Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Hog
The coffee urn wheezed, and nobody was touching the muffins. In twelve years of locker rooms, I'd never seen guys ignore free food unless someone was about to get cut.
I stood next to the folding table someone had shoved against the lockers, watching steam curl up from the ancient machine.
Usually, Jake would be holding court by now, dissecting last night's game or roasting whoever'd shown up in yesterday's practice gear.
Usually, Pickle would be humming something off-key while he retaped his stick for the third time.
Today, silence.
The muffins looked like they'd been sitting there for a decade—stale, deflated, and slightly gray around the edges. I grabbed one anyway because standing there empty-handed felt worse.
"Anyone else think this feels like a fucking funeral?" Jake muttered from his stall.
Evan glanced up from his tablet. "Meetings don't usually happen at nine AM unless someone's getting fired."
"Or traded," Desrosiers added, not looking at anyone.
"Or the whole damn franchise is getting sold," MacLaren said.
The room was quiet again.
I bit into the muffin. It tasted like cardboard with chocolate chips.
The locker room door banged open, hard enough to rattle the frame.
Coach Rusk walked in first, ball cap backward, jaw working his gum. Behind him came two guys in suits—one I recognized as the GM, the other was new.
He wore a crisp tie and a thousand-dollar watch that he checked twice in the first ten seconds. He flashed the dead-shark smile of a man who'd delivered this speech in a dozen other cities. I smelled the leather of his briefcase and his expensive cologne.
"Gentlemen." The stranger set his briefcase on the folding table with a deliberate thunk. Metal clasps clicked open. "I'm David Crawford, representing the ownership group. It's great to be back in Fort Williams—uh, Fort William Gardens."
He smiled as if he'd nailed it. The silence that followed said otherwise.
Crawford pulled out a stack of folders—maybe eight, maybe ten—and arranged them on the table in a neat row.
Player contracts. Had to be. The folders were color-coded: blue, red, yellow.
I couldn't see the names from where I stood, but his eyes swept the room as he touched each folder like he was taking attendance.
His gaze lingered on Pickle for a half-second too long. Then Desrosiers. Then me.
"I'll keep this brief." He left the folders visible on the table—a deliberate choice. "As you're aware, the franchise has been exploring options to ensure long-term viability. We're in preliminary discussions regarding potential sale and possible relocation."
His hand rested on the blue folders. Four of them. He drummed his fingers against the top one once before continuing. "All player contracts are under review as part of the evaluation process."
I swallowed hard, a lump suddenly forming in my throat.
Evan tapped his tablet screen. Jake's leg started jiggling, and Pickle dropped his roll of tape, which bounced across the floor.
"What does that mean for us?" Jake asked.
Crawford checked his watch. "All player contracts are under review as part of the evaluation process. No decisions have been made, but we want to be transparent about the restructuring possibilities."
Restructuring. Transparent. Corporate speak for "you're fucked, but we're going to use big words to hide the truth."
"Can they... move us?" Pickle's voice cracked slightly. "Like, pack us up and ship us to Labrador or something?"
Coach finally spoke, his voice flat as week-old beer. "They can do whatever the hell they want, kid. That's how business works."
I watched the room. Pickle looked like someone had told him Santa wasn't real. Evan was already calculating something, and Jake's jaw was tight enough to crack teeth.
My ribs chose that moment to remind me they existed—the old dull ache flared up. How many hits were left in my body? How many seasons?
Maybe now none of them mattered.
I reached out for the jersey hanging in my stall.
I traced the stitched numbers—14. Hawkins.
The name that meant something here, in this city, and to these people.
Scatter us across the continent, and then what?
Just Connor, thirty years old with bad knees and no idea how to introduce himself at parties.
"Questions?" Crawford asked.
We were all silent. Nobody wanted to be the first to ask how fucked they were.
Coach stepped forward. "Here's what we're gonna do. We control what we can control. The ice. Each other. The rest of it?" He shrugged. "Above our pay grade."
He turned toward the door, then stopped. "Practice in twenty. Show me you still remember how to play hockey."
Then he was gone, leaving us with Crawford and his corporate smile.
"We'll keep you informed as the situation develops." Crawford rechecked his watch. "Thank you for your time."
The suits left. The door swung shut.
I looked around at my teammates—my brothers—and realized we all thought the same thing.
How do you fight something you can't hit?
The suits hadn't been gone thirty seconds before Pickle started pacing.
