Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
DYLAN
There’s a moment, right before the puck drops, where everything goes silent.
Doesn’t matter if the arena’s packed, it doesn’t matter how loud the crowd is or how many cameras are shoved in your face. It all disappears for a second. One breath, one heartbeat. And in that moment I forget who I am.
It used to be the best part of the game.
Now, sometimes, it feels like the only part I can stand.
The rest of it, everything off the ice, is noise I haven’t figured out how to live with yet.
The press, the pressure, the pretending.
The constant feeling that I’ve fooled everyone, and one day, they’re going to wake up and realise I’ve got no right to be here.
That I’m not the player they think I am.
Jonno’s voice barks across the rink, calling the team into a huddle for the pre-game review.
I hang back near the bench, ankle taped, shoulder wrapped under my kit.
I’m technically cleared to skate now, but there’s still hesitance in my stride, a phantom pain, and I can’t tell if it’s physical or something worse.
They said I was a natural. That I had ‘raw talent,’ that I was ‘born to play.’ It’s bullshit. No one’s born to do this. You claw your way in. You bleed for it. And even then, sometimes, you still don’t feel like you deserve it.
I remember being seventeen, all bones and nerves, standing in the dressing room of my first semi-pro team with kit two sizes too big and hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.
I didn’t speak for the first week. Just watched, head down, absorbing every word, every drill.
They called me ‘Mute.’ Said it like a joke, but it stuck.
A scout noticed me two months in. Took me aside after a game I don’t even remember playing. Told me I had a shot. That I had the kind of instinct you can’t teach.
I thanked him like it was nothing, then went home and threw up.
There’s something deeply messed up about being good at something that also slowly eats away at you.
People look at the stat sheets, the highlight reels, the goal tallies.
They see confidence, swagger, and someone in control.
What they don’t see is me lying awake at night, dissecting every missed pass, every shift where I could’ve hustled harder, every time I let someone blow past me on the boards.
They don’t see the fear.
The constant need to prove myself. Again. And again. And again.
Every contract I’ve signed has come with an expiry date, and every time I hit the ice, a part of me is trying to earn it all over again. As if it could all vanish if I screw up one too many times. And maybe it could.
The fear never goes away, it just gets quieter. Easier to ignore when you’re scoring goals and the fans are chanting your name. But when you’re benched? When you’re injured? When you’re not useful?
That’s when the voice starts again. Told you so. You’re just a fluke. A flash in the pan. A mistake.
“You’re late,” Mia’s voice cuts through the static in my head later that afternoon, when I find her in the gym again, this time pinning rehab routines to the noticeboard with that sharp look she gets when someone’s irritated her. Someone always has.
I’m not late, but I don’t argue. Instead, I say, “Do you ever feel like you don’t belong?”
It catches her off guard. I see it. But she recovers quickly, “It’s a daily occurrence in a building full of men who think they know more than me.” Then she adds, with a small shrug, “It doesn’t mean they’re right.”
I laugh, but it doesn’t reach all the way through me.
She gestures for me to sit and starts checking my shoulder. Her fingers are clinical, practiced, but I still feel every place they touch. “I didn’t think I’d make it this far.” I tell her.
“Why not?” Her tone is flat but not unkind.
I try to explain it. “The doubt clings to success like mould on a wall you never quite finish scrubbing. Every good thing feels like it belongs to someone else, like I’m borrowing this life and someone’s going to come back for it.
” I pause for a second, wondering if I’ve said too much.
But I carry on anyway. “The league makes you feel replaceable. Even when you’re winning. ” Especially when you’re winning.
“That sounds exhausting.” She’s not wrong.
After my session, I find myself walking back onto the rink long after everyone’s gone home. The lights are half off, but there’s enough glow left from the ceiling to see the lines on the ice, faded and familiar.
I lace up again, slowly. Carefully.
There’s a reason I keep coming back here. A reason I stay late, sneak onto the ice when I shouldn’t. It’s the only place I can hear myself think and not want to rip my own head off. Out here, it’s just me and the ice, the sound of my breath and blades.
I start skating gentle laps. Nothing aggressive. Just movement.
It feels good. Not perfect, my ankle still catches, and my shoulder twinges when I shift too far, but good enough to remind me I’m not finished yet.
I’ve made it further than anyone ever expected.
Especially me. But that voice still follows.
That whisper in the back of my skull that says I’ve cheated my way here.
That the people cheering in the stands don’t really know me.
I wonder if Mia hears that voice too. I wonder if that’s why she sees through mine so easily.
I end up outside the physio room again. I don’t knock this time. I lean on the doorframe and wait. She doesn’t look surprised to see me, but she doesn’t tell me to piss off, either.
Instead, she nods toward the second chair and says “You can sit if you promise not to bleed on anything.”
I don’t talk much and she doesn’t push. She just carries on tidying up, taping up a few new ice packs, and updating the board with notes from the day.
Mia moves like someone who’s always three steps ahead, like she’s learned the hard way never to let her guard down.
And I get that. “What would you be doing if you weren’t here?
If you hadn’t taken this job, and left your family behind. ”
“Probably be stuck in some miserable clinic back home, watching other people live my life for me.” She glances up at me as she speaks, but it’s fleeting.
“I get that.” And I do, I feel it just as deeply.
It’s not a big moment. There’s no swelling music or deep eye contact. Just two people sitting in a room, quietly realising they’re more similar than they thought.
I stand to leave, my shoulder is stiff but manageable.
“You can stop icing it so much now; you’re giving yourself freezer burn.”
And as I walk out, I think maybe this is what belonging looks like.
Not fans. Not headlines. Not stats or trophies.
Just someone who sees the parts of you you’re not proud of and doesn’t flinch.