Chapter 21 #2
It wasn't frustration with him. It was the game, and it was hard to watch how he folded disappointment into routine while I sat three stalls down with my fists clenched around the memory of a power play that should have been a goal.
I broke nothing. I undressed. Showered. Got on the bus.
But the anger was new.
Game 3 was Nashville. Landed at BNA with the city shimmering under May sunshine. Nashville arrived through the bus windows as a series of contradictions: construction cranes and bachelorette crowns, Baptist churches and pedal taverns, everything loud and dressed up for the weekend.
Bridgestone Arena was loud. Organized chants between whistles. Someone threw a catfish onto the ice during warmups, and Varga photographed it "for anthropological purposes" while the ice crew removed it with the practiced disgust of people who performed the chore regularly.
We won 3-2 on a Julian Cross goal with four minutes left. In the tunnel, their captain gave me the nod that meant you're annoying and I'll see you Thursday.
Eddie stopped me outside the visiting training room. He held a bag of ice and two ibuprofen. "Your ribs look like a Pollock painting," he said. "Take the anti-inflammatories or I'm telling Markel you're being too brave."
I followed his instructions.
Sleep came in fragments. The hotel was on Broadway, and the strip didn't quiet down; it just cycled from country to pop to someone's boombox at 2 a.m.
On the plane after Game 3, I sat in my usual window seat. The cabin smelled like equipment bags and the gas station gummy worms Varga had hidden inside a hollowed-out copy of The Art of War, which the nutritionist had confiscated twice and which kept reappearing in different luggage..
Kieran sat one row ahead. Headphones in, not listening.
I leaned forward between the seats.
"Their D-man is cheating toward the boards on the cycle. Started in Game 2. He's leaving the back door open if we sell the net drive and pull up."
Kieran turned, tugging his headphones down. "You saw that?"
"Third rep in the second. He bit hard when Cross faked the wrap-around. Slot empty for almost two seconds."
Kieran tracked it, eyes moving, mapping the play on a surface only we could see.
"Pull up to the dot instead of driving all the way. I can hit you on the forehand."
"Timing has to be before the far-side forward recovers."
"It will be."
Varga's head appeared over the seatback.
"Are you scheming? I have a sixth sense for tactical conspiracies. It's a gift and a burden."
"Go to sleep, Varga."
"I demand naming rights on any play developed in my airspace."
"There's no play."
"That's what schemers say." He pointed at both of us. "I'll be watching Game 4 with a detective's eye and an informant's lack of loyalty."
He vanished.
Kieran looked at me. The corner of his mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile.
I closed my eyes. Ribs aching. Engine humming. Let the noise carry me toward something adjacent to sleep.
Game 4. Nashville again. Second period. Four minutes left.
I drove the net. Full commitment. Elbows out. Stick flat. The space in front of the crease was mine. I'd been paying rent on it since October.
Their defenseman had been working me all series. He played the body with the belief that enough hits would eventually change my address. He didn't know me well.
The puck cycled low. Cross held it along the wall. Rook pinched from the point.
I turned to establish position. Read the goalie's stance and the coverage rotation the way Kieran had taught me when we reviewed film, anticipating what was about to happen instead of reacting to what was.
A hit came from my blind side.
It wasn't the defenseman I'd been battling. It was his partner. Full speed, shoulder through the numbers between my shoulder blades.
My chest hit the post.
The iron caught me directly in the sternum and folded me around it. The air left my lungs in one forced exhale.
My helmet hit the ice. Arena noise flattened to a hum.
I checked in with my body. Ribs screaming. Neck stiff but mobile. Legs present. Vision tunneled but clearing.
I heard the bench shift, twenty bodies leaning forward.
Then Kieran moved.
I didn't see it. I was face down, trying to remember how to breathe.
I heard the first stride, and then he stopped.
With a glove off, I pressed my palm flat. The cold steadied me. Rose to one knee. Then both skates.
Pain flashed in my chest. I rolled my shoulder. Full range. Painful, but full.
Skated to the bench under my own power. The crowd cheered.
A trainer appeared with a penlight and questions.
"Bruised. Not broken. Let me play."
The trainer looked at Markel. Markel looked at me.
"One shift. We reassess."
Four spots down, Kieran sat with his water bottle on his thigh. Gloves off. Left hand gripping the bench edge hard enough to whiten his knuckles.
