Chapter 28
Skyler
I’d been smiling since I’d closed the door behind Jacks, smiling through my shower, smiling while I brushed my teeth, smiling during the entire drive to the practice facility while some terrible pop song played on the radio that I would normally have changed but instead found myself singing along to because apparently I was the kind of person who sang pop songs now.
Jacks had done that to me.
Jacks and his coconut hair and his terrible jokes and the way he’d curled into me last night like I was built to hold him.
This is what it’s supposed to feel like.
I’d said those words in the dark. They’d been barely a whisper. They’d also felt like the truest thing I’d ever spoken.
And now I was carrying that truth into the Lightning practice facility at 9:42 a.m., wearing it on my face like a neon sign I couldn’t switch off.
Get it together, Shaw. You’re a professional. Act like one.
I pulled into my usual spot, killed the engine, and spent thirty seconds trying to rearrange my face into something that didn’t scream, “I had the most transformative night of my life and I’m still processing it.”
Then I practiced my neutral expression in the rearview mirror.
It looked unhinged.
Like a serial killer trying to blend in at a PTA meeting.
I tried serious.
God, that was worse. I looked constipated.
I settled on what I hoped was “pleasantly rested” and headed inside.
The locker room was already half full when I walked in, with guys in various stages of suiting up, and the usual pre-practice chatter bouncing off tile and metal.
Murph was holding court near his stall, recounting some story that involved hand gestures forceful enough to qualify as a contact sport, and Kowalski was taping his stick with the meditative focus of a monk.
The equipment guys moved through the space with quiet efficiency, laying out gear, adjusting skates, and keeping the machine running.
It was a normal morning.
I could do this.
“Morning, Cap!” Murph called out. “You look—” He stopped, squinted, then tilted his head like a dog hearing a strange noise. “Different. You look different. Did you get a haircut?”
“No.”
“New skincare routine?”
“No.”
“Botox?”
“I’m twenty-seven, Murph.”
“Preventative Botox is a thing. My sister does it. She looks amazing.”
He squinted harder. The others began to stare, ignoring the boredom of skates for the tantalizing sensation of fresh prey caught in a web.
“Something’s different, though. I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Nothing’s different, Murph. I slept well. That’s it.”
“Nobody sleeps that well. You look like you just got back from a spa retreat in Bali.”
“I’ve never been to Bali.”
“Then you should go, because whatever Bali does to people, something did it to you.”
I escaped to my stall before he could continue his investigation, pulling my gear from the shelf with more force than necessary. The trick was to keep moving, to stay busy, to not make eye contact for too long.
The plan worked for approximately eleven minutes.
Then practice started.
And the facade began to crack.
But not because I sucked. Oh, no. I was on.
I wasn’t good. I was incandescent.
Every pass found its target, every shot hit its spot. My edges were sharp, my hands were quick, and I was seeing the puck three moves ahead like the whole game had slowed down just for me.
Coach noticed. Of course he did. He noticed everything.
But the guys noticed, too.
I could feel them watching, exchanging glances, and trying to figure out what had shifted.
During a three-on-two drill, I pulled off a between-the-legs pass to Tyler that was so precise, so perfectly weighted, that he stopped skating and stared at me.
“What the hell was that?” he said.
“A pass.”
“That wasn’t a pass. That was art. What did you eat for breakfast?”
“An acai bowl,” I said, starting to skate away.
I was still close enough to hear him mutter behind me, “I’m switching to acai bowls.”
Coach’s whistle ended our conversation, and practice continued.
I played like a man possessed—or, more accurately, like a man unburdened. Something had unlocked in me, some tension I’d been carrying without realizing it. My body felt lighter and freer, like I’d been skating with weights strapped to my ankles and someone had cut them loose.
I knew exactly why.
And apparently, so did everyone else, even if they couldn’t identify the source.
When Coach blew the final whistle, the locker room buzzed with the usual post-practice energy.
Guys peeled off gear, headed for showers, and debated lunch plans.
I moved through my routine on autopilot while trying not to think about what Jacks had done to me fourteen hours ago, then again as the sun rose this morning.
I failed.
The memories surfaced, and all I knew was his mouth, his hands, and the sound he’d made when I kissed him. I felt my face flush so violently that I had to shove my head into my locker and pretend to look for something.
