making sure I'm not alone in it.
Dinner is some kind of stir-fry she throws together with chicken and vegetables.
We eat in relative silence, her trying to make light conversation while I give one-word answers.
Not because I don’t want to talk to her, but because my brain won't stop replaying every hit from practice, analyzing what Ryan said, trying to figure out how to be useful without being physical.
"I'm going to watch film," I say after helping her clean up. "It might be a while."
"That's fine." Scout kisses my cheek. "I'll read or something. Don't stay up too late."
I set up in bed with my laptop, pulling up footage from our last three games. Mainly, I’m looking for patterns. Times when I hit and it mattered. More times when I hit and it didn't change anything.
The more I watch, the more Ryan's words make sense. Half my hits are unnecessary. The other half are effective but poorly timed. I’m constantly moving, constantly engaging, never giving myself time to read the play and respond strategically.
I can’t believe I never saw this before. It’s like looking at the sky through a telescope for the first time. Everything is suddenly brilliantly illuminated.
Scout appears in the doorway about an hour later, changed into one of my oversized t-shirts.
Seeing her dressed in my clothes, wearing what she thinks is comfortable, makes my mouth go dry despite my distraction.
She's holding a physical therapy magazine, the kind with dense articles and diagrams of muscle groups.
"Mind if I join you?" She gestures to the empty side of the bed.
"It's your bed too."
She snorts and climbs in beside me, propping pillows against the headboard, settling in with her magazine.
The rustle of pages becomes background noise as I continue watching film.
Every so often I glance over at her. The way she chews her bottom lip when she's concentrating.
The little furrow between her eyebrows when she reads something interesting.
Her bare legs are tucked under her, toes painted some bright color I can't name. Her dark blonde curls are loose now, falling around her shoulders in waves. Those green eyes track across the page, completely absorbed in whatever article she's reading about rotator cuff injuries.
Scout's fucking adorable and doesn't even realize it. Cute doesn't begin to cover it.
An hour passes. Then another. The laptop screen casts a blue glow across the darkened room. Scout's magazine slips from her fingers, her breathing evening out into sleep. She's curled on her side facing me, one hand tucked under her cheek, head tilted at an odd angle.
She doesn't stir as I gently move her onto a pillow. She just keeps breathing slowly, peacefully. Apparently she trusts me enough to fall asleep beside me while I'm wound tight with anxiety about tomorrow's game.
Looking at her now, something settles in my chest. A feeling that's been building for weeks but I've been too stubborn or scared to acknowledge.
I swear, I tried to lie to myself, to resist her. I told myself she was only a temporary roommate. Pretended that keeping her at arm's length and not letting her matter could work.