Markel sent me out with Varga's line. Forty seconds of controlled hockey that told the building I was still here.
When I came off, Kieran's line was next over the boards.
He delivered sixty-three seconds of clean, furious play.
Won every battle. Finished a check that sent their forward into the glass hard enough to rattle the dasher.
Nashville at night smelled like fryer grease and river water. The hotel was downtown. Through the window, neon bled pink and blue across the wet pavement. It had rained while we played. The city carried on without us.
I sat on the edge of the bed in boxers and a t-shirt, with an ice pack taped to my ribs. TV on low. Playoff coverage. They showed the hit once. I watched my body fold around the post and turned it off.
A knock came at 10:35.
It was Kieran wearing sweatpants and an Ironhawks t-shirt. He looked at the ice pack.
"Trainer said I'm fine."
"I know. I asked. Can I come in?"
He didn't hover. Moved my jacket from the desk chair to the closet hook and sat down.
I lowered myself onto the bed. The mattress dipped, and the ice pack crinkled.
Kieran leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
"You stayed down for two seconds."
"I know."
"Longest two seconds of my life. Including the elevator."
I looked at him. The overhead light cast shadows in the hollows under his eyes. He hadn't been sleeping either. Broadway bass pulsed faintly through the wall, a honky-tonk's rhythm section carrying on into the night.
"I almost came out there. Wasn't thinking. I moved without thinking. Rook would've had to tackle me."
"Rook's too old to tackle anyone."
"Rook is ageless and would absolutely flatten me if necessary."
A sound escaped me. It wasn't quite a laugh. My ribs would veto that.
I adjusted the ice pack. The cold had gone from sharp to numb, doing its job.
"I don't want to hide anymore." It was true, and I was too tired to hold it back.
Kieran stopped looking at the ceiling. He looked at me.
"Me either."
We didn't have a plan. The series was still going. We still had morality clauses neither of us could renegotiate from a Nashville hotel room at eleven o'clock at night.
What changed was our framework for the future. We weren't guarding a secret anymore.
Kieran moved to the bed and sat beside me.
Our shoulders touched. Through two layers of cotton and the chemical cold of the ice pack, I felt the heat of him.
"You need to be careful with these." He touched the edge of the trainer's wrap where it met my skin. Checking the adhesion the way you'd check tape on a stick.
He kept his fingers there, touching the strip of skin between the wrap and the waistband of my boxers.
I turned my head. He was right there.
"Your ribs—"
"Are fine."
"They're not fine. You got folded around a goalpost four hours ago."
"Then be careful."
He looked at me. "I don't know how to be careful with you. I've been trying all year. I'm bad at it."
"Yeah. You are." I blinked back wetness at the corners of my eyes.
He kissed me.
It wasn't careful. His hand slid from the wrap to the back of my neck, fingers raking into my hair, and his tongue pushed into my mouth, tangling with mine.
I leaned in. My ribs protested, and I didn't care.
He tasted like hotel toothpaste and underneath it something familiar, Kieran.
His thumb traced the edge of the bruise through the wrap. I flinched. He pulled back.
"Sorry—"
"Don't stop."
He paused. Read my face. Whatever he found there made his breath catch, a small involuntary sound that I filed next to the knee bounce and the white knuckles.
He kissed me again. Slower. His hand was careful around the wrap, while his lips and tongue were not careful at all. I stopped thinking and let instinct take over.
"Game 5," he said. "Two days. Home ice."
"I know."
"We should sleep."
"Stay," I said.
He did.
I turned off the lamp. The room went dark except for the parking lot light through the curtains and the glow of my phone on the nightstand.
The queen-sized hotel bed was narrow for two full-sized athletes. We lay on our sides, Kieran's arm around me, and my back pressed against his chest. His breathing slowed against my shoulder blade.
He kissed the back of my neck just below the hairline. "Heathcliff," he said into my skin. Barely audible.
Nobody called me that. I'd shortened it before anyone could use it against me: kids at school, coaches, teammates, reporters, everyone. The full name remained on paperwork, in the mouths of announcers, and in my mother's voice.
He knew the story of where it came from—Mom reading Wuthering Heights in a sterile breakroom. A name that she believed would mean I could never disappear.
He said the whole thing. Into the dark. Into the skin at the back of my neck.
I closed my eyes. The series would continue whether or not we were ready.
I was ready to let it come.