Chapter 3
Chapter three
Hog
One word was waiting for me when I pushed through the locker room door.
"Domesticated."
Jake said it, rolling it around in his mouth while he grinned at his phone. The photo from the Chronicle glowed on his screen—Rhett and me, midnight kiss, confetti falling.
I dropped my gear bag. The thud echoed off the cinder block walls.
"That's the word you're going with?" I yanked my practice jersey over my head, fabric catching on my beard. "Domesticated?"
"It fits." Jake held up his phone so the entire team could see. "Look at you. All soft and claimed. Next thing, you'll be scheduling date nights and sharing mimosas at Sunday brunch."
Pickle appeared from around a corner, stick in one hand and a protein bar in the other. "What's domesticated mean?"
"It means flannel guy collared Hog," Jake explained, delighted with himself. "House-trained. Tamed. Soon he'll stop fighting and start doing couples' yoga."
The locker room erupted—whistles, someone banging equipment, the usual chaos. The word stuck to my ribs like tape residue.
Domesticated.
I'd heard versions of it before. Different words, same meaning: You're too much of one thing. Not enough of another. Pick a lane. Be simpler.
"His name's Rhett," I said, grabbing my skates. I moved through the routine—unlace, check blades, retape the ankles where the leather had started to split. Familiar motions that didn't require thinking. "And I'm meeting him in—" I checked the clock on the wall. "—five hours."
The locker room went silent.
"FIVE HOURS?" Pickle's voice cracked. "Today? You're meeting him TODAY?"
"Why didn't you lead with that?" Jake grabbed my shoulders. "That's the headline, Hog! That's the story!"
Evan looked up from his notebook, one eyebrow raised. "Five hours means 2 PM. That's optimal for a first proper date—post-lunch, pre-dinner, natural exit point if things go poorly."
"Thank you for the analysis, Spreadsheet," I muttered.
Five hours. Three hundred minutes. I'd be sitting across from Rhett at Common Thread while half of Thunder Bay watched through the windows and tried to figure out what the contractor and the enforcer could have in common.
"What are you gonna wear?" Pickle had that forward-lean thing going, weight on his toes, like a sprinter waiting for the gun. "Do you have a plan? Did you practice what to talk about?"
"I'm wearing clothes. And no, I didn't practice—"
"You should practice! What if you get nervous and forget how to talk? What if—"
"Kid." I pointed at him. "Breathe."
Jake grinned like he'd won the lottery. "Okay, new plan. We get through practice fast, Hog showers—actually showers, not that thing you do where you rinse off for thirty seconds—and then we help him pick an outfit."
"I don't need help picking an outfit—"
"You wore a Storm hoodie to the grocery store yesterday," Evan observed. "You absolutely need help."
"It was laundry day!"
"It's always laundry day with you," Jake said. "That's not the point. The point is you've got five hours not to spiral, and we're going to make sure you don't."
Coach Rusk's voice cracked through the noise. "Gentlemen, are you planning to practice today, or should I forfeit the season now and save us all some time?"
Everyone scrambled. Jake grabbed his helmet. Pickle dropped his protein bar.
Coach caught my eye as I stood, and he jerked his chin toward the ice. "Hawkins. You're up first in corners. And if you play as sloppily as you did last week, we're having words."
Not When's the big date? Not Try not to embarrass yourself. Just hockey. It was a relief.
I followed the guys toward the tunnel, but Jake fell back to match my pace.
"You're overthinking," he said. The chirp had dropped from his voice. "I can see your brain melting through your skull."
"I've got five hours. Four. That's not enough time to—"
"To what? Reinvent yourself? You're not supposed to reinvent yourself. You're supposed to show up."
"But what if he only wants half? The parts that fit. The highlight reel."
Jake grabbed my arm, stopping me dead. "Listen to me. You're the guy who brings banana bread to team breakfast and breaks someone's face if they touch Pickle. You're both. You've always been both. And anyone who asks you to pick doesn't deserve either version."
The words had the power of a check against the boards.
"But what if—"
"No." Jake shook his head. "If Rhett walked across that bar to kiss you in front of everyone, he wasn't confused about what he was getting. He knew. And if he didn't—" His grin came back, sharp and protective. "I'll write him a strongly worded sonnet, and then maybe set it on fire."
Coach's whistle shrieked from the ice. "Riley! Hawkins! Move it!"
Jake shoved me toward the tunnel. "Go hit something. You've got hours to kill. Might as well burn some energy."
