Chapter 14
LIAM
Thursday morning I was in the locker room lacing up for practice when Carter dropped onto the bench beside me.
He didn't say anything right away. Just sat there in the way Carter did when he had something to say and was deciding how to say it.
"You're back in the lineup tonight," he said finally.
"Yeah."
"Storm game. Home ice." He paused. "You ready?"
I pulled the lace tight. "Been ready for eight weeks."
"That's not what I asked."
I looked up. Carter was watching me with that particular expression he reserved for situations he'd decided were his business whether or not you'd invited him in.
"I'm fine," I said.
"You've been a ghost all week. You show up, you skate, you leave. You haven't said more than ten words to anyone." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "And whatever is going on with you and Anne — and don't tell me nothing, because I have eyes — it's been all over both of you since Monday."
I went back to my laces.
"Carter."
"I'm just saying. If you need to talk?—"
"I know. You've said that."
"Has it sunk in yet?"
Despite everything, something loosened slightly in my chest. "A little."
He was quiet for a moment. "Is she okay? Anne?"
"She's doing her job."
"That's not what I asked either."
I finished with my skates and straightened. Looked at him. Carter had been my linemate for three years, my friend for longer than that. He'd seen me through a lot. He'd keep this until I was ready to give it to him.
"It's complicated," I said. "I'll tell you everything when I can."
"Okay." He stood. "But tonight — when you're out there — whatever's in your head, use it. Don't fight it. Use it."
He skated off before I could answer.
The pre-game locker room had its own particular energy.
I'd missed it. The smell of tape and sweat and the sharp cold that drifted in from the ice. The sound of sticks on the concrete floor, the low music someone always put on, the specific rhythm of twenty men getting their minds right before battle.
I sat in my stall and went through my routine.
Shoulder wrap first — Anne's work, the careful athletic tape she'd applied this morning without comment, her hands as precise and professional as they'd been every session this week. Then the ankle. The familiar ritual of it. Everything in order.
I put on my jersey.
Number 17.
Finn had claimed this number. Two months ago, because of a friend's father, completely unaware it had always been mine. He'd found his way to it without anyone pointing the way.
I smoothed the fabric down and looked at myself in the mirror above my stall.
I had a son.
I was a father.
And tonight, for the first time in eight weeks, I was going to play.
Practice ice and game ice were two different things entirely.
I'd been skating for weeks. Drills, systems work, line rushes, all of it. My legs knew the surface. My edges were sharp. The shoulder had been tested in controlled conditions enough times that I trusted it.
But practice didn't have twenty thousand people in the seats. Practice didn't have a scoreboard. Practice didn't have a Storm defenseman who'd been physical all season and had no interest in being careful with my recovery timeline.
During warmups I felt it start to build — that particular current that only existed on game nights. The crowd noise rising as the arena filled. The opposing team at the other end of the ice, real opponents with real intentions. The specific weight of a game jersey versus a practice sweater.
By the time the lights went down and the starting lineups were announced and the crowd came fully alive around us, something in my chest had shifted into a gear it hadn't hit in eight weeks.
This was what I'd been working toward. Not another practice. Not another controlled drill.
This.
The puck dropped.
The Storm were good. Top five in the conference, physical defense, a goalie who'd been lights-out since January. We'd split our season series with them two games apiece, and tonight mattered — a win put us in prime position heading into the first round.
I felt good. Better than I'd expected. The shoulder held through the first contact, through the first board battle, through the first time a Storm defenseman caught me with a shoulder check I didn't quite dodge fast enough. A flare of heat, nothing more. Anne's work holding.
First period ended scoreless.
In the intermission Coach said the things coaches say. I heard maybe half of it. The other half of my brain was somewhere else entirely.
Not Finn. Not Anne. Something bigger and harder to name. The feeling of eight weeks of PT sessions and cold mornings and careful exercises and professional silence — all of it accumulating, building, needing somewhere to go.
Carter looked at me across the locker room.
Use it, his look said.
Six minutes into the second period.
Carter won the face-off clean and pushed it back to our defenseman, who moved it up the right side. I was already reading the play — the Storm's left defenseman cheating toward Carter, the lane opening down the middle before he'd fully committed.
I cut through it.
The pass came exactly where I needed it, tape to tape, and I was in alone on the goalie with one defenseman closing from behind.
No time to think. No time to feel anything.
Just the puck and the net and every hour I'd ever put on the ice taking over.
I went to the backhand at the last second — a move I'd been working since juniors, the one that came out when my body trusted itself completely — and tucked it top corner on the short side.
The red light went.
The crowd detonated.
I don't know what I felt in that moment.
Too many things at once. Relief and rage and grief and something that was almost joy but had too many jagged edges to be called that cleanly.
