Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Heath
My tape job was clean.
Three wraps past the heel, half-overlap, consistent tension from heel to toe.
Around me, the locker room ran its usual current. Rook dressed two stalls down in the order that never changed—socks, shin guards, pants. Pratt stretched in the center of the floor, one leg extended, forehead nearly touching his knee, eyes closed. A man meditating inside a suit of armor.
Varga was talking, as always.
"—the thing about deep-dish is that it's not pizza. It's a casserole that committed identity fraud. I've been saying this for years. Nobody listens. It's a structural argument. The cheese-to-crust ratio violates—"
"Varga," Rook said. "It's nine in the morning."
"Truth doesn't have business hours."
Four days since the deadline. The board in Markel's office still held the same names in the same positions.
I was still here.
I'd played thirty-seven games. Scored fourteen goals. Earned trusted minutes in high-leverage situations and net-front assignments that Coach Markel didn't hand out as favors.
The deadline came and went. My name stayed on the board.
That meant something.
Varga migrated from pizza taxonomy to something about a documentary he'd watched on competitive eating. He was half-dressed, one shin guard on, the other still in his stall, gesturing with a roll of tape.
"—and the hot dog guy, the champion? He trains by drinking water. Gallons. Expanding his stomach capacity. He logs it. It's a training program. Progressive overload. The man periodizes his hydration, Rook. He has a water macro split—"
"Nobody asked."
"Nobody ever asks. That's the tragedy of being ahead of the discourse."
I reached for my skates. Left foot first. Tongue pulled forward, laces threaded through the lower eyelets. The motion was automatic.
"Hey, Donnelly."
Varga changed the subject to me.
"Yeah."
"You see the deadline breakdown on The Athletic? Good stuff. Barkov went for a haul. Two firsts and a prospect."
"Didn't read it."
"You should. Context matters." He yanked his shin guard on and velcroed it tight. "Speaking of, heard they were shopping you before the deadline. Like, for real. Three teams. Then Mathers signed and the whole thing went away. Lucky break, right?"
He tossed the news out between shin guard and elbow pad, delivered with the same weight he'd given the deep-dish argument and the competitive-eating documentary.
"What?"
"Yeah, Pratt's agent heard from somebody. You were in a package. Cap space thing. Mathers's extension fixed the math, so—" Varga shrugged. Reached for an elbow pad. "Anyway, the Barkov return is insane. Two firsts. In this market."
He was already gone. Next subject loaded.
My hands had stopped moving.
The left skate was half-laced. Tongue still forward. Laces threaded through the fourth eyelet but not the fifth. I looked at my fingers where they held the lace.
Shopping you. Three teams. Mathers signed and the whole thing went away.
The equipment dryers hummed behind the far wall. The sound had been there all morning. Now it was the only thing I could hear.
I pulled the lace through the fifth eyelet. Sixth. Seventh.
The trade was real. Not a rumor Varga had inflated for dramatic effect. Pratt's agent. Somebody in the network. Three teams calling.
I was in a package.
Cap space thing.
Mathers's extension fixed it.
Kieran knew.
The conclusion landed cleanly. Kieran signed the extension on deadline morning. The trade package dissolved. I stayed.
He knew they were moving me. He signed to stop it.
All of my recent goals flashed through the back of my mind. I'd believed the ground underneath them was mine.
I finished lacing the right skate. Checked the tension. Checked it again.
Did I stay because I earned it, or because Kieran changed the numbers?
The question pressed against the inside of my ribs like the moment before a hit you can see coming and can't avoid.
Across the room, Varga had moved on to ranking the best airport Cinnabons by region.
Nobody looked at me.
I stood. Grabbed my stick.
Markel ran a neutral-zone drill. Three-on-three, tight rotations, and puck support through the middle of the ice. Standard structure. The kind of rep I'd run two hundred times since October.
Kieran lined up on my right.
His stick sat flat on the ice. Weight distributed. Shoulders level.
I planted on the left half-wall. Blade down.
Cross won the draw back to the point. Rook collected and surveyed. The lane through the slot was clogged. He cycled low to the corner. I drove the net.
Kieran carried wide. Drew their weak-side coverage with a head fake I'd seen a hundred times. The passing lane cracked open between his defender and the net-front traffic.
He released the puck.
Tape to tape. Same timing. Same trajectory. The pass arrived at the exact spot my blade was supposed to be, because Kieran Mathers had spent five months learning where I'd be before I got there.
