Chapter 36
Jamie
Two weeks off the ice.
I've never hated a sentence more in my life.
I show up anyway. Every practice. Every film session.
Every drill I can't participate in. I stand at the boards in my compression sleeve and watch and take notes and talk to Fitch because this is still my team and two weeks off the ice does not mean two weeks off everything.
I couldn't stay away even if I wanted to. This is my life.
It just means I have to watch. Which means I have nothing to do but notice things. And what I notice, on day one, is that Rhys doesn't look at me, not once.
It's different from before.
Before, when things were bad between us, there was still something underneath it — the deliberate not-looking that was its own kind of looking.
The awareness that lived under all the hostility.
I always knew exactly where he was in a room.
I think he always knew where I was too. That was the thing about us even at our worst — we were always leaning towards each other even when we were trying not to.
This is nothing like that. This is cold. Empty. Indifferent in a way that hostility never was. Hostility at least means you matter enough to someone to make them angry. This is Rhys deciding I'm not even worth the energy.
I miss the fire between us so much it's embarrassing.
This nothingness — it fucking sucks.
He skates like the ice was made for him.
That loose, effortless quality that used to make me furious and now just pisses me off in a different way.
He talks to Bennett. Helps Cooper with his positioning, patient and intense in a way that makes me think of early morning sessions that feel like a lifetime ago. Makes Fitch laugh twice in an hour.
He just doesn't look at the boards.
Not once.
He doesn't look at me.
By Wednesday I've developed a specific routine.
Same spot at the boards every practice. I tell myself it's because the sight lines are good from here, because I can see the full ice, because it's the most useful position for someone in my situation.
It has nothing to do with the fact that this is where Rhys skates closest to on his rotation.
He goes past me on Thursday close enough that I could whisper his name and he'd hear it.
I don't say his name. He doesn't slow down anyway.
Friday, Kowalski comes to stand beside me at the boards between drills. Both of us watching the team run a power play formation in silence.
"He's good," Kowalski says.
I don't ask who he means.
"Yeah," I respond, regretfully.
Kowalski glances at me sideways. Says nothing else.
On the ice Rhys takes a pass from Bryce and puts it top shelf without breaking stride. The whole team reacts. Fitch claps once, sharp, the way he only does when something is truly impressive.
Rhys skates back to position.
Still doesn't look at the boards.
After practice I stay behind. I tell myself I'm reviewing plays.
I have a notebook. It's a convincing cover.
The locker room empties slowly. Showers running, voices carrying, the usual noise winding down until it disappears completely.
I sit on the bench with my notebook open and wait for someone I can't name and probably shouldn't want to notice me.
Rhys comes out of the shower in just his towel. Moving with the same calm he's had all week — unhurried, fully contained, fully ignoring me, and sits at his locker.
I watch him in my peripheral vision and think about the ice.
About going down. About that one unguarded second on his face before I opened my mouth and turned it into something it didn't have to be.
Something that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with me and my inability to let anyone in without immediately finding a reason to push them back out.
I almost say something.
Just his name. Just — hey.
He pulls his shirt over his head, stands up, and picks up his bag.
Walks out without a single glance in my direction.
I sit in the empty locker room with my useless notebook and my useless shoulder. And my useless fucking mouth that won’t open.
I did that. It's my fault. I was scared and I took it out on him and now I'm sitting here with nothing to hide behind and nowhere to put that except exactly where it belongs.
On me.
――――――――
Day nine.
I know it's day nine because I've been counting and I hate that I've been counting and I cannot stop. Nine days of standing at the boards watching Rhys skate like he owns every inch of ice he touches and not once — not once — having those dark eyes come anywhere near where I'm standing.
Near me.
I've never had to try with him before. That's the thing.
He was always the one who showed up, who pushed, who closed the distance before I had to decide anything.
He put his mouthguard in my mouth before a game and told me to be a good boy and walked away like he hadn't just dismantled me completely.
He showed up at my shower stall. He cornered me in a bathroom at a bar and said things I couldn't unhear.
He was always the one willing to move. And I spent the whole time backing away. Running from the locker room. Running from the party. Running from his house. Running from the shower. Running and running and running and calling it self-preservation when really it was just —
Fear.
Simple. Stupid. Ordinary fear.
I watch him pull up at the far end of the ice, chest heaving slightly, pushing his dark hair back under his helmet. He says something to Fitch and Fitch nods. Rhys nods back and skates away.
Still doesn't look at the boards.
The thing is — and I'm just going to let myself think it, just this once, standing here where nobody can see my face — I don't want him to stop.
I don't want the cold shoulder. I don't want the careful distance or this version of Rhys that has decided I'm not worth the trouble.
I don't want to have finally become someone he's given up on.
I want the infuriating version. The relentless one. The one who never once let me pretend he didn't exist, who made my heart race every time he got close because I never knew what he was going to do, and somehow that was the most alive I'd felt in years.
I want him to look at me.
That's it. I want him to look at me the way he used to and I have no idea what to do with that because I've spent my entire life being very good at identifying exactly what I want and then finding the most efficient way to not let myself have it.
I hear my father’s voice sometimes. Hockey is everything. Man up. Don't be soft. Don't be anything anyone can see.
But my father is not here.
And I'm standing here at these boards on day nine of watching Rhys Callahan not look at me and I'm starting to understand that the voice in my head isn't protecting me.
It's just keeping me alone.
I press my hand flat against the boards and continue to watch him skate. I make a decision so quietly I almost don't notice I've made it.
