Chapter 22 - Aleksey
Aweek ago I was skating for scouts, but today I bled onto the dirty floor of a garage.
When I stepped through the door ten minutes later, the rattle of an air compressor swallowed the street noise. Exhaust fumes hung in the air as I weaved past stacks of tires, heading toward the punch clock where the garage manager waited by a lifted Chevy.
Rick dropped his oil-soaked rag the second he saw me. His gaze tracked the bloody cut on my lip and the swelling along my jaw.
“You’re late,” Rick stated. “And you look like a train hit you.”
“Traffic,” I lied.
Rick stepped into my path. “I do not care about traffic, Zotov. Your cousin stuck his neck out to get you this job. You better not go bringing trouble into my shop.”
“I will not.”
He huffed, but didn’t press any further. “Get under the Chevy,” he ordered, pointing at the lift. “The transmission needs work.”
With a nod, I shifted over onto a creeper board, rolled under the chassis, and grabbed a wrench. Reaching for the overhead bolts pulled at my ribs. The pain was a reminder of my own stupidity.
My cousin had dragged me to a bar last night. But when a guy shoved me near the pool tables, the stress of the past few days just snapped.
Usually, I try to walk away from trash talk. However, last night I swung first.
Taking him down to the floor felt good. Every punch I swung at the guy blocked out the reality of leaving Karter behind. The fight only ended when bouncers hauled us apart and tossed us both out onto the sidewalk.
Sneaking back into my mom’s apartment afterward required total silence. Mama worked too many hours to wake up and see her son acting like a criminal. Especially when my father had ended up in a cell for doing exactly what I did.
My phone vibrated against the concrete next to my head.
A text from Perez lit up the screen: Ice House isn’t the same without you. Sorry, man.
That message sat right below three missed calls and a string of texts from Karter. Staring at his name made the space under the car feel smaller. Answering him would be easy, but I forced my hand away and shoved the device face down.
He had a future on the team. I just needed to stay out of it.
Clocking out from work ten hours later, I dragged myself back to our apartment and unlocked the door. Mama was already waiting in the kitchen. She took one look at my face and bloody hands, pointed at a chair before I could even speak, and I sat down without a word.
The smell of rubbing alcohol quickly replaced the auto grease stench that seemed to follow me everywhere of late. Sitting across from me at the kitchen table, Mama soaked a cotton ball, then scrubbed the dirt and blood from my reopened knuckles with punishing force.
“What is wrong with you, Lekha?” Mama scolded.
“I am fine,” I muttered, pulling my hand back.
She yanked it right back toward her. “Fighting in alleys. Bozhe, why do you do this to yourself?”
“It was a bar,” I corrected her. “Not an alley.”
Her grip tightened on my fingers. “Do you think that makes it better? Your cousin told me everything.”
“He is a snitch.”
“He is worried about you,” she snapped. She pressed the alcohol into my split skin until I winced. “I am worried about you. You call me in the middle of the night and tell me you are throwing away your degree to protect someone. And now you come home and act like you have nothing left?”
I let out a long breath. My shoulders lifted in a tired shrug. “I had to leave, Mama. There was no other way.”
She dropped the cotton ball and looked up at my bruised face. “You still haven’t told me his name. Not once since you’ve been back.”
The linoleum floor was chipped near the table leg. I stared at that spot for a long time.
Seven days of dodging her questions. Seven days of pretending I had nothing to say. The exhaustion of it sank deep into my skin, heavier than the garage grease.
“His name,” I said. The words scraped out before I could stop them. “Karter. His name is Karter.”
Mama drew a slow breath through her nose. She did not speak, but her thumb stopped moving against the cotton ball and her chin tipped upward, waiting.
“He’s the legacy kid I mentioned on the phone before,” I continued. Slumping back in the chair, I dragged my uninjured hand down my face. “A teammate found out about us and wanted my ice time. So he filed a fake complaint about me, claiming I was harassing Karter.”
The word landed in the quiet kitchen and sat there.
Her brow furrowed, deep lines carving across her forehead. “And this Karter? What did he do?”
“He wanted to fight it. The athletic director. The whole administration.”
“But he did not.”
The blood on my knuckles had dried to a dull rust color.
“I wouldn’t let him. His family would have cut him off.
Besides, their names are on half the buildings on campus.
The scouts already pulled my draft spot over the rumors, so I quit.
