Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Aleksi
Seattle morning fog hangs low over the private terminal as we load the Hawkeyes jet.
Out on the tarmac, the wind tastes like rain and jet fuel; inside, we’ve got the usual team soundtrack.
Some guys are already asleep against their pillows, some are hyping up with headphones blaring, others go over plays with assistant coaches.
There’s an edge you can feel too.
Series: 2–1 them.
Denver tonight. Steal this one and the world evens out. Lose it, and the season tilts the wrong direction.
I like road games. The world gets small in a good way. We only have each other to rely on, and the fans who show up are the die-hard kind. No distractions, no noise—just hockey.
I jog up the stairs to the plane two at a time. Part superstition, part habit. Also because I want to get to Row 9 before Theo does.
Kendall’s already there, window seat. Headphones looped around her neck like she meant to wear them and forgot.
Her team-issued sweats look softer than anything I own; the hood is up, blonde hair spilling out in a messy, perfect cascade.
Her bag’s tucked neatly beneath the seat in front of her.
Her hands—steady in blood, steady on the bench, steady in chaos—are clenched on her knees.
One bounces just slightly. Not loud enough for anyone else to notice.
But I do.
Claustrophobia doesn’t care that you’re the smartest person on the plane.
“Seat taken?” I ask, already angling my duffel into the overhead.
She tips her chin up to see me, gives the same quick scan she gives every player, as if checking for an injury. “Theo usually sits with me,” she says, the kind of sentence that would stop most people cold.
“He hasn’t gotten here yet,” I say, “and I brought a care package.”
Her eyes narrow, skeptical but interested. “A care package?”
I take the seat since she doesn’t object right away. Pull the loot from my backpack like a magician. “One neck pillow with a cooling gel insert. One stress ball… or my hand, if you prefer. You can squeeze until you break it. I’m strong.”
That earns me a muffled chuckle. I take it as a win.
“And—” I keep going, “one bag of gummy bears you pretend you don’t like but always steal from Theo, one spare power bank because you always forget yours, and—” I set the crown jewel on her tray “—an iPhone I bought last night so I could download this claustrophobia podcast offline. No ads. The good kind. A woman with a soothing voice like a sauna towel.”
“You bought a phone for a podcast?” she asks, somewhere between disbelief and something softer.
“It was the cheapest one,” I say. “I didn't have to leverage my hockey contract to afford it. Also got the premium app. They plant a forest when you buy it.”
The corner of her mouth fights a smile. “Of course they do.”
Finally, I spot Theo boarding. Kendall’s scrolling through the phone, too absorbed to notice him. His eyes find me sitting beside her, and he smirks—half amused, half unsurprised. Everyone in the locker room either knows or suspects my crush on Dr. Kendall Hensen. I don’t bother denying it.
Theo finds a seat a few rows up with one of the assistant coaches. Good. That feels like permission.
I reach for my seatbelt, and it’s not lost on me that Kendall’s knee stops bouncing as she looks over my offerings. She smells like orange sanitizer and chai. She’s already braver than anyone I know, which is why it kills me to watch her swallow fear like medicine every time we fly.
“Are you sure you want to sit with me?” she asks. “I took Dramamine. I’ll be terrible company in ten minutes.”
“I like terrible company,” I say. “I can keep up a two-way conversation on my own.”
She nods with a knowing smile, like she’s not surprised, and reaches for the neck pillow. “Yeah, I suppose that’s true.”
I help settle the pillow behind her neck, waiting for the nod that says it’s not too close, not too much. Her throat moves when she swallows. She presses the stress ball once, twice—testing it like a pulse.
“Phones in airplane mode,” I say.
“You’re bossy,” she mutters.
A callback to our last conversation.
I grin. It means she’s still thinking about that night on the bench. So am I.
The doors whoosh shut with that sound that makes the world small too fast. I queue the podcast, lean the phone against the tray lip. The woman’s voice fills the space—low, calm. I already know where Kendall’s starting; I listened first to make sure it would help.
Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for six.
Kendall mirrors it, eyes closing. I match her cycles in my head, a quiet inside joke with myself. The engines build to a soft roar. Her hand finds my sleeve without looking. I let it stay.
Takeoff. The runway bumps turn to air, and everyone pretends not to notice their stomachs lift.
I stare out the window—bright wet smears of Seattle sliding away beneath the clouds.
