Chapter 9
nine
ROWAN
Gavin’s pregame speech is eleven words.
“Let’s play our game, boys. Stay sharp, compete hard out there.”
He claps his gloves together once, doesn’t look at anyone, and grabs his stick. And that’s it. In response, the guys’ heads dip and stay there, except Theo, who glances up at me like he’s waiting for me to step in.
But I can’t do that.
Not in front of the captain.
We move toward the tunnel, and the Friday-night noise of The Den catches us at the bench door, that wall of sound that usually stitches everyone together in the same second. It still gets me. But the guys around me are flat.
A North Vale State game is supposed to feel like somebody lit a fuse in the corridor: bodies banging into each other, the whole place feral by puck drop. Hell, the seniors still talk about the triple-overtime playoff loss two seasons ago.
But tonight, there’s just nothing.
We push out onto the ice. North Vale State’s already there, lined up clean and synchronized, and their captain is barking at his first line D pair in a voice that couldn’t be more different from Gavin’s.
I take my laps, trying to shake whatever’s hanging over us. Before I know it, I’m taking the opening faceoff. It’s not my usual spot — I’m a winger — but Luca is sore and Dunne’s out with a bad shoulder, so I’m centering the line tonight, and the opening draw falls to me.
North Vale State’s center wins it clean, walks through Gavin’s pairing and buries one.
One-nothing.
The Den goes quiet in a way I’ve never heard it.
I skate back to center for the next faceoff, and Seb catches my eye on the way past. He doesn’t say anything, but we know whose fault that goal was. It’s the guy with the letter, who’s got his head down and isn’t saying anything.
The whistle goes, and I drop into the next faceoff — and for no good reason, my head is back in the doorway at Sterling House the other day. Sloane in a hoodie, hair still damp from the pool, the smallest smile, a quiet “Hi.” Not forgiveness. But not the door in my face either.
But it doesn’t change anything, because I still can’t have her.
The faceoff dot is a terrible place to consider it, so I shake it off and win the draw, and for the next few minutes I play like the game is something I can drag back by force. But every time I glance at the bench — lungs raw, legs heavy — Gavin is unmoved.
And the scoreboard is stuck.
As Coach Franklin’s jaw keeps getting tighter, he calls for adjustments that Gavin should then be relaying down the bench, but he isn’t. So, between shifts, I start passing them along myself.
A few minutes later, Mason drops onto the bench beside me, pulling his gloves off finger by finger. Two seats down, Seb gets up without a word and posts at the rail. Mason glances at the vacated seat and smiles like he won something.
It’s been six days since the party, and they still haven’t traded a word.
Nobody could fault Mason’s game — he’s been sharp all night. That’s the annoying thing about him: he produces enough to make the rest tolerable, although the transaction is getting harder to stomach the more I get to know him.
“Look at you,” he says, not looking at me. “Running the whole show.”
I don’t respond.
“Sloane doing okay tonight?” He spits into the trough and watches the ice.
“Wouldn’t know,” I say, eyes on the play. “Isn’t that your business?”
He scoffs and doesn’t answer.
But the mention of Sloane drags my eyes up to the student section. Ivy’s there, three rows up, in one of her million vintage hoodies and a gray beanie, but the seat next to her is empty.
Then Coach Franklin calls our line and I’m over the boards.
Mason’s voice follows me out there, and under it, uninvited: Sloane, stepping back from my hand at the party, the mask sliding home. It makes me half a second late to the play, and North Vale State breaks out three-on-two that we barely survive.
At the next whistle, Seb glides in beside me. “Where were you on that?”
“Lights must’ve got in my eyes,” I say.
“Sure,” he says, and pushes off.
I can’t tell him for half a second, I was still at the party, feeling her step out of my hands.
It goes like that for the rest of the first period, and during intermission, Gavin sits in his stall with his elbows on his knees, head down, and contributes the one syllable he’s contributed all season: Yeah.
Whatever cracked in him in the spring, he’s never said, and nobody’s made him say it, because there’s a code about that. But there’s also an expectation that you’ll get your shit together for the team, sooner or later. In Gavin’s case, it just keeps getting worse.
The second period starts. Our structure comes apart. Gavin sits at the end of the bench, water bottle untouched, refusing to offer any insight or encouragement that might turn the game around.
Coach leans down to Gavin and me. “Should we swap Bauer for Rodriguez?” he says.
Gavin doesn’t look up. “Whatever Rowan thinks,” he says.
Franklin looks at me.
“Bauer stays,” I say.
Franklin nods, and nobody comments, because nobody needs to. Everyone reads the leadership vacuum — including the North Vale State players, who start going at our freshmen with late hits and high sticks, the kind of stuff a captain calls out to a ref between whistles.
And all the doubts I had about him come home to roost when Theo takes a bad hit along the boards and no whistle comes. He pops up, but his hands are unsteady on his stick and his eyes too wide for a kid who spent all week telling everybody he was ready for his first start.
He’s only playing because we’ve got guys hurt, way sooner than we expected.
And now he’s hurt and intimidated, but he won’t admit it.
“Hey.” I lean over when we’re next on the bench together, my hand on the back of his neck. “Look at me.”
He looks.
