Chapter 8 Griffin
Griffin
Today feels…weird. I spent way too long replaying that weird-ass interaction with Hughie and Jake in my head, which is extra annoying considering how aggressively I told myself I didn’t give a fuck. Repeatedly.
Turns out that was a lie.
But it ate at me.
And, yeah, I was also thinking about Jake and his pretty blush. Enough that I actually fucking looked up Pink Lady apples last night just to make sure I hadn’t exaggerated the color in my head.
I didn’t.
Just so we’re clear.
I show up to the rink early, stupid early, like no-one-should-be-conscious-yet early, because my roommates weren’t home last night and the silence in the house was way too fucking loud. I barely slept because every time I closed my eyes, my brain decided it was the perfect moment to spiral.
And then there’s Sab.
She finally texted back last night with the most appeasing message imaginable.
Sabrina: It’s okay, baby. We’re good.
Which sounds reassuring. It should be reassuring.
Except I don’t know if she actually meant it, because she didn’t want to come over.
And I was kind of hoping she would, because our makeup sex has this magical ability to drag me out of whatever foul mood I’m drowning in.
But she didn’t even give me a reason…just said she couldn’t come over.
The fucked-up part? I didn’t even hate that she couldn’t.
And I’m pretty sure that says a lot about my real feelings, but I’m so deep in denial right now that even thinking about unpacking that feels like too much goddamn work.
By the time Terry and Mack stumble into the locker room, looking hungover or maybe still a little drunk, I’m already dressed and ready to hit the ice. Yesterday my shots felt mechanical. My shifts were pure autopilot. No instinct, no fire.
I can’t let that happen again.
I don’t need to be thinking about clingy girlfriends or beautiful trainers or weird tension with teammates. I need to fucking focus.
Coach calls us over for warmups and I follow along like a good soldier, but by the time we hit the boards I’ve got this weird tension in my shoulders.
“Yo, Griff,” Mack says next to me, glancing over mid-stride, “you good?”
I give him the most neutral nod I can muster and murmur, “Yeah, just tired.”
Because if I actually said what was going on? That my brain is stuck in a loop about love and text etiquette and commitment, and also certain thoughts about Jacob that I absolutely do not need invading my head during practice?
Yeah. No.
Terry skates up behind me and claps a hand on my shoulder. “You look like someone put salt in your cereal this morning.”
I don’t laugh, but I want to. I just can’t muster up the energy when my head is so fucking full of bullshit and I can barely breathe.
Practice starts properly and I stick to the drills, timing my strides, listening to Coach bark, trying to focus on the rhythm of the game. And for a while, it works. Hockey is muscle memory. Hockey is instinct. Hockey doesn’t require introspection or at least, it didn’t used to.
But every time my shoulder twists, or someone bumps me from behind, my brain veers off course and pulls me back into that text thread, into that dismissive little “can’t hang out,” and into this weird, swirling haze of confusion about what I really want versus what I think I ought to want.
And as the whistle blows and practice rolls on, one thing becomes painfully clear:
I’m not just tired.
I’m off. And I don’t even know how to fix it.
Practice is one drill away from “mundane athletic monotony,” and I’m barely present when everything suddenly goes sideways.
We’re in the middle of a puck battle on the boards, our guys sliding and scraping and teeth-grinding over position, when the whistle blows and the guys break off to regroup.
That’s when it happens.
Hughie Rourke and Sam Connelly lock eyes just outside the crease, right in my goalie’s space, and I can tell immediately that something’s wrong.
Hughie’s lips move first. I can’t hear the words from the blue line, but I know that posture, his chin is down, shoulders squared.
Whatever he says lands hard, because Sam’s expression twists like he’s been slapped.
The reaction is instant.
One second they’re standing there jawing, the next Sam shoves Hughie straight in the chest, hard enough that Hughie stumbles back into the net and the mesh rattles behind him. And Hughie just snaps. He snarls, low and ugly, like a dog that got kicked in the ribs and decided it’s done being nice.
And holy shit.
I’ve played with Hughie for years. The guy once apologized to a ref for thinking about arguing a call. He’s calm and measured. I mean, the guy is completely unshakeable. Nothing gets under his skin. Watching him flip that switch feels like gravity just fucked off and left the building.