Carter hit me first, then Kowalski, then the whole line piling on, and I stood in the middle of it and let myself have it for three seconds.
Then I skated back to center ice.
One wasn't enough. One didn't touch what was in my chest.
The second goal came with four minutes left in the third.
We were up one, the Storm pressing hard, the last period the kind of grinding physical hockey that wore on you if you let it.
I'd taken two more board hits, given a few back.
The shoulder was complaining now — not screaming, just a steady reminder that it had been eight weeks and this was real contact and it remembered the injury even if I was trying to ignore it.
I didn't care.
I wanted the puck on my stick. Wanted one more chance.
It came off a turnover in the neutral zone — Storm defenseman miscommunicated with his winger, and I read it before either of them did. I picked the puck off a bad pass and was gone, one stride ahead of the backcheck, alone in the zone with just the goalie and everything I'd been carrying all week.
The goalie came out to cut the angle.
I shot off my back foot — harder than I needed to, more weight behind it than was strictly necessary, everything in my legs and my hips and my shoulder that was already burning — and the puck hit the back of the net so hard it bounced back out.
The goal horn sounded.
The arena lost its mind.
I stood at the top of the crease and breathed.
This one I didn't celebrate right away. Couldn't. My chest was too full of something that didn't have a name — wasn't quite grief, wasn't quite relief, wasn't quite anything I'd felt before.
I just stood there for one suspended second while the crowd roared around me and my teammates converged and somewhere in the noise of twenty thousand people I heard nothing at all.
Then Carter's glove hit the back of my helmet and I was back.
Final score: Blaze 2, Storm 0.
The locker room afterward was the loud, loose, relieved kind. We'd needed this win. Everyone knew it. The playoffs were two weeks out and momentum mattered and tonight we had it back.
Coach found me when things quieted down.
"Good to have you back, O'Connell."
"Good to be back."
He studied me for a moment with that coach look — assessing, measuring, deciding what to say. "Both goals on pure instinct. Not overthinking. That's what I need from you in the playoffs."
"That's what I'll give you."
He nodded. Clapped me once on the shoulder — the good one — and moved on.
Carter waited until we were the last two in the room.
"You want to tell me now?" he said.
I leaned back against my stall. Thought about it.
"I have a son," I said.
Carter stared at me.
"Five years old. His name is Finn. He lives in Chicago with Anne." I paused. "I found out last week."
The silence stretched.
"Last week," Carter repeated.
"Last week."
"And you've been coming to practice."
"Had to."
He processed this in the Carter way — quietly, thoroughly, not rushing to fill the silence.
"How is he?" he finally asked. "Finn."
Something shifted in my chest at the sound of his name. "He's great. Smart. Funny." I stopped. "He fixed his own hockey stick grip. Had it almost right and nobody showed him. Just figured it out."
Carter was quiet for another moment. Then: "He sounds like you."
"Yeah." My voice came out rough. "He does."
Carter stood. Grabbed his bag. "You know you're going to figure this out, right? All of it."
"I don't know that."
"I do." He shrugged like it was simple. "You just played two of the cleanest goals I've seen from you in three years. All that — whatever you've been carrying — you didn't freeze. You used it." He paused at the door. "You're going to do the same thing with Finn."
He left.
Jonesy appeared in the doorway five minutes later.
He looked around the empty locker room, took in the fact that I was alone, and came in without being invited. Sat down two stalls over. Didn't say anything right away.
That was the thing about Jonesy. He knew when to talk and when to just be there.
"Two goals," he said finally. "First game back."
"Yeah."
"You were somewhere else tonight. I could see it from the face-off circle." He paused. "Good somewhere else. Not distracted. Focused like I haven't seen you in a while."
"I had something to play for."
He nodded slowly. "I heard you and Carter talking. I wasn't eavesdropping — the walls in here aren't exactly soundproof." He glanced at me. "You have a son."
I looked at my hands. "Yeah."
"Finn."
"Yeah."
He was quiet for a moment. The particular quiet of a man who had two kids and a third on the way and understood exactly what that word meant.
"How old?"
"Five."
Another pause. "You okay?"
It was such a simple question. Two words. The kind Jonesy specialized in — no drama, no agenda, just genuine.
"I don't know yet," I said honestly. "Ask me in a week."
He nodded. Stood. Grabbed his bag.
"For the record," he said, pausing at the door, "you're going to be great at it. The dad thing." He looked back. "I've watched you with the rookies for two years. The way you take the time. The patience you have when they're struggling." He shrugged. "That's not nothing, man. That translates."
He left before I could answer.
I sat with that for a while.
I sat alone in the empty locker room for a while.
I thought about Finn on the driveway with the hockey stick. The way he'd turned around to check I was watching every single time. The way his whole face had changed when the puck connected.
Carter was right.
I was going to figure it out.
I had to.
He was counting on me.