“You okay in there?” Tyler’s voice came from behind me. “You’ve been rummaging in your locker for two minutes. It’s not that deep.”
“Looking for my phone.”
“It’s in your hand.”
I pulled my head out of the locker.
Tyler was leaning against the stall divider, freshly showered, arms crossed, and wearing an expression I’d seen a hundred times, the one that said, “I know something’s going on, and I’m going to wait right here until you tell me what it is.”
“Got a minute?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Not here. Grab a shower and meet me in the film room.”
That was unusual.
The film room was where we went for serious conversations, generally about injury news, lineup changes, or the occasional come-to-Jesus talk when someone’s effort wasn’t meeting expectations.
My stomach clenched.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Everything’s great.” He smiled, but it was his patient smile, the one with layers. “Shower. Film room. Ten minutes.”
I showered in seven.
Tyler had commandeered two rolling chairs and positioned them facing each other in the middle of the tape room. The whiteboard behind him was covered in Coach’s offensive zone diagrams, arrows and X’s mapping plays we’d been running all week. The flat-screen on the wall was dark.
I dropped into the chair across from him and waited.
Tyler studied me for a long moment.
“So,” he said. “You going to tell me what’s going on, or do I have to guess?”
“Nothing’s going on.”
“Skyler Bernard Shaw.”
Oh, shit. This was bad.
He’d used my full name, the one few knew because the whole Bernard Shaw thing was too cliché to be real. He hadn’t called me Cap or Shaw like normal.
“You’ve been different for weeks,” he said.
“First you were distracted, then anxious, then distracted again. You almost bit Murph’s head off in Vancouver for no reason.
Then you went outside alone in Calgary after Erik’s speech and came back looking like you’d seen a ghost. Today, you walk in looking like sunshine personified and play the best hockey of your career, probably of your life.
” He leaned forward. “Something happened. It’s clearly something big, and I think you need to talk about it. ”
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
Tyler waited.
He was maddeningly good at waiting.
It was one of his best qualities as a friend and one of his most annoying qualities as a human being.
“I’m seeing someone.”
The words felt enormous.
Two words—“I’m” and “seeing” and “someone”—okay, three words, technically, and yet they landed in the quiet room with the force of a building collapse.
Tyler nodded. “Okay. That’s great. Is it someone I know?”
This was the moment.
The cliff edge.
The point of no return.
I thought about Jacks, about his patience and his warmth and the way he said he’ll be there either way with such quiet certainty that I almost cried.
I thought about Erik’s speech.
When I stopped fighting it, everything got simple.
I thought about lying in bed last night with Jacks asleep in my arms, whispering truths I’d been hiding from for years.
This is what it’s supposed to feel like.
“It’s Jacks,” I said.
Tyler didn’t react.
Not a flinch, nor a blink, not even a widening of his eyes.
He sat there, steady as a stone, and nodded.
“Jackson Armstrong,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.”
“The guy from Barbacks.”
“Yeah.”
“The former FSU linebacker whose jersey you have framed in your apartment.”
“I . . . yeah.”
Silence.
It stretched between us, long and terrifying, while my heart tried to hammer its way through my sternum and my palms turned slick against the armrests of the chair.
Then Tyler leaned forward and put his hand on my knee.
“Sky,” he said, and his voice was so gentle, wholly devoid of judgment or surprise. “I’m really, really happy for you.”
I blinked.
And gaped.
And blinked again.
“You are?”
“Of course I am. Jesus, man, I’ve been waiting for this conversation for weeks—or years. I can’t tell time with you anymore. It’s definitely been years.”
“You . . . what?”
“I’m not blind, Sky. Or deaf. And no matter what Murph says, I’m not stupid either.
The way you talk about him, the way you light up when he texts you, the way you’ve been walking around like a man trying to solve a puzzle he’s terrified of—I’ve seen it.
I didn’t want to push. You needed to be ready to tell me.
Shit like that’s too big to squeeze out of a guy.
” He squeezed my knee. “But I’m glad you told me. ”
“You’re not . . . this doesn’t change anything? For you? I mean . . . for us? Between us? Not that there’s an us or anything. Shit. You know what I mean.”