Chapter 7 Heath
Chapter seven
Heath
My mouth remembered before I did.
It came back with me standing in a hotel bathroom in my boxers with toothpaste foam on my chin.
I spat. Rinsed. Stood there with both hands on the sink. My left shoulder was stiff from a hit I barely remembered taking. I rolled it once, and the soreness pulled across my chest.
Underneath it, like a second bruise, the memory of Kieran's mouth adjusting against mine.
It was the same face in the mirror. Freckles, a scar through the eyebrow, and hair staging its daily rebellion.
The hotel restaurant was louder than it should've been for seven-fifteen. Round tables and white cloths plus the clatter of guys who'd lost ugly and were working through the stages of grief via mounds of food from the buffet.
Varga held court at the center table, gesturing with a fork that still had egg on it. Rook sat two seats down, eating oatmeal.
I poured myself black coffee and loaded a plate with whatever my hand touched first.
Kieran sat at the far end of the room, back straight, and jaw freshly shaved. I sat across from him. Two place settings and a basket of English muffins between us.
"Morning," I said.
"Morning." He only looked up briefly, and his gaze landed somewhere around my left ear.
"Sleep okay?" he asked.
"Fine."
"Good."
Varga dropped into the chair beside me. "Donnelly. Rate the eggs. Scale of one to ten."
"Haven't tried them."
"Six at best. Seven if you add hot sauce, but the hot sauce here tastes like someone described Tabasco to AI and the AI did its best."
I ate. The eggs were actually a five.
From across the room, Rook's gaze drifted our way. A single pass. It was the same scan he ran before a faceoff. He returned to his oatmeal as primary focus.
Cross arrived late and sat beside Kieran. He ate in silence until he asked something about the contract buzz. Then, he turned to me and mentioned my net-front positioning in the second period.
After breakfast, we headed for the bus to the airport. "Critical question," Varga said, dropping into the seat beside me. "Window or aisle?"
"Window."
"Wrong. Aisle gives you leg freedom. Strategic bladder access. Emergency extraction options when Pratt snores, which he will."
I let Varga's endless monologue carry me through the terminal. It was a small, bright, regional airport that smelled like floor wax and Cinnabon.
Kieran walked thirty feet ahead with Cross. He shortened his stride to match Cross's pace without appearing to adjust. Everything he did had that quality. Seamless.
On the plane, Kieran boarded after Rook, walking past my row without a pause, and settling three rows back on the opposite side. His face was blank, a wall of clean angles.
Two nights ago, on another bus, our knees had touched. He'd shown me a photo of a sea turtle named Marina, and his thumb had brushed my wrist as he angled the phone.
Now, we had a gap of fifteen feet and a Varga-shaped buffer between us.
Varga pivoted from hotel rankings to the rivalry narrative.
"You see the updated article? Some blog's running a poll. Mathers or Donnelly: Who starts Game 10? You're winning. Sixty-three percent."
"That's not winning."
"Mathematically, it is."
"It's a fan poll on a hockey blog that probably also sells supplements."
"It's a fan poll about you." He elbowed me. "Embrace it. You've got a brand now. Chaos Boy. The Human Deflection. I'm workshopping names."
"Please stop."
"I will not."
I turned toward the window. Below us, the Midwest was a quilt of brown and rust, late October stripping the color out of everything.
"Hey." Varga's voice dropped half a register. He turned his comedy routine off like a faucet. "You good?"
I looked at him. His face had rearranged into something I hadn't seen before, direct, with no expectations. He'd noticed his teammate was somewhere else and was offering a door back without making it weird.
"Yeah. Tired."
The grin came back. "Cool. Because I have a developing thesis about airline pretzels that needs a witness, and you're contractually obligated."
I let him talk. My phone sat in my lap with a text thread glowing.
It was a new message.
Kieran: We should talk.
I didn't hesitate to type back.
Heath: Yeah.
Heath: Not at your place.
Kieran: No.
His building had a doorman and cameras in the lobby. It was impossible to know who might scour security reels.
Heath: My place.
Kieran: Safer.
I locked the phone. And then, against every piece of logic I had left, I looked.
Three rows back, across the aisle. Kieran had his phone face down. Headphones in, and looking at me.
The plane banked. Varga grabbed his armrest. "Jesus—"
O'Hare spit us out into late-afternoon gray, a Chicago in October sky that didn't commit to rain or clearing. It hung there, pressing the city flat.
The parking structure was underground. My car was on level two, Kieran's on three. Between them, the ramp curved past a blind spot, a pillar with bad lighting.