Fine.
My turn.
――――――――
I find him after practice.
Not by accident. I waited until the locker room cleared out completely — until the last shower shut off and the last voice faded down the hall and it was just us and the fluorescent lights and the silence of a room that's been loud for an hour and suddenly isn't.
Rhys is at his locker with his back to me.
He knows I'm here. That awareness between us has never stopped working regardless of what either of us has decided to do about it.
It's the one thing that survived everything — the anger, the distance, the nine days of nothing.
My body still registers him before my brain does.
I think his still does the same with me. I hope.
He still doesn't turn around.
I clear my throat.
Nothing.
"Callahan."
"Nash." Flat. He keeps moving — folding something, putting it in his bag, deeply occupied apparently with the same contents of a locker he's had all season. I stand there with my hands in my pockets and every single thing I rehearsed over and over again evaporating completely.
God, he pisses me off.
Relax. Stay cool. Don't fuck this up again.
It's five words. You've said harder things.
"I was out of line," I grit between my teeth, finally managing to say something.
He stops moving, but doesn’t turn around.
"On the ice. When you—" I stop. Start again. "When I went down. You were just—" Another stop. Jesus Christ, Nash. "I shouldn't have said what I said. In front of everyone. I was out of line and I—"
"Are you apologizing to me right now?"
"I'm trying to."
"Right." He turns around slowly. Arms crossed. Face unreadable. "Continue."
"I was out of line," I say again. Same words.
Same delivery. I'm aware of how it sounds.
I'm aware a normal person would put more into this — feelings, expression, something that resembles human emotion.
I'm not built for more than this right now and he's just going to have to accept that this is really me giving it all of my effort.
He looks at me for a long moment while I've been just standing here holding my breath. "Okay," he says, evenly, giving me nothing back.
"Okay?"
"Okay, Nash. You were out of line. Noted." He turns back to his locker and I just stand there.
That's — not what I expected. I don't know exactly what I expected but it wasn't this.
Some version of Rhys that made this harder.
Not the one that finds the thing that gets under my skin, not the one that pushes back, that turns everything into something I have to fight my way through. Just a flat wall and his back to me.
"That's it?" I ask.
He throws his arms up. "What do you want me to say here?"
"I don't know. Something. You always have something to say."
He glances at me over his shoulder. "You want me to make you feel better about it?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"I just—" I exhale. "I wanted to say it."
He's quiet for a beat. Then he turns around fully and leans back against the locker and looks at me with that look — the assessing one, the one that has always seen right through everything I put up — and I hold still under it because I owe him that much. At minimum that. Probably much more, if I’m starting to be honest with myself.
"You know what your problem is?" he asks.
"I'm sure you'll tell me."
"Your apology sounds like it was written by a robot.
" The corner of his mouth moves. Just slightly.
Just enough that I can breathe again and my heart can stop pounding.
"Like you read it off a card. Very professional.
Very thorough. Zero feelings whatsoever.
" He tilts his head inquisitively. "Six out of ten. "
"I—" I stop. "Wait, six?"
"Six and a half, actually. You kept eye contact the whole time. That was brave. That saved you from a five."
My chest unknots against my will and red creeps up my neck. "Are you seriously grading my apology?"
"Someone has to. You clearly didn't practice."
"I practiced all week." The admission comes out before I can stop it, and I know I'm fully red now. He goes very still for half a second. Something shifts in his expression. Just enough. Like I just handed him something he didn't expect.
"Nash." He tilts his head again. "You said I was out of line twice in the same speech."
"I know—"
"That's not an apology." He tsks softly, looking far too pleased with himself.
And there it is — his mouth doing the almost-smile and his eyes going warmer underneath it and I'm standing here in this empty locker room having just survived the most painful thirty seconds of my week and somehow this is better.
So much better than nine days of nothing that it makes me furious how much better it is.
How did I survive nine days without this?
"It was genuine," I say.
"I know it was." He says it simply. Like he actually means it. "That's not the problem. The problem is it was very you and very you is—" he pauses, "—not enough right now."
"What does that mean?"
"Say it properly."
"I just did—"
"No." His voice drops further. Just for me. "Not I was out of line." He holds my gaze and I can feel my resolve slipping with the intensity of it.
"Say it properly, Jamie. Apologize."
My name in his mouth does what it always does.
I don’t fight it and just let it this time.
I savor it. I’ll do whatever to get out of this hole I dug.
"I'm sorry," I say, openly. The words sitting heavy in my mouth before I let them out.
He's right. They cost something. I'm not sure I knew how much until just now.
But I’ll give them to him anyway.
He doesn't move. Just watches me. Waiting.
"For what?"
I don't break eye contact. "For what I said on the ice. When you came over and I—" I stop. "I was scared and I took it out on you and you were just trying to help me and you didn't deserve it. None of it." A beat. "I'm sorry, Rhys. Really sorry."
He looks back at me for a long moment. The almost-smile still at the edges but underneath it something very real that I haven't seen in a while and have been missing without letting myself admit it.
"Okay," he says, finally.
"Okay?"
"That one was real." He picks up his bag and steps toward the door. Stops with his hand on the frame and doesn’t turn around. "I missed you, too," he says. And I can hear it — the smile fully there now, big and private, just for this room and these two people in it.
The door swings shut and I stand in the empty locker room for a moment, a smile on my face too.
I have him back.
Just like that.
Just that simple and that hard and that worth it.
I have him back.