Chapter 21 - Karter #3
There it was. Not a question about whether I was okay. Not five seconds to breathe. Straight into damage control, same as Dad, same as always.
“Don’t start with me.” I shoved his hand off and threw my elbow pads into the bottom of my bag.
“I am starting with you.” He kicked my duffel bag out of the way and stepped in. “What was that garbage out there? You just gift-wrapped exactly what Trenton wanted.”
“I don’t care!” I wrenched my chest protector over my head and hurled it onto the bench. “I don’t care about the optics, El. I don’t care about the legacy. Dad told me to never call him back, and Trenton skates away clean.”
“Keep your voice down.” Elliot’s eyes cut toward the double doors, his eyebrows rising high on his face.
“No,” I crammed the rest of my gear into the bag and ripped the zipper shut. “Aleksey is gone. He looked me in the face and said I was a distraction, grabbed his bag, and walked.”
Elliot scoffed, a short, harsh exhale. He shook his head, his mouth twisting into something halfway between disgust and disbelief. “And you actually bought that?”
My hands froze on the canvas strap. “What?”
“He lied to you, Karter.” Elliot’s voice dropped, the hard edge crumbling into something quieter. “This wasn’t about saving himself. He walked away so Hastings wouldn’t go after you next.”
A cold rush swept through my limbs. I gripped the locker behind me.
I’d known the truth the second Elliot had scoffed the words, ‘you actually bought that?’, but hearing it laid out in plain words still knocked the air from my lungs.
Aleksey had stood in my doorway, face blank, voice steady, and fed me a lie I’d swallowed whole.
Not to save himself. To bury the fallout before it touched me.
“I talked to him before he left,” Elliot said. “He was already set on stepping down. Told me you’d walk away clean.”
“But he can’t do that.” My words sounded as helpless as I felt. “He needs that scholarship.”
“And yet he did it, anyway.”
Stepping back, Elliot ran a tired hand over his face.
His shoulders slumped under his practice jersey, all the energy from earlier draining out of him.
He had barely looked me in the eye for days since I told him the truth about Aleksey and me, back in the administrative hallway, but now, his blue-gray stare held mine.
“That asshole cared enough about you to give up this team,” Elliot said. “So, do not waste that.”
I swallowed hard, staring back at my older brother. Ever since I dropped the truth on him outside the administrative offices, Elliot had been dodging me and treating this whole situation like a toxic PR disaster.
But standing here right now, seeing the small kernel of respect on his face, I realized he understood what Aleksey meant to me.
My hands shook as I grabbed the canvas strap of my hockey bag. I needed to get out of this sterile athletic building. Slinging the strap over my shoulder, I walked past Elliot without another word.
The only thing I wanted to do was go back to the house and sit in Aleksey’s empty room.
I pushed through the front door of the Ice House. With the rest of the team still running Corby’s drills back at the arena, the downstairs living room sat deserted. And not for the first time, I felt relief at the fact that there was nobody to dodge in the house.
So, I dragged my hockey bag past the couches, the canvas scraping against the floorboards, and climbed the stairs to the attic. Then I pushed open the door to Aleksey’s room.
Honestly, I didn’t know what I was expecting. Maybe some foolish, desperate hope that I would open the door and find him sitting there, realizing he couldn’t bring himself to leave. But the space was just as desolate as it had been when I watched him walk out last night.
Aleksey hadn’t come back. There was nothing left but the bare mattress, the pulled blinds blocking out the afternoon sun, and a deafening silence.
Shutting the door, I let my hockey bag drop to the floorboards. The faint smell of his cheap bar soap still hung in the air as I walked over and sat down on the edge of the mattress.
Leaning forward, I rested my elbows on my knees and pressed the heels of my hands hard into my eyes.
I sat there in the dark and let the quiet settle around me.
And for once, I didn’t try to fill it. Didn’t replay the argument or hunt for the right combination of words that would have made Aleksey stay.
Every word I’d thrown at him in this room had landed exactly where it was aimed.
And he still walked out. Not because he didn’t believe me, but because believing me meant staying, and staying meant letting the wreckage hit us both.
So he’d chosen the damage he could control.
The one where I got to keep my name, my team, my future.
The one where he bore the cost alone.
Feeling exhausted, I sighed as I pushed off the mattress, crossed the dark room, and walked back into the hallway without looking back. The door clicked shut behind me, and Aleksey’s room sat empty again, waiting for whoever moved in next.