Chapter 6 Kieran
Chapter six
Kieran
We blew a two-goal lead in seven minutes.
No catastrophic breakdown. A slow, professional erosion. We had a neutral-zone turnover that became a two-on-one and a power play we couldn't kill because Varga took a lazy interference call.
The final horn sounded with the score 4-3. Their fans rocked the arena.
I skated to the bench. Stick across my knees. Helmet off.
Markel stood behind us with his arms folded. He didn't speak. The loss was clean enough that no single player wore it, which meant everyone did.
In the locker room, I undressed the way I always did. Jersey first, folded once, hung in the stall. Shoulder pads unbuckled left, then right. Elbow pads stacked. Shin guards aligned.
The room smelled the way it always did after sixty minutes: rubber matting and the sharp chemical bite of equipment spray. I breathed through it the way everyone did.
My hands were steady. They were always steady.
My body had played well. Clean shifts. Smart reads. Two assists that should have mattered and didn't. The box score would reflect competence—good enough to avoid blame, not good enough to change the outcome.
Across the room, Heath sat in his stall.
Still mostly dressed. Pads on. Gloves off, but resting in his lap. He stared at the wall opposite, gaze fixed and unfocused.
He'd played hard. Two shifts in the third where he'd held position in traffic while bodies piled in around him, refusing to peel away even when the play had moved on. Markel had trusted him in high-leverage minutes, and Heath had answered with effort that was almost painful to watch.
Almost. The upside was watching Heath Donnelly try was like watching someone hold a door open with their whole body. You couldn't look away.
He just sat there on the bench. Still wearing the game because taking it off meant admitting it was over.
I knew that posture. I'd built my entire life on a more polished version of it.
The difference was Heath's version looked like it hurt.
Mine looked like discipline.
While I watched, Heath reached up and pulled his jersey over his head. The fabric caught on his shoulder pads, and he wrestled with it for a second. His hair stood up at odd angles when he emerged. The back of his neck was flushed from effort, sweat still visible along his hairline.
I showered. Let the water run too hot. Stood with both palms flat against the tile until my breathing slowed.
One more season. That was the deal. My plan. A clean, carefully detailed exit.
I turned the water off. Dressed in the suit I'd hung that morning, because that's what professionals did after losses. They put on a suit and walked out, pretending it hadn't touched them.
The bus idled at the arena's loading dock. We were all quiet.
I took an aisle seat midway back. Rook sat across the aisle. Upright. Eyes forward.
Three rows ahead and to the left, Heath sat alone.
Window seat. Forehead nearly touching the glass. His suit jacket was off, sleeves pushed up past his forearms. The flush on the back of his neck was gone. I checked.
His phone was in his hand. He looked at it once.
I watched his jaw tighten. A single, involuntary compression. He didn't scroll. Didn't type. Only absorbed whatever was on the screen and put the phone face down on his thigh.
My father would call tomorrow. Not tonight. He'd wait until morning, let the sting settle into something workable, then offer his analysis.
What did you learn?
That's what he always asked. Never, how do you feel?
Ahead, Heath hadn't moved. Still facing the window.
And I still watched him. Three rows back, across an aisle, through the dark. I didn't look away and pretend I was doing something else, because there was no one awake enough to catch me.
I closed my eyes. He was still there, an afterimage of his forearms and fingertips on the window glass.
***
The hotel lobby was bright. Painfully so after the dark cabin of the bus. Equipment staff distributed key cards. Players headed toward the elevators in loose clusters.
Heath collected his key card and moved toward the elevator bank without looking back.
I collected mine. Room 1214.
Rook stepped into the first car with three other defensemen. I hung back.
The second elevator was still descending. I watched the numbers drop. 8. 7. 6.
Heath stood in front of it. Alone. His bag hung from one shoulder, pulling his jacket off-center.
The doors opened. Heath stepped in and moved to the back corner. Instinctively. I followed him in.
The doors closed.
I pressed twelve.
"Floor?" I asked.
"Same."
The elevator climbed.
The lighting was brutal. In the mirror panel to my right, I saw both of us. Kieran Mathers in a charcoal suit, posture correct. Heath Donnelly, two feet behind and to the left, leaning against the back wall with his arms crossed.
Heath pushed off the wall and spoke.
