5. Everly #2
I trace the H with my finger, and my throat closes like a fist. I don’t cry, because crying at Sutton Arena is something I’ve only done twice before—once at eleven, once at thirteen—and I swore an oath.
The exhibition winds down. The crowd thins. The stands empty until it’s just me and the Zamboni making its final pass—erasing every mark, smoothing every scar, turning the ice back into a blank page. Saying goodbye.
I should leave.
Instead, I pull out my laptop.
I open Ice Cold Heart. Earbuds in.
My fingers find the keys.
And hallelujah, just like that, I’m back. The block breaks.
BECKETT
The mechanical hum of the Zamboni fills the tunnel, echoes off the wall for one final run. Why they even bother is beyond me—but then again, same could be said for our little send-off scrimmage. It wouldn’t be right to leave the ice like that.
Sweat still mists my neck, turning cold with the artificial chill in the air as I lean against the tunnel wall, watching the Zamboni paint over the ice. My duffel sits at my feet, the old one fraying at the seams—yeah, all right, I’m a little sentimental.
My other hand wraps around a puck, worn down from years of play. I know come Monday, this place is getting torn down to the studs. I set the puck on the sideboard, standing it on end, face out. An ode to the lost, like a glass turned down, everything poured out.
You had a good run, buddy.
Yeah, I’m going to miss this place.
My gaze carries toward the stands, skirting over the silver rows where my mom used to sit—when she could make it. I got used to those empty stands early in the morning, when it was just me and Coach Hart on the ice.
Movement near the top row catches my eye, and my breath hitches. I freeze the way you would spotting a deer in the wild. No sudden movements.
Her stunning red hair catches the fluorescents like that final sliver of sunset.
Her laptop balances on her knees, her gaze entirely focused on her work.
She’s got that look, determined and completely in her element, and…
and she’s beautiful. I let out a sigh. Of course she’s up there.
One last glimpse of the girl in the stands.
“You’re still here?”
I turn to find Conrad striding from the tunnel, duffel slung over his shoulder.
I force a laugh. “Yeah, just taking it in one last time.”
He stops beside me and slaps a hand on my back, a reminder that despite the way it feels lately, I’m not entirely alone on this team. “Well, don’t take too long. There’s a blizzard coming. I heard they’re shutting down the mall early.”
I nod. “Yeah, all right. I’ll just be five minutes.”
“I’ll see you Monday, man.” Conrad gives my back one more slap for good measure, and then he’s gone.
Minutes pass. The Zamboni shuts down, tucks back into its room, the roller door shutting it away. The arena crew kills the main lights, leaving us in the silvery twilight.
I don’t move. And neither does she.
“Locking up the arena side,” the Zamboni driver calls. “Head through the mall when you’re done. Building manager’s doing a sweep in thirty.”
“Five minutes?” I ask.
“Make it three. Power’s on life support.”
The lights stutter to cosign his assessment. I grab my bag, cast one more glance at the upper stands.
She’s still there. Same ferocity. Earbuds in. Typing like the keyboard owes her money.
She can’t hear the evacuation. She can’t hear anything.
I should tell her.
I can be here. Deal with it.
I look at her in the stands. I look at the exit.
She probably heard the guy, right? Besides, she’s an adult. She’ll figure it out.
I walk toward the exit.
Outside the arena, the doors to the parking lot are dark and blustery. Mallgoers are dwindling down, packing up. Shops closing. Moms zipping the jackets of disgruntled little hockey players too tough to admit they need it.
I chuckle, remembering my own objections to my mother’s help at that age.
Trust me, kid. Resistance is futile.
That’s when I spot Cole.
Not heading for the south lot with the rest of civilization. Swimming upstream—shoulders hunched, phone death-gripped in one hand, beelining toward the back corridor near the old arena offices.
Everyone else is heading toward the dwindling daylight. Cole Thompson is heading into the dark.
The image of him in the Staff Only office earlier today, his terrified expression, his less-than-friendly companions, stops me dead in my tracks. Where is he going?
The smart play is to keep walking. Let Cole swan-dive into whatever abyss he’s been excavating.
But I don’t do that. Because the defenseman in me sees a teammate skating toward open ice with nobody between him and the boards. Because that’s how I’m wired—even if said teammate stabbed me in the back.
“Cole.” I catch him at the junction near the old offices, voice corridor-low. “Hold on.”
He spins. For the split second before he recognizes me, his face tells me everything I need to know. He’s expecting someone else, and whoever they are, they’ve got him scared out of his skin. “Not now, Benson,” he hisses.
“I know you saw me earlier. In the office. Tell me what’s going on.”
His gaze skitters over the crowd. “Nothing’s going on. And you should mind your own business.”
He keeps walking. I step into his path. “If you’re in some sort of trouble—”
“Stop!” The word ricochets off cinderblock like a gunshot. His eyes are searchlights—bright, wild, sweeping for exits. “You don’t know anything about what’s happening to me, and you need to turn around and walk out of this building right now.”
“Let me help—”
“You can’t help me.” His voice cracks—not breaks, cracks, the sound of structural failure in a load-bearing wall.
“Nobody can. And if you don’t leave right now, you’ll make it worse for both of us.
” He’s backing up, one hand trailing the wall behind him.
“I’m dead serious, Beckett. For once in your life, you can give up the whole teammate-who-cares act. ”
“Cole, just let me—”
His hand finds what it’s been hunting for. A door handle. He wrenches it open.
I see a flash of interior—industrial shelving, a yellow mop bucket, the chemical right hook of Pine-Sol.
Then his palms slam into my chest.
The shove is desperate—not violent, not calculated, the raw physics of a man who’s burned through his vocabulary.
I stumble backward through the doorway. My bag snags the frame.
My heel finds the mop bucket. And it sets off a string of chaos—the bucket kamikazes into the shelf.
The shelf retaliates with a cascade of paper towels and cleaning bottles.
And by the time my back hits the far wall of what is now unmistakably a janitor’s closet the size of a phone booth—
The door bangs shut.
The lock clicks like a gavel, and Cole’s footsteps retreat, leaving me vacuum-sealed in a Pine-Sol sarcophagus with a mop handle spearing my spine.
What the—
“Cole!” I throw my shoulder into the door. Once, twice, hard enough to rattle every bottle on the shelf. What is this thing, industrial steel?
“COLE!” My voice detonates off cinderblock and hits me from four directions. “COLE, OPEN THE DOOR!”
No response. Figures.
I don’t know why I even tried to help that guy.
I slip my phone from my pocket. No Service.
Fantastic.
The lights stutter. Flicker. And then, with the quiet finality of a last breath, the power dies.
Even better.
I slide to the floor, prop my arms on my knees, and hang my head.
This is what I get for trying to be the nice guy. I don’t know why I went after Cole. I don’t know why I tried to talk to Everly.
The dark swirls ahead of me, the cold floor seeping through my pants. Reminds me of the night of the gala. And of course, the girl in the elevator is in my head. Everyone deserves a second chance. A real one. Not the kind where people say they forgive you but hold it over your head forever.
I tilt my head back. I can’t see the ceiling tiles, but I know they’re there—flimsy, removable, the gap above them wide enough for a man willing to crawl through dust and darkness.
Here goes nothing.
I grab the shelving unit. One foot on the bottom shelf. The metal groans under my 210 pounds. I push up a tile. Dust rains down. The darkness above is somehow darker than the darkness below.
I haul myself up.
Because somewhere out there, my teammate is going up against something that’s left him a shell of himself. Because even if he framed me for doing drugs and ruined my reputation—I’m still Blue Line Beckett.
It stops here.