"What if they don't renew my contract?" His voice pitched higher with each word. "What if I have to move back home? Do I call my agent? What if I never make it to the show? What if—"
Jake whipped a towel at his head. "Fuck, kid. Breathe."
I kept taping my stick, wrapping the blade in slow, deliberate spirals. The rhythm helped—something to focus on while my brain processed what Crawford had just dropped on us.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Probably Rhett, wondering why I hadn't responded.
For almost a month, we'd been doing this—whatever this was—and I still didn't know how to explain that everything I'd built my life around might disappear before we figured out if we were serious or just Thunder Bay's favorite piece of gossip.
"Seriously, though," Pickle continued. "Do they just... announce it one day? Like, 'Thanks for playing, here's a bus ticket to Saskatoon'?"
"Worse places than Saskatoon," Desrosiers said from across the room.
"Name one."
"A bus depot in Moose Jaw at 3 a.m."
Coach appeared in the doorway like a ghost, watching us pretend everything was normal. His gum snapped once, sharp as a whip crack.
"Don't start writing obituaries before the season's over," he said quietly.
Then he was gone again, leaving us with the echo of his words and the sound of skates scraping against concrete as guys finished getting dressed.
The ice felt wrong the moment my blade hit it.
Not choppy—that would've been the Zamboni's fault. This was my edge. Dull where it should've been sharp, catching on the inside when I tried to pivot. I'd sharpened them yesterday. My hands knew that pattern like breathing.
Except now they didn't.
"Corners drill!" Coach barked. "Hawkins, MacLaren—you're up!"
I lined up across from MacLaren, both of us low and ready. Coach dropped the puck. We crashed together—shoulders, sticks, the familiar crunch of bodies competing for space.
Except when I tried to drive through him, my knee didn't hold. Not buckled—worse. It clicked—felt more than heard—and my leg went numb from hip to ankle.
MacLaren won the puck easily. Swept it free while I adjusted my weight, testing.
"Again!" Coach called. We reset. This time, I protected the knee and compensated with my right side. I got my stick on the puck, but MacLaren's elbow caught my ribs—in the same spot Desrosiers had tagged two days ago.
The pain was white-hot and immediate, stealing my breath.
I doubled over. Just for a second. Just long enough for everyone to notice.
"You good, Hawkins?"
"Yeah, Coach." I straightened. "Good."
We ran it four more times. Each rep, my body lied to me in different ways. The knee that clicked. The ribs that screamed. The shoulder that ground bone-on-bone when I reached too high. The hand that didn't quite close around my stick the way it used to.
Across the ice, Evan blew a rotation call—something that never happened.
His eyes were distant, not tracking the play.
Jake overplayed a puck at the blue line, chasing it like a rookie instead of holding position.
Pickle took a hit in the corner. Not dirty—clean, textbook—but he went down hard.
Shoulder against the boards. The sound made everyone wince.
"Fuck!" Pickle slammed his stick against the ice. "Fucking shit fuck!"
"Language," Coach called, but didn't blow his whistle.
He was watching us. All of us. Watching his team come apart in real time.
When I caught an edge during a simple crossover drill—something I'd been doing since I was eight—Jake was there.
"You good?"
"Yeah."
"Liar." He bumped my shoulder. "Your knee's fucked. I heard it click from the bench."
"It's fine."
"Hog." His voice dropped. "How much longer you got?"
"I don't know," I said quietly.
Coach's whistle shrieked. "That's enough. Hit the showers."
We'd been on the ice for twenty minutes. Coach never called it early unless someone was bleeding or the world was ending. Maybe both.
Most of the guys cleared out fast—showers quick and perfunctory, gear shoved into bags without the usual ritual. Nobody wanted to linger in the aftermath.
Jake and Evan stayed. They always stayed.
I sat in my stall, still in full gear except for my helmet and gloves, staring at the roll of tape in my hands. My knuckles were starting to swell again. I'd caught MacLaren's elbow during a drill. It was nothing dirty; it was just hockey being hockey.
Jake broke the silence. "So, anyone else thinking about Plan B?"
Evan glanced up from his phone. "I've been thinking about Plan B since my second concussion."
"That's because you're smart." Jake's voice lost its usual edge. "What about you, Hog? You got somewhere to land when this all goes to shit?"
I spoke without thinking. "Margaret offered me something. Teaching. Maybe co-owning the yarn shop eventually."