"Do you ever get nervous before games?"
His voice was low. The question hit wrong.
It didn't land in the professional register, the teammate-to-teammate frequency where the expected response is something easy and deflective. Everyone does. It's part of the job. You learn to use it.
It landed somewhere else entirely.
I turned.
Heath looked at me. Arms still crossed, shoulders slightly drawn in, but his face was open, unguarded without being fragile.
The question wasn't a test. It wasn't seeking reassurance. Heath was telling me something. Packaging it as a question because that was safer, but the content was clear.
I was scared tonight. I'm telling you because I think you might understand. I'm not ashamed of it.
"Yeah," I said. "Sure. Everyone does."
It sounded like I was speaking to a reporter, reflexive.
The silence that followed told me how badly I'd missed.
Heath didn't flinch. Didn't look away. He absorbed my non-answer the way he absorbed crosschecks, stayed planted.
"That's not—" I stopped. Tried again. "That was a shit answer."
"Little bit."
The corner of his mouth rose into a half-smile
"What kind of nervous?" I asked. My voice sounded less managed.
Heath uncrossed his arms. Let them hang at his sides.
"Third period," he said. "I tightened up. You could probably see it."
I had. He hesitated half a step before committing to the net front.
"I wasn't thinking about the game." He looked at the floor numbers that weren't moving. "I was thinking about turning into the reason we lost it. Like—the thing people remembered wouldn't be the shifts that worked. Only the one that didn't."
He was describing his fear with the same plainness he described everything. Skate rivets. Blade alignment. Nothing's ever wrong. I check anyway.
I caught the message. He was scared, and he was standing in the fear like it was just another piece of net-front traffic to absorb.
The elevator jolted.
A mechanical stutter, loss of momentum, and then nothing. The car hung between floors, the amber digits flickering between 10 and 11 before holding steady.
The hum cut out.
Silence. The building exhaled.
Heath glanced at the panel and back at me. "We stuck?"
"Probably."
The car didn't move. Five seconds. Ten.
We were between floors, in a city that didn't belong to either of us. It was a steel box with no audience and no script.
Heath leaned back against the wall. Patient. Then he looked at me.
Every layer of careful self-management fell away. What remained was just Heath, fully and unbearably himself.
And I understood, in the space between one breath and the next, that I'd been holding mine since I was sixteen. Every clean shift and every perfectly maintained boundary had been an elaborate, exhausting act of not breathing.
Heath Donnelly stood two feet away with his tie undone and his fear visible, extended like a hand, and my lungs refused to cooperate any longer.
I reached out and touched the side of his neck. His skin was warm.
Heath's eyes opened wide. Then focused, sharpening the way they did when a loose puck appeared in traffic.
I kissed him.
Not smooth or practiced. I didn't have enough experience for that.
The angle was wrong at first; my mouth caught the corner of his before I corrected it . In that moment, I understood this was the least controlled thing I'd done since I was sixteen years old and drunk on cheap beer in a hotel room that smelled like pizza.
Except now I wasn't sixteen, and I wasn't drunk. The boy I'd kissed in juniors had tasted like spearmint gum. What I tasted now was Heath, coffee, salt, and the faintly metallic edge of a mouthguard chewed half to death.
He froze for a half-beat. Maybe less.
Then he gripped my jacket with both hands. He grabbed the lapels and pulled me into him.
His mouth opened under mine. The kiss went from desperate to devastating in the space of a breath. All the restraint I'd packed away since juniors met all the hunger Heath carried. The collision wasn't pretty.
Our teeth clacked briefly. His nose pressed hard against my cheek. I crowded him against the wall.
He released my jacket and moved his hands to my waist. He knew what he wanted, and he'd simply been waiting for permission to reach for it.
I braced one hand against the wall beside his head. The other held his jaw, thumb moving across his cheekbone.
He made a sound. Low, from the back of his throat.
I pulled back an inch. His breath hit my mouth. Fast. Ragged.
Heath's eyes opened. Brown and gold in the bad lighting, the color nearly swallowed by the dark at their center. This close, I could count the freckles across his nose.
The elevator shuddered. The motor caught again
The mechanical hum returned. The car lurched upward, and the motion knocked us slightly off-balance.
We stared at each other.
