Chapter 21
The locker room is too bright, the overhead lights buzzing like hornets as the walls close in tighter with every second. Every sound—skates clacking, sticks hitting the floor, voices rising, Shane yelling something from his wheelchair—scrapes raw against my nerves. I can’t breathe.
Damian’s not here.
Shane’s leg is still fucked, which means Steve—the backup goalie who I’m pretty sure plays Candy Crush between periods—is starting in net.
Mats keeps pacing, restless and wired. Tyler’s hunched over a trash can, still throwing up.
And Cole hasn’t said a word in ten minutes, which is its own kind of terrifying.
Viktor’s taken Damian’s stall. Same spot.
Same black-on-black gear, already laced tight, helmet sitting at his feet.
He’s calm. Still. All wrong. He’s captain now, at least for tonight, the A on his chest stitched over with a C, and he’s staring at the whiteboard like he can will us into surviving this.
But all I see is Damian not being here.
I can’t do this.
I can’t fucking do this. My chest tightens, fast and brutal, and I double over on the bench, palms pressed hard to my thighs. My hands won’t stop shaking. My breaths come short and choppy. “I can’t—I can’t—I can’t—”
The panic eats me alive, fast and ugly. There’s no captain to glare me into place. No deep voice grounding me. No one to call me pup like it means I can breathe again.
“I can’t do this—” The words rip out of me, raw and loud.
My voice breaks halfway through. I’m gasping, shoulders heaving, heart beating so violently I swear it’s echoing across the ice, thudding loud enough for the whole team to hear.
I’m seconds from bolting. From puking. From collapsing right here in the middle of practice because everything’s too loud and too bright and too much.
“Mercer.” Viktor's voice cuts clean through it, snd somehow, it silences every ounce of the static screaming in my head.
I jerk my head up, breathing like I sprinted a mile, every muscle twitching under my skin. Viktor’s standing right in front of me, massive, and terrifying. His gloves are off, tossed somewhere behind him like this isn’t hockey anymore, it’s war. His mouth is a hard line. And his eyes? They’re ice.
“Stand up,” he says, cold enough to freeze blood.
I shake my head before I can stop myself, the motion fast and scared. My stomach turns over. “I—no—I can’t—”
“I said,” he growls, louder now, sharper, cutting through every excuse, “stand the fuck up.”
My knees lock on instinct and I stumble forward, scrambling upright, everything inside me still screaming no while I force myself to move. My skates drag against the ice.
And then Viktor grabs a fistful of my jersey, tight, dragging me in until we’re nose to nose. There’s no hesitation in his grip. No gentleness. Just sheer force of will.
“You wanna win that Cup for your captain?” he growls. “Then you skate. You lead. You take that ice and you make the Hawks bleed for every goddamn inch.”
Viktor doesn’t let go. His hand stays fisted in my jersey, locked like a vice, and his eyes never leave mine. "You fall apart now,” he snarls, vicious, each word snapping, “and he flatlined for nothing.”
It hits like a goddamn puck to the ribs—pure, precise, perfectly aimed—and all the air punches out of my lungs in one brutal rush. My chest caves around it. My knees almost give. The truth of it lands so hard I physically flinch.
I gasp, trying to breathe around the wreckage he just forced me to see. And then I nod once, because that’s all I can manage.
But it’s enough.
Viktor lets me go immediately, like I passed some invisible test, like yanking me apart for one second was all he needed to do. His hand drops, his eyes flicking away. “Good,” he mutters, turning back toward the ice. “Now go warm up. You’ve got a Cup to win.”
Steve looks like he’s two seconds from tossing his breakfast all over his pads. His helmet’s crooked. His gloves are inside out. His stick is taped like a toddler did it in the dark. And his eyes are wide and terrified.
Absolutely not ready for a Cup game.
I grab his mask gently but firmly, and yank him a little closer until we’re eye to eye. “You hold that net,” I say, deadly calm, Damian calm, “and I’ll get the goals.”
Steve whines. Whimpers, actually. “Oh my god. Oh no. Oh shit. No pressure—”
“You’re fine,” I growl, giving his shoulder a shove. “You’ve been training with Shane all year. This is your shot. Don’t fuck it up.”
He sways on the spot. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
“That’s fine,” Shane says from behind us. “Just don’t do it in my crease.”
I turn and glare at his leg. “Are you sure it’s broken?”
Shane lifts his pant leg to show the boot. The cast. The fresh-ass Reapers sticker Cole slapped on it. “Wanna sign it again, sweetheart?”
“I wanna kick it.”
