27. April 3, Sunday
Chapter twenty-seven
Zoey
Zoey always thought the worst sound in a hockey arena was the hiss of the final horn after a loss.
She’d been wrong.
Tonight, it was the dull, awkward clap of twenty thousand people trying to pretend they weren’t afraid.
The applause still echoed faintly in the tunnel as she slipped through the maze of concrete and cinderblock, her water bottle hugged to her chest. The game was over—final score a blur—but no one was celebrating. Staff moved quietly, voices low. The usual postgame roar flattened into a murmur.
Christian on the ice, eyes open and not seeing anything, was burned behind her eyelids.
That awful stillness.
She’d done what she had to do. She helped get the sanitized version to media, watched Coach give it again at the podium, heard management repeat the same line in the hallway.
Stable.
The kind of word that sounded reassuring until you thought too hard about it.
Sam or maybe one of the trainers said Christian’s girlfriend was with him at the hospital and didn’t want the whole team descending on the waiting room like a funeral parade. No spectacle. No cameras. She’d call when there were updates.
So, nobody knew what to do with themselves.
She’d seen guys roaming between the locker room, lounge, and trainers’ area, damp-haired and half-dressed, not ready to go home and sit with their thoughts. Going out for beers felt obscene. Staying felt like haunting a crime scene.
Zoey kept moving, passing along what little news she had, instinct pulling her toward the one person who always absorbed everyone else’s weight.
She needed to see Ilya.
Needed his steadiness.
Needed proof he was upright and breathing and still here.
She checked the usual places—the small captains’ room, his stall, the gym. No Ilya.
She almost texted him, but Where are you? felt too thin for tonight.
Then she turned into one of the back service corridors near the parking garage and found him.
He was leaning against the wall at the end of the dim hallway, between a stack of folding chair carts and a steel door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
The fluorescents buzzed weakly overhead.
He’d half changed out of his gear into his pregame clothes—dress pants, undershirt, his button-up hanging open and crooked, sleeves shoved to his elbows.
His tie hung loose around his neck. His hair was damp and flattened in strange directions.
He looked hollowed out.
Not frantic. Not angry.
Just…empty.
One hand hung at his side. The other was clenched around a crumpled rectangle of paper.
Relief and worry hit her at once.
“There you are,” she said softly.
His head turned slowly, like it cost him. His gaze landed on her, warmed for half a second, then dimmed again.
“You should be home,” he said, voice rough. “Sleeping.”
“Yeah, well.” She lowered the bottle. “I don’t think sleep is on the table.”
He made a sound that might have been agreement.
“What’s the latest?”
“Stable,” he said flatly. “They are running tests. MRI. CT. All the letters.”
“That’s what I heard too.”
His jaw flexed. “They don’t want us there.”
Of course, they didn’t. It still felt cruel.
She stepped closer. Up close, she could see the strain around his mouth, the way his fingers had gone white with how tightly he was holding the paper.
“You okay?” she asked quietly.
He stared past her shoulder. “No.”
The honesty landed hard. “Do you want to talk about it?”
His mouth twisted. “Second intermission, Mitch tells me Christian is soft at the walls. Says he’s scared. Says I need to tell him to go in harder on loose pucks or the league will eat him.”
Zoey went still.
“I already knew something was wrong,” he continued, eyes fixed on the opposite wall. “Kid was off. Looking into the stands more than at the puck. Half a step behind everything. I was thinking I should ask if he was okay. Tell him to sit if he was not.”
He swallowed.
“Instead, I listened to Mitch. Took his words, made them mine, and told Christian, ‘Full commit. No fear.’” The last words came out clipped and bitter.
“And then,” he continued, finally looking at her, “on exactly that play, he goes in. Full commit. No fear. And now he is in a hospital, and his pregnant girlfriend is listening to doctors talk about swelling instead of baby kicks.”
His eyes were too bright.
“So, tell me,” he said softly, “how I do not put that on me.”
Zoey closed the distance between them. “Because you didn’t hit him,” she said. “You didn’t force him into that play. It was a clean hit and terrible luck.”
“Bad luck, yes. But what kind of captain sees his guy playing like a ghost and still tells him to go in harder without asking why?”
There it was. The old, punishing belief underneath everything. If something breaks, it’s because I failed first.
“You can’t catch everything,” she said gently.
“That is exactly what I am supposed to do.” Ilya’s voice was harsh.
“No,” she argued, soft but firm. “That’s what you taught yourself you had to do.”