I couldn't catch my breath. Neither could he.
We'd damaged my plan. Suddenly, nothing looked quite so clean.
The doors opened.
I dropped my hand and stepped back. The distance between us reassembled.
The hallway was empty. Beige carpet and brass sconces. Ordinary and completely irrelevant.
I walked out first.
I didn't look back. Couldn't. If I looked back, I'd see Heath standing in that elevator with his lips and eyes asking a question I wasn't ready to answer.
My keycard was in my jacket pocket. I walked to 1214 with my heart pounding.
Behind me, I heard his door open and close.
I waved the keycard. Green light. Pushed the door open, stepped inside, and let it close behind me.
The room smelled like a hotel room—recycled air and the synthetic lavender of whatever housekeeping sprayed on the pillows. Through the curtains, a parking lot light threw amber bars across the ceiling.
My hands were shaking.
Barely visible. It was a vibration beneath the surface. I pressed my palms flat against the desk, and the shaking stopped.
I walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. Elbows on knees. Head forward.
I could still feel him. How his lower lip had caught between both of mine when I'd corrected the angle. The sound he'd made, low, like a locked door opening.
Heath Donnelly kissed the way he played hockey—find the opening, commit, and deal with the aftermath later.
I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes until I saw static.
The next several months were supposed to be a controlled demolition. One more season. Clean exit. A timeline that accounted for every variable except the one standing in an elevator asking me if I got nervous before games.
I reached for the TV remote and scrolled until I found a favorite old movie. North by Northwest. Cary Grant being chased across an open field by a crop duster, running with the loose-limbed urgency of someone who looked elegant even while terrified.
Volume low. Subtitles on.
It wasn't comfort. Needing comfort would mean something had gone wrong, and what had gone wrong was that something had finally gone right, and I had no framework to process that.
I loosened my tie and pulled it free. I removed my jacket and hung it on the desk chair.
The plan still existed. Nothing that had happened in that elevator changed the timeline or the fundamental math of leaving.
What it changed was twice as difficult. It changed what leaving meant.
Twelve hours ago, leaving meant freedom. Now, leaving meant walking away from the taste of Heath Donnelly's mouth. The sound he'd made. His hands on my waist like he'd been waiting and hadn't known for what.
My phone sat on the nightstand. I picked it up and unlocked it.
Our last exchange stared back from hours ago. A different lifetime.
Can't sleep. Same. Wanted to make sure you were okay. Media can be tough.
Clean. Careful. The texts of two people maintaining plausible deniability with professional-grade discipline.
My thumbs hovered.
I typed: Are you okay?
Deleted it. Patronizing. He'd stood in the elevator with his fear visible and his lips parted, and I'd been the one who came apart.
I typed: I'm sorry.
Stared at it.
Deleted it.
I wasn't. Every time I tried to regret what happened, my brain fought back.
The cursor blinked.
Three words. I could do three words. Three words were a controlled amount. Three words were manageable.
Kieran: Don't regret it.
I sent it.
Seconds passed. Or minutes. I wasn't counting, which meant I'd stopped being able to count, and that meant—
My phone buzzed.
I lifted it. Didn't breathe.
Heath: I don't.
Two words.
That was it. No, but we should be careful, or what does this mean, or any of the thousand reasonable responses.
I don't.
Heath Donnelly, who checked his skate rivets three times and played like every shift was an audition. That Heath Donnelly had looked at what happened in the elevator and come back with two words that left no room for misinterpretation.
He wasn't going to pretend.
He wouldn't make it easy for me to pretend either.
I exhaled and turned off the TV.
The room went dark except for the parking lot amber on the ceiling and the faint green glow of the clock: 12:14.
Thirty minutes since the elevator. Thirty minutes since every carefully constructed wall between who I was and who I wanted to be had proven as sturdy as drywall.
Fifty-three feet down the hall, Heath was awake.
I closed my eyes.
Tomorrow I'd put on the suit. Say the right things. Perform the version of myself that had given no one a reason to look deeper. Tomorrow I'd sit on a bus three rows behind Heath and look at the back of his neck and know what his mouth—
I couldn't finish the thought.
That was new. In twenty-three years, I had never once been unable to finish a thought.
I lay in the dark and contemplated what it meant.