Cole snorts. “Do that and he’ll make you share his wheelchair.”
“I’ll drive the damn wheelchair if it means he gets back in net,” I mutter.
Shane shrugs. “Not happening. Unless you’ve got a time machine or a miracle pill, I’m benched, baby.”
“Useless,” I hiss. “Absolutely fucking useless.”
“Love you too, sunshine.”
Steve groans somewhere behind me. “Why are you all like this,” he mutters into his gloves.
“Because this is the finals,” Cole chirps, slapping him on the ass. “And you’re the goalie. So suck it up, buttercup.”
Steve looks like he might actually weep as I shove my helmet on, snap the chinstrap into place, and drag in a deep, steadying breath. Damian’s not here—but I am, and I’m skating this Cup for him.
“I am not winning this Cup for Damian,” I deadpan, staring up at the jumbotron. “Not like this.”
The Hawks have scored ten times. TEN. In two periods.
Because Steve? Steve is vibrating in the goddamn crease like he’s auditioning for a haunted house. He hasn’t blocked a single shot since the puck dropped. At this point, I’m convinced he’s allergic to pucks. The moment one gets within five feet of him, he flinches.
Meanwhile, we’ve scored five. Five goals. Do you know how hard it is to score five goals in the goddamn finals and still be losing?
My gloves hit the boards with a violent slap as I snap, “I swear to fuck—”
Viktor is seething beside me, jaw clenched tight.
Shane is pounding on the wall behind the bench in his wheelchair, yelling “MURDER HIM” every time Steve flubs another save.
Mats is muttering something in Spanish that sounds like a very creative death threat.
Tyler looks like he aged ten years just watching this trainwreck unfold.
Coach is chain-smoking behind the bench like he’s watching his soul physically ascend into the rafters.
He’s pacing in tight, twitchy circles, muttering, ash flaking off the end of his cigarette.
The smoke coils around him, thick and slow, turning him into this grim, grizzled figure of doom who’s one bad play away from spontaneous combustion.
Every time I glance back at him, he looks a little closer to cardiac arrest.
I turn, storm up the bench, skates hissing across the concrete, gloves already off, heart in my throat and I absolutely lose it. “PUT ME IN THE FUCKING NET!”
The words come out with the full force of every emotion I’ve been trying not to feel since this whole nightmare started. The rage. The grief. The desperation. It all comes spilling out in a scream that echoes down the hall.
Coach doesn’t even blink. He turns to me with all the calm of a man who’s raised ten feral children and buried three. One eyebrow goes up, unimpressed. Smoke curls lazily out of his nose. “Not possible.”
My voice spikes so high I’m amazed glass doesn’t shatter. “WHY NOT?!”
“You’re a center, Mercer.”
“DOESN’T MATTER!”
He shrugs like this isn’t even a conversation worth entertaining. “You’ve never blocked a shot in your life.”
I throw my arms wide, already full banshee. “I BLOCKED DAMIAN WITH MY MOUTH LAST WEEK!”
There’s a beat of stunned silence. Then Mats chokes violently, audibly, almost dropping his stick. Viktor turns his head slightly, enough for me to catch the tiniest twitch at the corner of his mouth, like he’s two seconds from losing it and physically fighting himself not to.
Coach does blink this time, slowly, then flicks the ash off his cigarette, looks at me like I’m the reason he has high blood pressure, and mutters, “Jesus. Sit down before I strap the goalie pads to Cole.”
Cole cackles, loud and delighted. “Do it, coach,” he says, eyes gleaming with the kind of glee only he can get away with. “I wanna die dramatically.”
I throw my head back and scream, hands in my hair, lungs on fire, the kind of primal noise that doesn’t have a name, just pure frustration distilled into sound.
“Coach, let me back on the ice,” Shane chimes in smoothly from his wheelchair, voice syrupy and sinfully sweet.
Coach doesn’t even look at him. His tone is flat, already over all of us. “Are you high?”
Shane grins. “A little.”
I stare at both of them like I’ve fallen into a parallel universe where nothing makes sense, where the rules are made up and the points absolutely don’t matter. I’m surrounded by chaos. Literal, living, breathing chaos. And I’m part of it.
Then the puck drops again and something changes.
Me, Cole and Tyler launch like wolves off a chain. No hesitation. No mercy. We go full rabid, charging the ice like we’re not athletes but goddamn soldiers. There’s no finesse, no pretty plays, no structured formation.
Cole’s skating like his blades are on fire, flipping the puck and slamming it home for a goal that sends the crowd into chaos—but it doesn’t matter. We’re still drowning.