Chapter 2
Jamie
What a fucking piece of shit.
I give this team everything. Always. A hundred percent, every single time — I come early, leave late, stay after practice to run drills with any guys who need the extra work. Watch film when everyone else is sleeping. I show up to every optional session like it’s mandatory.
Whatever the team needs, I’m there.
And this is the thanks I get. Rhys Callahan sitting on a bench with a towel over his face telling me to shut up. Like it wasn’t even worth it to look at me while he talked all that shit.
Callahan and his constant, exhausting backtalk.
Part of me wants to hand him captain for a day just so he can see what it actually feels like. Watch him drown in it. But that’s not a captain’s thought, so I push it down and keep moving through the locker room, stopping to clap a hand on a shoulder here, say an encouraging word there.
Because this loss is sitting on all of us and I know it. 4-1 is the kind of score that follows you home. Because we were right there and something broke down and we couldn’t fix it in time.
It’s the middle of the season and we’re getting buried.
We're talented. Individually this lineup is good — Kowalski is one of the best defensive players in the conference, Bennett is finally starting to realize what he's capable of as goalie, and Callahan is — well.
Callahan is frustrating for a lot of reasons but his game isn't one of them.
The problem is we play like strangers. Like a bunch of guys who happened to show up on the same ice and are waiting to see what everyone else does first.
I make my way through the sea of disappointment in the locker room, trudge towards the showers, hang my head under the cold spray and just stand there for a minute. Let the noise in my brain dull as much as it's going to.
The locker room is mostly silent around me. That exhausted silence that only comes after a loss you felt coming and couldn’t stop anyway. We’ve been grinding all week — practice, film sessions, conditioning — and we skated out there tonight and got absolutely murdered.
Hockey is my life. That’s it, full stop.
School was never my thing, never came easy the way the ice did. I do good enough to keep my scholarship, but not good enough that I have other options. Not like other people here do. So I don’t appreciate anyone making it harder for me.
Getting picked captain this year meant everything to me, more than I’ve told anyone, more than I’d know how to say.
So when someone gets between me and the thing I’ve worked hardest for — it lands deep in my chest like a bad hit.
Especially when that someone is a guy who seems to care about absolutely nothing.
I get dressed slowly — white tee, shorts, taking my time — and wince sharply when I rotate my shoulder the wrong way.
That asshole Monroe caught me hard in the third period and it’s already starting to stiffen up.
I make a mental note to ice it before bed and immediately forget about it when I hear footsteps behind me.
“You wanted to see me?”
Right. I almost forgot. I take my time turning around and finish lacing up my shoes before I look at him. Trying to take a beat to calm myself down first. Let myself settle.
Rhys is freshly showered, dark hair slicked back with a few loose strands starting to curl around his face, a single drop of water still sitting in the hollow of his throat.
He looks completely unbothered, which somehow makes it worse.
It’s the most aggravating thing about him—he always looks unbothered.
“What’s it gonna take?” I say. “What’s your deal? Why do you always have something to prove with me?”
“No, I don’t. At least not out loud.”
“Not always with your mouth. But you say it with everything else — the looks, the glares, the whole show you do. If you’ve got something you want to say, just say it.”
His expression shifts. His dark eyes go almost black when he’s angry, I’ve noticed. Like the color drains right out of them.
“Fine.” He crosses his arms. “You really want to hear it? I think we’ve been playing like shit all season and you don’t know how to get us working as a unit. I think you're so focused on controlling everything else that you can't see you're part of the problem.”
The fury that moves through me is immediate and physical.
This fucking guy.
This guy who coasts in late, treats every rule like a suggestion, has never once seemed to carry the weight of what it actually means to be held accountable to something — standing in front of me telling me I'm the problem.
I cross the distance between us and push him hard, flat palmed against his chest.
He makes me feel violent in ways I don’t know what to do with.
“What the fuck—”
"You've been checked out since you got here," I say, and my voice is shaking with how hard I'm struggling to hold it level.
"Half-present, doing whatever you want, showing up when it's convenient.
I'm putting in everything I have every single day and you're standing here talking shit like you've earned that.
I'm your captain. That's not up for debate. "
I turn back to my locker to grab my bag. I’m done with this conversation. I don’t have the energy or the bandwidth to deal with Rhys right now. Except my shoulder seizes when I reach for the strap and I stumble forward, catching myself against the locker with a grunt.
There’s a beat of silence behind me.
I force myself upright and stare straight ahead. Looking at him right now feels too dangerous. I grab my bag, slam the locker shut, hard enough to rattle the row, and throw Rhys a middle finger without turning around.
A captain knows when to walk away. Even when every part of him wants to do the exact opposite.
But I’m not perfect.