Signed the form. Took the fall.” A bitter taste coated my tongue.
“The investigation dies with me gone. He stays clean.”
Silence stretched across the kitchen. Then her shoulders dropped.
Mama did not yell. And she did not call me an idiot for flushing four years of sacrifice down the drain, all to leave with nothing but a resignation letter.
She just sat there, holding my hand.
The kitchen clock ticked through the silence. Outside, a car rumbled past the apartment, the headlights sweeping across the wall before fading. Still, she did not look away from my face.
Her thumb traced the edge of my torn knuckle. Once. Twice. Then her grip tightened, the pads of her fingers pressing into my palm as if she were trying to anchor me to the chair.
When I finally lifted my head, her eyes had gone glassy. Her chin tipped upward, jaw set, and she exhaled a slow, shaky breath through her nose. The same breath she used to take before telling me we would figure it out, back when I was a kid and the heat got shut off or the rent came up short.
She did not say a word. She did not have to.
Telling Mama the truth at the kitchen table loosened something in my chest. Not enough to fix anything, but enough to get a few hours of sleep that night.
The next morning, the garage heat hit me like a wall. By noon I was back under a sedan, grease caked under my nails, my shirt soaked through.
Rick let me take my break in the alley. So, I dragged an empty, upturned bucket to the wall and sat down hard, scrubbing my fingers with a paper towel that disintegrated before it did any real work.
The metal door scraped open behind me.
“Ten minutes, Zotov.”
“I know.”
“Break’s over. Get under the lift.”
The door slammed. Felt about right. Tossing the ruined paper towel toward the dumpster, I dug my phone out of my pocket.
Sunlight washed out the screen. Squinting against the glare, I opened the sports app before I could talk myself out of it.
Just checking scores. That’s all. If Karter was back on the ice, if his name showed up in the recap and he looked fine, then I would know. Leaving was the right call. My absence had actually protected him.
A notification popped up immediately: Ridge Cross Secures Spot in Cold Quartet. Karter Johnston Scores Game-Winning Goal.
Clicking the link loaded a post-game photo. The guys from the team crowded the frame in a mess of helmets and gloves, celebrating the playoff spot.
Zooming past Perez and Elliot, my thumb stopped on Karter. Anyone else would just see a player posing for the camera. But I saw differently.
He kept his weight shifted away from the teammate leaning on his shoulder. His eyes stared straight ahead, completely blank.
Karter wasn’t celebrating; he was just enduring it.
The stench of the dumpster hit the back of my throat.
Dropping my arm to my side, I stared at the cracked asphalt between my sneakers.
The screen had shown me a team photo and a playoff spot.
Everything Karter was supposed to keep. But that flat, empty stare in the middle of a celebration told me the truth.
Walking away had not protected him from a damn thing.
Shoving my phone into my pocket, I walked back inside.
The rest of the afternoon blurred together. I spent the final hours of my shift so distracted that I dropped a wrench directly on my thumb, splitting my nail. Still, I simply wrapped it in shop tape and kept working, completely ignoring the sting.
That same numbness followed me home and kept me awake long past midnight. Tossing and turning on my bed did no good. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Karter staring blankly into that camera.
Giving up on sleep, I pushed the living room window up and climbed outside. Wind whipped across the fire escape as I sat down on the metal grate and gripped the railing, pressing my bare hands against the iron.
Half an hour later, the window scraped open. Mama climbed out onto the grate, her sweater wrenched tight across her chest. She did not look at the streetlights or the empty road. Instead, her gaze pinned me to the railing.
“It is two in the morning.”
“I am not tired.”
“You are lying.” The grate groaned as she sat down beside me. A beat of silence, then she tapped my taped thumb. “Is it your hands?”
“My hands are fine.”
“Then you are awake because of why you hurt them.” She watched me closely, her mouth pressed flat. “You walked into that bar wanting a fight.”
I stared down at the street below. “Some guy ran his mouth. I finished it.”
“That is not finishing anything. Letting a stranger crack your lip open is just you trying to drown out thinking about Karter.”
The iron railing bit into my palms. “I got out of his way. That was the right call.”
“You did what was easy.”
A turned to her. “Easy. I gave up my scholarship. I left the only person on that team who actually gave a shit about me. Tell me which part of that was easy.”
Her voice dropped. “You gave up everything to protect him. That is love.”