25 - Aiden
Aiden
The locker room was thick with the smell of sweat, tape, and the usual pre-game chaos, but it all felt different tonight.
Every noise was somehow sharper, as though it was pressing against my skull.
I wanted to breathe, to focus, to be the player I was before all this bullshit, but my mind kept circling back to pressers, appearances, photo shoots, the constant scrutiny.
Every move I made, every word I spoke, felt like it had a weight I wasn’t ready to carry.
I found Grayson by his bag, tightening his gloves with the calm that only a captain could wear. I leaned against the lockers, voice low. “I don’t know if I can do this. The game’s fine, I can handle the ice. But everything else… it’s too much.”
He didn’t look up at first, just tightened the last strap on his shin guard, slow and methodical. Then he did, finally, eyes catching mine.
“You think too much,” he said, almost too casually. “The game doesn’t care about the cameras. The people yelling at you on the internet don’t matter. You play. That’s all.”
I tried to nod my understanding, but it felt like a lie. My brain refused to quiet down.
We stood together a few minutes longer, listening to the buzz of the crowd creeping into the arena, the first roar filtering through the walls. Two-nothing in the series. Surge were supposed to have momentum, supposed to feel in control. I should have felt that.
Instead, I was drowning in everything I’d ever wanted, realizing for the first time that what I wanted came with an avalanche I wasn’t prepared for. Every dream had a price, and the bills were coming due faster than I’d expected.
We laced up, and started walking toward the tunnel. Grayson clapped a hand on my shoulder, an anchor I didn’t really feel. “Focus on the ice, man. The rest will figure itself out.”
I nodded, but I knew I wouldn’t. Not yet. Not with every eye, every camera, every expectation pressed against me the way it was now. The weight of it all was suffocating. And yet, somehow, I had to play.
We hit the tunnel. Lights flickered over the boards. The crowd’s roar hit, shaking the floor. I took a breath. Tried to block out the noise. Tried to be just a player. But this wasn’t just hockey anymore. This was everything, all at once, and I didn’t know if I could give them what they wanted.
The arena was a furnace of noise, LA’s fans jeering, chanting, stamping—everything a home crowd could throw at a visiting team.
I skated onto the ice with that familiar crackle in my veins, but it felt more like static in my brain, disorienting instead of exciting.
I couldn’t shake it, like Grayson had told me to. Everything else kept gnawing at me.
We won the faceoff, and for a moment, the Surge looked sharp.
Landon streaked down the left wing, Grayson threading a pass through him, and I moved to catch it in the slot.
Perfect set-up. A clean shot opportunity.
But my stick felt heavy, and my timing was off by milliseconds. Enough for Landon to miss the rebound.
The puck slid harmlessly along the boards, and the LA crowd roared their approval. My heart sank.
Minutes later, another chance presented itself.
I passed, circling, trying to force play in the thick of LA’s defensive wall.
Grayson was wide open, and I made the pass…
too late. It missed him completely. Landon had to backtrack, but tripped up and missed the shot, then suddenly we were scrambling to defend.
LA capitalized, one of their wingers sneaking in for a neat goal past Hunter. 1-0.
No amount of talking myself down helped. Every time the puck came near, my mind short-circuited: What if Sage saw this? What if the press dug into this game the way they had into the Purple Rose photos? Every minute I wasn’t perfect was being measured somewhere, by someone.
We managed to equalize mid-first. Landon tipped in a pass I barely delivered, but it felt hollow.
We tied it 1-1, and I thought maybe I could pull it together.
Then another play went sideways. A pass I overcommitted on, a missed check, and LA streaked past us again.
2-1. The jeers from the fans who’d followed us there were a physical wall against my chest, every punch of sound knocking my confidence lower.
I tried to force the game harder, skating faster, talking louder, positioning better. But my heart wasn’t in it. I stayed a step behind, my instincts dulled by the pressure of it all. Grayson called for a line change, and Coach reeled me in.
“Shawn, get in there. Aiden, sit!”
My stomach dropped as I sank onto the bench, Shawn sliding into the line like a fresh shot of adrenaline.
Like magic, the team found the rhythm that had been eluding them all night.
The puck moved crisply, passes connected, and a goal actually went in.
It looked so easy when I wasn’t there fucking it all up.
When they had someone who wasn’t dragging them down with a thousand and one distractions raging in him.
Every scream from the crowd, every glare from my teammates, every shout from Coach—Get it together!—felt like a hammer. I was a liability. My worst fear wasn’t abstract anymore. I was going to be replaced. And tonight, I felt it, in every fiber of my body.
I stayed planted at the end of the bench while the second rolled on, stick wedged between my palms, tape already peeling where I’d been grinding it.
The play kept snapping past me in bursts.
Breakout up the boards, chipped at the line, turned back the other way before anyone could set.
Landon jumped over the boards on the next change, took a pass in stride, drove wide and sent it across the slot.
It got tipped just enough to miss. The crowd surged, then dropped.
I tracked it all from five feet away, waiting for a tap on my shoulder that never came.
Midway through the period, we lost our gap for half a shift and it cost us.
A bad clear died at the hash marks, their winger scooped it up and fed the point.
Shot through traffic, rebound kicked out hard to the far side.
No one got there in time. 3–2. The red light snapped on and I stared at it longer than I should’ve.
Coach didn’t look down the bench. He just leaned in on the next line change and sent another unit out.
I tightened my grip on the stick and kept my eyes on the ice.
Third period opened fast. We pushed, finally.
Tucker won a draw clean, D-to-D, quick shot from the top that forced a glove save.
We kept them hemmed in for a stretch, cycling low, bodies to the net, sticks banging for a pass that never quite found its mark.
I was up on the boards once, ready to go, but the whistle came late and Coach sent the same line back out.
Their goalie froze a rebound, and when play flipped, it flipped hard.
Turnover at our blue line, odd-man rush the other way.
Cross-ice, one touch, back of the net. 4–2.
I sat back down before the crowd finished reacting, the game still moving without me.
The final minutes bled out without a dent.
We pushed, or tried to, but every entry got stood up at the line or chipped back out before it could turn into anything real.
The clock kept sliding, red numbers dropping one by one, and I watched it all from the same strip of bench I’d worn into place.
When the horn finally cut through the arena, it didn’t feel loud. Just final.
Gloves tapped the boards as the guys came off.
Heads down, a few sticks slammed once against the rubber before getting tucked under arms. No one said much.
Tucker peeled his helmet off as he passed, jaw tight.
Landon skated straight through to the tunnel without looking up.
Coach stepped aside to let them file past, already talking to one of the assistants. No one stopped. No one glanced my way.
We’d lost, and it was all my fault.
The locker room was dead silent after the game, the team dragging themselves inside, heads down. Away games were sometimes brutal, but this loss was on me. My hands itched, my legs felt like lead, and my chest burned from guilt and shame.
And then, from the shadow near the lockers, Mason appeared. Still hobbling on his crutches, but there was nothing injured about the fury in his eyes. He was on me before I could react, shoving me so hard I went skidding across the locker room floor.