I hesitated.
Half a beat. Less than a second. The puck hit my blade and sat there for one extra fraction of a second before I moved it.
A month ago, I would have redirected without thought. See the opening, commit, and deal with the aftermath. That was how I played. How I scored, and how I did everything that mattered.
Now I stood in the lane Kieran had built for me and wondered who had paid for the space where I stood.
I shot. Holloway kicked it out. Routine save on what should have been a routine goal.
I circled back through the high slot. Reset my edges. Found the wall and planted like nothing had shifted. My stick went flat on the ice. Weight redistributed.
Markel's whistle. Line change.
I came off and sat on the bench.
"Stay in it, Donnelly." That was Coach Markel from behind the bench. Observational.
"Yes, Coach."
Kieran sat four spots down. He didn't look at me. He was watching the next group cycle through the same drill, his water bottle resting on his thigh.
I watched his hands. The left one gripped the bottle with the same steady pressure he used for everything. No tremor. No tell.
Five months ago, I'd sat on this bench and studied how he moved through the world without wasted motion, every gesture calibrated.
Now I watched those same hands and thought: He knew. While he was handing me the puck, sitting on this bench, and sleeping in my bed. He knew, and he decided, without me.
The whistle blew. My group was up.
I vaulted over the boards. Found my lane. Ran the rep clean.
The drill didn't require me. Only my edges, my stick, and the part of me that had been doing this since Rhinelander, since Thunder Bay, since the first time I'd driven the net and refused to leave.
Practice ended. Markel collected pucks. The Zamboni emerged.
Varga said something about lunch. I said something back. I don't remember what.
The parking garage was cold. My car sat where it always sat: third level, near the stairwell. I dropped my bag in the trunk and climbed behind the wheel.
Three teams. Cap space. Extension fixed it.
I turned the key.
The drive from the practice facility to my apartment took eleven minutes on surface streets.
I drove past the taqueria where Kieran had once ordered in surprisingly passable Spanish and then refused to explain where he'd learned it.
Past the laundromat with the hand-lettered sign that had been promising GRAND OPENING since November. The city scrolled past the windows.
I needed to think about the truth in a room with walls. My walls. The apartment I paid for with money I earned on ice I'd fought to keep. The kitchen where we'd eaten on the floor. The couch where he'd fallen asleep with his hand on my chest.
If this was going to break, it was going to break where we'd been real.
My apartment was exactly as I'd left it that morning.
Coffee mug in the sink. The rock from California next to the pipe cleaner figure on the side table.
Dishes from last night stacked on the counter because I'd been too tired to wash them, and Kieran had offered.
I'd said leave them, I'll get it tomorrow.
It was tomorrow.
I picked up my phone.
Heath: Come over. Now.
The dots appeared almost immediately.
Kieran: Everything okay?
Heath: Now.
I set the phone on the counter and waited.
I didn't sit. I stood at the kitchen counter with my palms flat on the surface.
The dishes from last night were still stacked beside the sink.
Two plates. Two forks. A pot with dried sauce at the rim.
Evidence of a meal we'd shared eighteen hours ago, when I'd made pasta and Kieran had leaned against the refrigerator and told me about a paper he'd read on nitrogen cycling in brackish environments and I'd said you know I don't know what brackish means and he'd said it means the water can't decide what it is and I'd laughed.
Two knuckles. Twice.
I opened the door.
Kieran stood in the hall in his practice day clothes. Dark jacket. Jeans. Bag still over one shoulder, which meant he'd come straight from the facility. He hadn't gone home first.
His face was wrong. The pleasant mask gone, replaced by something tighter, eyes moving too fast, and the blankness of a man running scenarios and not liking any of them.
"Heath—"
"Come in."
He stepped inside. I closed the door behind him. Didn't take his jacket. Didn't offer water.
He set his bag by the wall. He looked around the apartment how he always did—counter, couch, the dishes I hadn't washed—but this time the scan stopped at my face and stayed.
I stood at the edge of the kitchen. He stood near the door.
"You knew they were trading me."
I didn't waste time.
Kieran's body went still.
"Yes."
He didn't ask how I'd found out. Didn't deflect or qualify. He stood in my apartment and told me the truth he'd been withholding since he signed.
"And you signed to stop it."
"Yes."
The radiator clanked and ticked.
"Did you sign for you, or for me?"