He was standing there. Phone out. He'd positioned himself in the one place that didn't have witnesses.
"Hey."
"Hey." He pocketed the phone. "Text me when you're free."
When, not if.
He turned and walked up the ramp, and I listened to his footsteps until they faded.
My apartment building didn't have a doorman. It had a front entrance that stuck in cold weather and a landlord who responded to maintenance requests on a less-than-urgent timeline.
I was on the third floor, end of the hall. Inside, the apartment was exactly as I'd left it: clean, with a narrow kitchen, a secondhand couch, and an alley view.
I was seeing it the way he would.
Since last April, the apartment had been enough. It was a place to sleep, eat, check my skates, and send money home. I'd never measured it against anyone else's life because I'd never invited anyone in whose opinion mattered.
Now someone was coming, and the space closed in, stealing my breath.
I checked the sheets. They were clean. I checked the bathroom. Passable. There was a water stain on the ceiling above the stove that I'd stopped seeing six months ago. I saw it now.
Five-forty a month. That's what Maggie had said two days ago. New prescription costs. Mortgage adjustment. Five hundred and forty dollars between my family and math that keeps you awake at 3 a.m., looking for money that isn't there no matter how many times you rearrange the numbers.
My NHL salary was infrastructure. Every dollar assigned before it arrived. The rest paid for my rent and groceries.
Every financial calculation I'd ever run assumed a version of me that understood wanting things for himself was a luxury the budget didn't include.
That version hadn't tasted Kieran Mathers' mouth in a stalled elevator.
I had three hours. I unpacked. Showered. Watched game film without absorbing a frame.
At nine, I closed the laptop and picked up my phone.
Heath: Tonight still work?
Kieran: Yeah. What time?
Heath: Whenever.
Kieran: Practice at 10am tomorrow.
Heath: I know.
A pause.
Kieran: Give me an hour.
I wiped down the kitchen counter because my hands needed something to do. Moved the coffee table six inches left and then four inches right. I laughed, realizing I thought the angle of a secondhand table would determine what happened next.
Kieran: On my way.
The knock was quiet. Two knuckles, twice. The knock of someone who had considered the volume.
Kieran stood in the hall in a dark jacket over a gray t-shirt and jeans. No team gear.
"Good to see you."
"Yeah, thanks for the invite."
I stepped back. He stepped in. My apartment shrank around him, or maybe he filled the space differently from anyone who'd been here before.
He scanned my apartment the way he scanned the ice. Quick, thorough: counter, couch, the alley light throwing a cold stripe across the floor.
"Can I take your jacket?"
He almost smiled. "You don't have to host me, Donnelly."
"I'm not hosting. I'm being polite. My mother would kill me if I did otherwise."
I hung his jacket on the hook behind the door, next to mine.
He smelled like leather from the car seats and something briny underneath. Saltwater, maybe. Tank water. My dad used to come home smelling like that. Before.
"Water? I've got—" I opened the fridge and confronted the evidence: protein shakes in various stages of expiration, a bag of shredded cheese, and a lime that had given up. "Water."
"Water's fine."
I handed him a glass.
He drank half of it standing in my kitchen. Then he set it on the counter, and his fingertips trembled.
"So," he said.
"So."
He leaned against the counter. I leaned against the kitchen table. Four feet of linoleum between us.
"The elevator was contextual. We were tired. Emotional. Post-loss adrenaline, confined space—mitigating factors."
"Mitigating," I repeated.
"Circumstances that explain why something happened without necessarily implying—"
"I know what mitigating means."
His jaw tightened. I watched the muscle work, a small knot just below his ear.
The refrigerator kicked on behind him. A low, rattling hum that made the silence between sentences louder.
"The team comes first. Both our situations, your contract and my timeline. If anyone suspected—"
"It could end us. Both of us."
He stopped. I'd taken his sentence and stripped it to the studs.
"Yeah," he said, quieter. "It could."
I looked at him. Arms crossed and collarbones visible at the neck of his shirt. He'd rehearsed this speech in his car. Built his argument like a legal brief. Climbed my stairs and then knocked.
"So why'd you come?"
Kieran uncrossed his arms. Without the posture, he looked younger. Unfinished.
"Because you asked me to."
"That's not why."
His breath hitched. I saw it the way I saw a lane open up in front of the net. It was a sudden absence of something that had been blocking the view.
"No," he said. "That's not why."
My kitchen was too small for what was happening.
"What do you want?" I asked.
I needed him to say it.
He stepped forward and closed half the distance between us.