His gaze cut to hers.
Maybe she could comfort him, or distract if that’s what he needed, in a more roundabout way…
She glanced down at the paper in his hand. “What’s that?”
He looked at it like he’d forgotten he was holding anything.
Slowly, he uncurled his fingers and smoothed it against his thigh. Marker and crayon bled through the creases in thick strokes of blue, red, and green.
Her chest squeezed.
Two lopsided figures skated across a square of white. One tall, with a blocky 33 on his back. One smaller, helmet askew, both of them smiling under the jagged letters:
ME + ILYA = TEAM
“Jayden,” she whispered.
“I guess he stayed up late finishing it,” Ilya said. “Babs gave it Ashley, to give to Ty, to give to me. Said he wanted me to know he ‘drawed us as a team.’”
His thumb brushed the edge of the paper.
“You’re his hero,” Zoey said softly. “That doesn’t happen by accident. All those kids adore you.”
He stared at the drawing like it was a blessing he didn’t know how to hold. “It’s terrifying,” he admitted.
Her brow furrowed.
“If he can attach like that to me,” Ilya said, voice roughening, “someone he barely gets to see, then what does that mean for a kid who has to watch this life up close?”
“Ilya—”
“What if Christian’s kid was old enough to watch tonight?” he asked, pushing off the wall. “What if some six-year-old sees his father get carried off the ice and has to live with that?”
Zoey’s throat tightened.
“How do men in this league do this?” he asked. “How do they have children and not think about this every second? How do you ask someone to build a family with you when one bad hit can blow a hole through all of it?”
“It would be terrifying,” she said carefully.
“It already is terrifying,” he snapped, then softened immediately. “For them. For Christian’s family. His kid did not choose this. None of these kids choose it. They do not say, yes, I want my father to get paid to be hit by trucks on knives.”
He dragged a hand through his hair.
“How am I supposed to ask someone to sign up for that?”
Zoey reached for his forearm. The muscle locked under her hand.
“Ilya,” she said quietly, “that risk exists whether we put a label on this or not. If I’m at home and you go down on the ice, it hurts me whether I have your last name or not. Every time you stay down even one second too long, my heart stops. That doesn’t wait for paperwork.”
He stared at her.
“You think only spouses or kids get scared?” she asked. “Because no. I already know what it means to care about someone who could get hurt like that. I’m still here.”
“There is a difference between that and asking a child to love me.”
“Yes, there is,” she relented. “But risky jobs exist everywhere. Firefighters, cops, soldiers, construction workers, linemen. People build families anyway. Not because the risk disappears, but because love doesn’t require a guarantee.”
His fingers tightened around the drawing.
“No one is asking you to promise you’ll never get hurt,” she went on. “Just to let the people who love you face that reality with you instead of shutting them out and calling it protection.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “I thought I could balance it all. You. Them. This.”
His hand brushed his chest, where the C would sit.
“Tonight showed me I can’t.”
Her pulse stumbled. “No. Tonight showed you hockey is brutal and random and cruel. That’s not the same thing.”
“It is for me.”
He looked wrecked.
Not distant. Not cold.
Wrecked.
“I can’t do that to you,” he choked out.
“You’re not doing it to me,” she insisted, fingers tightening around his wrist. “You’re doing it with me. There’s a difference.”
He shook his head. “No. Christian is in the hospital. Kira hasn’t heard my voice in weeks. Jason looks like someone keyed his car. Fido is still missing. And I am sneaking around with you in offices and closets, and lying to Mitch, when I should be fixing all of it.”
“You are not a one-man repair crew. You’re a human being. You’re allowed…” She swallowed, pulse thudding. “You’re allowed to have something for yourself. To have me.”
“For me, wanting this is selfish.”
Her heart kicked hard against her ribs. “Wanting love does not make you selfish.”
His expression went raw. “If loving you makes me miss something that could break them, then yes, it does.”
The words hit like shrapnel. “I thought…” Her voice failed. She tried again. “I thought this was becoming something real.”
“It is real,” he said immediately, which somehow hurt more.
His hand came up to cup her cheek. His thumb brushed once over her skin, reverent and desperate.
“You are not a fling. You are not something I let myself borrow.”
“Then what am I?” she whispered. “Because this feels a lot like you deciding your fear gets to speak for both of us.”
His jaw clenched. Something worked behind his eyes. He looked away briefly.
“They’re moving your file,” he said quietly. “For Jayden?”
She went still. “How do you know that?”