“Breathe,” I say. “You’re fine. Next shift, take the inside lane on the wall, and body him into the boards. Make it legal, clean, and fucking huge, and he’ll stop touching you.”
“Okay,” he mutters.
I hold his eyes. “And if not, then I’ll find him.”
Theo nods, jaw tight, his glove gripping the boards hard. I let go of his neck and feel the weight of it settle back on mine. He’s eighteen, and the person who should be talking him through this is ten feet to our left, checked out.
During the TV timeout, the lights dip, and the ice crew comes out with their shovels. I tune out, taking the breather, but Seb skates over from the blue line and drops onto the bench beside me. He doesn’t look at me, which means the lecture is coming.
“You’re playing like you’re trying to win this by yourself.”
I don’t answer.
“It’s going to get you hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah.” He turns the bottle in his hand, watches the ice. “Sure.”
He gets up before the whistle and skates off.
The horn goes, and we’re down one, and in the locker room between periods, Gavin doesn’t say a word again. He sits and stares at his skate guards, and I watch the coaches read him, then read me reading him.
Then Coach Franklin crouches next to me and says, “We need you on every other shift.”
In the third period, I play the best hockey I’ve ever played. I forecheck like I’m angry, because I am. I feed Theo at the back post, and he barely misses. Next shift, I snap a wrister that pings off the crossbar.
The Den gasps and groans with every rush, and it powers me for a while, but I can only keep it up for so long. I take the bench halfway through the period, lungs on fire and nothing to show for it.
Mason taps my shin pad with his stick. “Unlucky.”
I don’t look at him.
With minutes ticking down, we start to push, desperate now. Coach Franklin waves me over the boards out of rotation twice. I don’t say no, because all game, every time the structure has broken it has been around Gavin’s pairing, and the coaches have noticed.
Then, with six minutes left, somebody tips a point shot through the goalie’s pads — Niko, I think, but it’s impossible to tell in the mess — and suddenly it’s one-one and the student section comes alive.
For four or five shifts after that, the energy is close to right, close to what it should’ve been from the start, and I let myself believe the game might have a different ending. But with two minutes left, Gavin takes a lazy hooking penalty, the kind that says I’m not here anymore.
The ref’s arm goes up, the arena groans, and Gavin skates to the box without looking at anyone on the bench. North Vale State’s power play is clinical, and they score with ninety seconds left.
Two-one.
Coach pulls Holloway, our goalie, with a minute left. It’s a long shot, but I win a board battle and find a seam. Luca reads it, puts the puck on my tape, and I one-time it clean. The shot is going in—
Until a North Vale State D-man dives and blocks it with his ribs.
Buzzer.
I fall to the ice, exhausted, and maybe I’m radiating something because nobody comes near me for a second. And when I climb to my feet, I move through the handshake line without seeing a single face, jaw locked, saying the things you say after a game.
We shuffle to the locker room, where Coach stands in the middle of the floor with his hands in his pockets and lets the silence do the work. Helmets come off. Tape gets cut. Somewhere in the back row a stick hits a stall and nobody flinches.
I sit, but I don’t take my gear off.
Gavin is the first one out. His coat is on before half the guys have unlaced their skates, and then he’s out the door. It swings shut behind him, and somebody — I don’t see who — lets out a breath that’s almost a laugh.
The other guys go in twos and threes. Seb is the last one in with me, and when he heads for the showers, his phone lights up on the stall between us. I don’t mean to look, but I catch the name.
Ivy.
I let it sit. I don’t have the room for it tonight.
Seb comes back, towel around his waist, and reads whatever’s on the screen. Something crosses his face — almost a smile, gone before it can settle — then he drops the phone in his bag without answering.
Then he bumps my shoulder. “Go home.”
And he’s gone.
Coach Franklin comes through on his way to the video room, suit jacket over one arm, and stops when he sees I’m still in my gear. He gives me the look he gave the bench all night, like he’s taking inventory.
“Anything I need to know about the room?” he says.
There are three safe answers: we’re fine, we’ll regroup, ask Gavin.
I’m too tired to pick one fast enough, so I just shake my head.
“You and Cross,” he says, into the gap. “Problem?”
I don’t say anything. I don’t look away, either.
Franklin nods slowly, like I’ve confirmed something for him. “Keep it off my ice.”
Then he’s gone, too.
I stay in my gear, staring at the Halden crest on the wall opposite my stall, feeling spent. I keep my eyes on it because they need somewhere to be, and the list in my head is already getting longer.
Eventually, I take my gear off. Skates first, untied wet eyelet by wet eyelet, then pads and jersey. If the stink coming off my equipment is any indication, I worked my ass off tonight. Small consolation.
I shower, dress in jeans and a hoodie, then start the walk home.
Only then do I check my phone, and there are nine unread messages.
Ivy.
Mom.
The team WhatsApp.
A grade notification — the Shelton paper, finally.
All in, it’s an avalanche of shit I’ll need to deal with.
Or later tonight, if I’m being honest, the moment I walk in my door.
But I can’t handle it right now. My apartment is a fifteen-minute walk south, and I stand with my keys in my hand, suddenly wanting to be anywhere but there. So, I turn and walk the other way, to campus, with no real destination in mind.
Knowing the problems follow me anywhere I go.