I think about the blue line, the seam that opens if you hit it with speed.
I think about the sound of the building exhaling last night when we won.
By the time we climb above the first clouds, her breathing has evened out.
Her hand slides from my sleeve to my forearm, slowly, as the Dramamine takes hold.
The space between us shrinks until her knuckles brush my ribs.
Her head tilts toward my shoulder in stages, like a tree deciding where to land—then lands there.
I don’t move for a long time. Not even when my arm starts to tingle.
I invent a drill in my head called Become the Doctor Pillow and I nail it perfectly because she doesn’t so much as flinch.
Eventually, I risk a glance down. The lashes I teased last night are even more unfair up close. Her mouth is soft. A sweet pink I’d bet tastes just as good as it looks. The crease between her brows has smoothed out; the tension is gone. Dramamine and a woman with a sauna-towel voice—1. Fear—0.
“Good?” I whisper to no one.
She doesn’t answer. Her hand curls, not around mine but near it, like a truce flag. The podcast voice tells her she’s safe, but I could have told her that myself. As long as I’m around, she always will be.
I’d say it out loud, but she’s not ready to hear it. Maybe she never will be.
If that’s the case, then I’ll settle for flights like this. When she lets me sit beside her, lets her guard drop, lets me be the pillow.
And if that’s all I get, then Coach better get used to me taking more hits that draw blood for her to bandage up.
Denver air hits differently when we land. Everyone says altitude like it’s an excuse; it’s not, it’s a fact. It dries your nose out and makes your legs feel like you forgot to charge them. You skate through it. That’s the job.
Morning skate is legs and touches, pucks snapping off fiberglass, Coach Haynes barking in that gravely tone that still says he scored thirty-one goals one year.
I run my pattern. If I do nothing else in this life, I will skate clean.
I owe eight-year-old me that much—back when I was all elbows and thrift-store pads and a rink that smelled like ammonia and the sea.
We go lines… we go reps. I win more draws than I lose, and Wolf chirps at me between circles about how my faceoff win is the only reason he tolerates my “finnish finesse” on zone entries.
Kendall watches from the tunnel with Theo, clipboard tucked against her chest. She is backlit by the fluorescent, scientifically unflattering light, and still I swear she glows.
She catches me looking and points two fingers at her eyes then at me: hydrate.
I make a show of chugging back a barrel to impress her and get a head shake I don’t deserve.
We bus back, take naps, wrap sticks while eating lunch.
I text my mom a picture of the skyline and she sends back three blue hearts and a photo of the dog asleep on her knitting.
She asks if Kendall liked the licorice. I say she is brave and add a winky face.
Mom sends thirty-five question marks. I tell her to watch the game.
The building is full before warmups. Denver’s band does this drum thing in the concourse that makes your ribs rattle.
In the first period, we settle into a long fight ahead of us.
Everyone is pretending not to have nerves.
I take the first shift and waste it winning a puck battle that goes nowhere, but it puts sweat on my back and quiets my head.
Second shift, I turn a middle pickup into a controlled entry and feed Slade late.
He looks at me like I did it on purpose, though he knows I did. Sorry buddy, next time.
We get it back on the power play. I fake a pass to Luka Popovich, and then send it to Slade. He hammers it. 1–1. I take a seat on the bench, down a water bottle and take a deep breath. Oxygen is a drug in thin air.
Between shifts, I hear the steady sound of Kendall’s voice without making out words. Theo nods; she writes. The headset cord drapes from the back of her collar, and I have an unreasonable urge to tuck it someplace safe so nobody trips. Focus.
Second period is a seesaw and not the fun kind. Wolf ends up in the penalty box more than usual and comes back out with eyes like a thunderhead. I keep it simple, chips and chases, retrieve and bump, the little ugly things you do to back up what you advertised in warmups.
On a change, I catch Kendall’s line of sight by accident. She gives me the world’s smallest nod, like something private just between the two of us. It’s ridiculous how quickly it gives me a burst of energy. Like I could shake all night.
We go out for the third period, tied.
The first thirty seconds are nothing but shifts—pucks in feet, whistles at bad times, the universe trying to see if we’ll blink. We don’t. Our line catches a matchup I like; their second pair is gassed from the last kill. I win the draw clean, slide it back to Luka, and we roll.