The cold bit my face as I stepped onto fresh ice, white and perfect except for the scratches from the Zamboni's last pass. The overhead lights buzzed and flickered. Two were out completely, leaving dark patches near the away team bench.
Home. This place was home, even when the heating was busted, the showers barely worked, and half the ceiling tiles were loose.
Coach stood at center ice, arms crossed, whistle hanging from his neck. "Pair up. Passing drills. And if anyone's skating lazy because they spent New Year's drinking instead of sleeping, you'll be running suicides until February."
Someone snickered.
Jake skated over. "Four hours and forty-five minutes. Clock's ticking, Cinderella."
He fired a pass that I barely caught. "You gonna make it through practice without keeling over from anxiety?"
"I'm fine."
"Your stick's shaking."
I looked down. He was right. My hands were trembling just enough to make the tape shimmer under the fluorescent lights.
"That's from the cold."
"Sure it is."
We ran through basic patterns—nothing complicated, finding rhythm after the break. My body moved on autopilot: receive, control, pass. The puck felt right on my tape, solid and predictable.
I kept checking the clock.
"You looked at the scoreboard four times in the last drill," Evan observed, gliding past. "That's twice your normal rate."
"I'm aware of the time."
"You're hyperaware. There's a difference." He stopped, studying me. "Are you going to make it to 2 PM, or should I tell Coach you have food poisoning?"
"I'm not faking food poisoning."
"It's an option."
We moved into contact drills, and I threw myself into every board battle. MacLaren bounced off the glass with a glare. Desrosiers ate a hard shoulder—sticky, not stupid.
"Fuck, Hog!" MacLaren picked himself up. "It's just practice!"
Coach yelled, "Hawkins! Dial it back or sit!"
I raised a glove in acknowledgment, skating back to the line. My shoulder ached. Good. Physical pain was simple. Manageable. Didn't require figuring out what to say when Rhett asked why I was nervous or what I did besides hockey.
10:38. Practice was barely half over.
"Corners drill!" Coach barked. "Hawkins, Desrosiers—you're up first!"
We lined up across from each other, both of us bent low, sticks ready. Coach held the puck like a grenade with the pin already pulled.
He dropped it.
We crashed together—shoulders, sticks, the crunch of skates fighting for position. Desrosiers got an elbow into my ribs. I drove my shoulder under his and shoved him into the boards hard enough that the impact echoed through the Barn.
I swept the puck free.
"Good! Again!" We reset. Crashed again.
This time, Desrosiers won, pinning me against the glass. As he swept the puck away, he muttered, "You're playing scared."
I straightened, breath coming hard. "What?"
"Scared." He circled back for the next rep, not looking at me. "You hit like you're trying to prove something instead of just hitting. Different energy."
Coach's whistle blew before I could respond.
We ran the drill four more times. By the sixth rep, my lungs burned, and Desrosiers was breathing hard, but his words stuck to my ribs harder than any check. The clock read 12:02.
Two hours left.
It ticked away like a countdown, each minute bringing me closer to sitting across from Rhett and trying to figure out how to be both versions of myself without performing either one.
"Water break!" Coach called.
I skated to the bench and grabbed my bottle, but my hands were shaking again when I lifted it to my mouth. Water hit my jersey as much as my face.
"Smooth," Jake said, appearing beside me. "Very attractive. Really selling the 'I've got my shit together' vibe."
"A few nerves. That's all."
"You're a disaster." He bumped my shoulder. "But here's the thing—he already knows you're a disaster. He kissed you anyway. At midnight. In front of everyone. That's not a guy who's expecting perfect."
Evan skated up to my other side. "I think he likes you. The real you. Not the edited version."
"You don't know that."
"No," Evan agreed. "But I saw the photo. And people don't look at someone like that if they're planning to ask them to be less."
I thought about the message I'd received early in the morning:
Rhett: Been thinking about you.
I hadn't responded yet. Hadn't known what to say that didn't sound desperate or terrified.
"You're gonna check your phone the second practice ends," Evan said.
"I am not."
Coach barked. "Back on the ice! Conditioning drills! Let's see who had too much eggnog over the holidays!"
We lined up for suicide sprints—my favorite form of torture. Coach raised his whistle, and I pushed off, hitting the first line at full speed.
Blue line. Back. Red line. Back. Far blue line. Back. All the way to the boards and return.
By the third set, Pickle gasped for breath. By the fifth, half the team bent over at the bench.
A dull pinch bloomed under my left rib—old bruise complaining—but I leaned on the burn and kept going. I pushed harder and faster, until my lungs burned and my thighs screamed. There was no room left in my head for anything except the next sprint.