Sam keeps talking, leaning in, saying something low and nasty, and Hughie doesn’t blink. He just glares at him from under his mask, eyes sharp and lethal.
“Don’t,” Hughie growls.
“Don’t what?” Sam snaps back, and the restraint he usually wears like body armor is completely gone.
Then Sam shoves him again. Harder.
That’s when Hughie swings.
He drops his blocker and throws a right straight into Sam’s jaw, clean and vicious, the crack of knuckles on bone echoing across the rink. Sam stumbles back half a step, shocked more than hurt, and then instinct kicks in and he lunges forward, his gloves are off and his fists flying.
At that point I’m already moving.
No one takes a run at my goalie. I don’t give a fuck who you are.
Sam throws a sloppy punch that clips Hughie’s shoulder, and Hughie answers with another one to the ribs, driving him back again, but Sam gets one in and it glances Hughie’s cheek, snapping his head to the side.
I’m there in two strides, grabbing a fistful of Sam’s jersey and yanking him back so hard his skates scrape the ice.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I bark, shoving myself between them and planting my skates wide in front of Hughie like a wall.
Sam tries to twist around me. His expression is murderous and he’s definitely still fired up. “Get off me, Thatcher-”
I don’t hesitate as I cock back and drive my fist straight into his chest, right over the sternum, knocking the air out of him and sending him stumbling backward onto his ass.
“Stay the fuck away from my goalie,” I snarl, my voice is low and deadly. “You wanna fight, you do it with me.”
Terry’s there a second later, grabbing Hughie by the shoulders and hauling him back, captain voice on full blast. “Enough! Jesus Christ, enough!”
Hughie’s chest is heaving, eyes wild behind the cage, knuckles already red. He doesn’t fight Terry, but he’s vibrating with fury, like it’s taking everything he has not to go again.
And then he turns.
Not slowly and definitely not to explain. He just turns and storms off the ice with his gaze straight ahead like he’s got somewhere to be and nothing in this rink matters anymore.
“Where the fuck are you going?” I shout after him.
He doesn’t answer. Shocker.
Sam sits there for a second, breathing hard, staring at the ice like he can’t quite process what just happened. When he finally looks up at Terry and me, his face is a mess of anger, shame, and something that looks an awful lot like regret.
Then he gets up without saying a word, and skates the other direction.
The rink feels dead fucking quiet after that.
We’re standing there at center ice with our sticks still in our hands, gloves half-off, guys staring from every direction like they’re waiting for someone to yell psych and reset the drill.
And for maybe the first time in my life, I genuinely have no clue what the fuck just happened.
Coach skates over fast, sharp cuts in the ice, and his face is pure thunder. The kind that makes your spine straighten before your brain catches up. He stops in front of us, eyes snapping between me and Terry.
“Someone want to explain why the fuck my first-line center is trying to kill his own fucking goalie?”
Silence.
Not the defiant kind. Just blank, useless silence, because I couldn’t explain it even if my life depended on it. I replay the last thirty seconds in my head and it still doesn’t make sense.
Hughie doesn’t do that. Sam doesn’t do that either. And yet here we are.
“Um,” Terry hums finally, and I shoot him a look because that is not a sound you make in front of Coach when shit’s on fire. “Well… I don’t have an answer right now, Coach.”
Coach scoffs, eyes narrowing like he’s carving us both into a list of future problems. “Fix it.”
Then he pushes off and skates away like that single word somehow explains everything.
I glance at Terry, who looks like he’s actively buffering, shoulders slumped, jaw tight, doing his best impression of a human question mark. I roll my eyes because of course this is my fucking life.
“We should… follow them?” I offer, and even I can hear how weak it sounds.
Terry doesn’t answer right away. He just exhales long and slow, rubbing a hand over his face like he’s trying to process the fact that the two most level-headed guys on this team just detonated like emotional landmines in the middle of practice.
“Yeah,” he says finally, voice low and unsettled. “We should.”
Terry goes after Connelly, which leaves me with the real fun assignment of tracking down Hughie like he didn’t just Hulk out in front of the entire team.
