Chapter 3
COLE
Coach Callahan had a gift for ruining my morning.
I was two sips into my coffee, still half asleep, sitting in the locker room scrolling through my phone when he walked in with his clipboard and that look on his face. The look that said someone was about to be unhappy and he didn't particularly care who.
"Briggs. Volkov. My office. Now."
Jonah shot me a look that very clearly communicated good luck with that, and I set my coffee down and followed Coach through the corridor with Volkov a few steps behind me. I could feel him back there. The man had a gravitational pull, like a small angry planet.
Coach's office was a windowless box with a whiteboard, a desk buried under paper, and a framed photo of his daughter that was the only evidence Mike Callahan had ever experienced a human emotion. He sat down and looked at us the way you'd look at two dogs who'd gotten into the trash.
"I'm going to keep this simple," he said.
"I don't care if you like each other. I don't care if you hate each other.
I don't care if one of you personally insulted the other's mother.
What I care about is that I have two of the most talented players on this roster and they can't be on the ice together without it turning into a cage match. "
"Coach, the hit was—"
"I watched the hit, Briggs. It was clean.
Move on." He shifted his eyes to Volkov, who stood with his hands behind his back like a soldier getting a briefing.
"Volkov. You're the best defenseman I've had in twenty years of coaching.
Briggs is the best offensive talent on this team.
If I can get you two working as a unit, we're a playoff team.
If I can't, we're fighting for a wild card and I'm in a bad mood for six months. Nobody wants me in a bad mood."
This was true. Callahan in a bad mood was like a thunderstorm with a whistle.
"Starting today, you're paired. Every drill. Every scrimmage. Every bag skate. You're going to learn each other's games until you can play together in your sleep. Questions?"
I had several. Like, how am I supposed to focus on hockey when the guy I'm paired with tried to separate my spine from my body four days ago? And, does he ever blink, or is that a Russian thing? And, why does he smell like pine trees and cold air in a building with central heating?
I did not ask any of these questions.
"No questions, Coach."
Volkov said nothing, which I was starting to understand was his version of agreement.
"Good. Get on the ice."
Practice was a warzone.
Callahan wasn't kidding about pairing us on everything.
Passing drills, breakout patterns, two-on-two battles, puck retrieval.
Everywhere I went, Volkov was there. And the thing about being forced to work with someone you're trying to hate is that it gets really hard to maintain the hatred when you see them up close.
Mikhail Volkov was, and I cannot stress this enough, unfairly good at hockey.
I knew he was good. Everyone knew he was good.
You don't get drafted out of the KHL without being good.
But there's a difference between watching a guy on film and being three feet away from him while he pivots on one edge and transitions from backward to forward skating so smoothly that it looks like the laws of physics filed a special exemption for his ankles.
His first step was explosive. His gap control was surgical. He read plays before they developed, shifting his positioning based on things I couldn't even see, and every time I thought I'd found a lane past him, he was already there. Waiting. With that blank expression that made me want to scream.
We did a one-on-one drill where I had the puck and he had to prevent me from getting a shot on net.
First attempt, I tried to go wide. He sealed the boards and stripped the puck off my stick so cleanly I didn't even feel it happen.
Second attempt, I cut inside. He matched me stride for stride and angled me into a dead zone where I had no play.
Third attempt, I pulled up and tried a move I'd been working on all summer, a fake drop to the backhand followed by a quick release.
He bit on the fake. I got the shot off. It went wide, but I'd beaten him, and the little spark of satisfaction I felt was completely disproportionate to the moment.
"Lucky," he said. First word he'd spoken to me all practice.
"Skill," I said.
"Luck. You telegraphed the fake. I chose to let you think it worked."
"You chose to let me beat you?"
"I chose to see if you would shoot or pass. Now I know."
I stared at him. He stared back. His eyes were grey with these tiny flecks of something lighter in them, which was a detail I should not have been cataloging.
"That's..." I started, and then stopped because what I wanted to say was that's actually brilliant, and admitting that felt like losing. "That's annoying."
"Yes," he said. "I have been told."
We went back to the drill. And I started to notice something that bugged me more than the rivalry, more than the hit, more than any of it.
We were good together. Not just good. We were starting to read each other.
By the end of the session, I knew where Volkov was going to be without looking.
I could feel his positioning the way you feel a current in water, and when I adjusted my routes to account for his coverage, the whole system clicked into a gear that hadn't existed before.
Coach noticed. I could see him on the bench with his arms crossed, watching us with the expression of a man who'd just discovered gold in his backyard and was trying not to get excited about it.
After practice, I was in the weight room doing curls and trying very hard to think about my biceps instead of Volkov's skating when the man himself walked in. He went to the squat rack on the far side of the room and started loading plates without a word.
We lifted in silence for ten minutes. It was the most aggressively quiet ten minutes of my life.
I broke first. Of course I broke first.
"So are you always this chatty, or is it just me that gets the silent treatment?"
He racked his bar and looked at me. "I talk when I have something to say."
"And when is that? Annually? On a solstice?"
Something happened at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. A micro-movement. The ghost of an expression that died before it could fully form. "I spoke to Gerald this morning about the weather. It was a very productive conversation."
I blinked. "Did you just make a joke?"
"I have been known to, on occasion."
"Was that a joke, Volkov?"
The micro-movement again. Slightly more visible this time. "My humor is an acquired taste."
"Like vodka."
"Exactly like vodka." He picked up his water bottle. "You have to suffer through the first sip. Then it becomes tolerable."
"Tolerable isn't exactly a selling point."
"I am Russian. We do not sell. We endure."
I laughed. I didn't mean to. It came out sudden and loud, bouncing off the weight room walls, and Volkov looked at me like the sound had physically startled him. Like he hadn't expected to be the cause of laughter and didn't quite know what to do about it.
"You're weird, Volkov."
"Yes."
"That wasn't a compliment."
"I know."
I finished my set and racked the weights. He was still standing there with his water bottle, watching me with that quiet, unreadable focus.
"Same time tomorrow?" I said, which came out sounding like I was asking him on a date, so I quickly added, "For the paired drills. Since Coach is making us."
"I will be here at five-thirty."
"In the morning?"
"When else?"
"Volkov, normal humans don't train at five-thirty in the morning."
"Then I will have the ice to myself until you arrive at a normal human hour."
I grabbed my towel and headed for the door. "Goodnight, Volkov."
"It is two in the afternoon."
"Exactly. For you, this is basically nighttime."
I heard it as I was walking out. A small sound, barely there. It could have been anything. A cough. A clearing of the throat. The weight room settling.
But I'm pretty sure Mikhail Volkov laughed.
I thought about that sound for the rest of the day. On the drive home, making dinner, watching film on my laptop in bed. That tiny, almost invisible crack in the glacier.
I did not think about his eyes. I did not think about how standing next to him on the ice felt like plugging into an electrical current.
I drove home and made dinner and watched film and went to bed, and if my brain replayed the weight room conversation before I fell asleep, that was involuntary and did not count.
I definitely did not think about any of that.
I was thinking about hockey. Breakout patterns. Neutral zone transitions. Very professional, very focused hockey thoughts.
My phone buzzed. A text from Jonah.
How was couples therapy with Volkov?
I typed back: He made a joke.
Three dots. Then: Evacuate the building. The apocalypse has begun.
I laughed and put my phone on the charger and turned off the lights.
In the dark, alone, with no one to perform for, I let myself think one honest thought.
His almost-smile was the best thing I'd seen all week.
Then I rolled over and went to sleep, because some thoughts are better left in the dark where they can't follow you into the morning.