It takes for-fucking-ever. I check the locker room, the hallway by the trainer’s office, damn near every fucking bathroom in the facility, before I finally find him in the sauna.
He’s sitting on the bench with his elbows on his knees and his shoulders locked up tight. His jaw is clenched so hard I can see the muscle jumping. The whole vibe is do not engage or you will get bit. Naturally, I walk in anyway.
“Hey, man,” I say, keeping it casual like I didn’t just jog half the facility looking for his pissed-off ass.
He looks up and lets out this sharp huff through his nose.
Something shifts in his face when he sees me, almost like he’s sad or resigned to my presence.
Which is fucking weird coming from the same guy who used to go out for midnight slushies with me after marathon video game sessions freshman year.
“Wanna tell me what the hell that was about?” I ask. I’m talking about Connelly and we both know it.
He doesn’t even blink. Just pops his jaw with a loud click and mutters, “Nope.”
I scoff and drop onto the bench across from him, ignoring the fact that this place feels like Satan’s personal steam box. Sweat’s already rolling down my back.
“Alright,” I say, wiping my face with the back of my hand. “Let me rephrase. Tell me what the fuck that was about.”
Hughie exhales slowly like even breathing is annoying him, and when he finally talks it’s measured and tired. “No. It’s between me and Connelly, and I don’t want to fucking talk to you about it.”
That one hits harder than I expect. Right in the chest. I blink, caught off guard. “Why the fuck not?”
He turns fully then and looks at me. He gives me this look that has my chest literally clenching like I’m about to have a heart attack. It’s the look you give when you’re deciding whether someone still matters enough to explain shit to.
“We’re not fucking friends, Thatcher.”
It’s like getting slapped in the fucking face.
“Since when?” I shoot back. “We’ve been friends since freshman year.”
He laughs, but it’s ugly and bitter. It’s so unlike the guy that I know. “Yeah. Freshman year. And then we weren’t.”
I try to rewind my brain, searching for the moment everything supposedly went to shit, and I come up with nothing. I came in here looking for answers about a fight, and now I’m just standing in the middle of something way worse.
“What are you even talking about?” I ask, honestly confused.
He leans back against the wood and closes his eyes.
“Friends hang out. Friends talk. We haven’t done either since you started living with those Fantastic Fuckboys you call roommates.
You stopped showing up. So yeah, I don’t feel like dumping my personal shit on someone who ditched me three years ago. ”
And fuck.
That lands.
Because once he says it, I can see it. The texts I didn’t answer.
The invites I brushed off to go chase tail or get wasted.
The times he walked into the house and I barely gave him more than a lazy ‘yo.’ I never meant to stop caring but I definitely stopped proving it.
I let time do the damage and assumed everything would just stay the same.
So now I’m sitting in a sauna, drowning in sweat and regret, realizing the guy I used to call my best friend doesn’t even want to talk to me anymore.
And worse?
He’s right.
I blow out a heavy breath and look him straight in the eye. “Hugh… I’m sorry.”
Instead of answering or I don’t know, yelling at me, he just sits there. When he finally looks at me, I see a flicker surprise, maybe even disbelief.
“That’s not what I expected,” he says quietly.
“Well,” I shift on the bench and try not to grimace at the feel of sweat soaking my clothes, “you’re not wrong.”
His brow creases but he doesn’t say anything.
“I didn’t know I was doing it,” I keep going with a small shrug that feels lacking. “Or maybe I did and just didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t realize I was losing you by not showing up. That’s on me.”
The silence that follows is thick and tense.
“Didn’t think you’d actually say that,” he mutters.
I swallow. “I mean it. I was a shitty friend. I’m sorry.”
He sits there for another second, then lets out a short, dry laugh. “Yeah,” he says, smirk tugging at his mouth. “I was kinda a dick too. So… whatever.”
I let it breathe for a second, then circle back, because I can’t leave shit unfinished.
“So. Connelly,” I say carefully. “What the fuck was that about?”
His posture shuts down immediately. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay,” I say, and this time I mean it. I hesitate, then add, “Maybe we could hang out sometime. Like actually hang out. No team shit.”
There’s a pause. A long one.
Then he nods. “Yeah. Sure.”