Chapter 18
Crash
Jason
The crease smells like cold iron and old sweat.
The linesman’s fingers hover over the puck, my blade set, breath tight in the hollow of my chest where anger lives coiled and waiting.
The barn is a storm—cowbells, drums, someone howling my name like a dare.
Their center crouches opposite, visor low, smirk carved into his face.
“Sleeping with staff suits you,” he chirps, sweet as antifreeze. “Hands softer now.”
Something in me snaps cleanly, the way a stick does when you lean too far into it.
The puck hasn’t even dropped. My gloves hit the ice first—thunk, thunk—like punctuation. The linesman jerks back, whistle half-raised. The chirper grins and obliges, gloves gone, chin up. We both know the choreography.
Left hand on his shoulder seam, right gripping jersey.
Twist, pull. The world narrows to fabric and bone and the part of a man that refuses to stay down.
He lands short, mean jabs that rattle my cage; I take two to find his rhythm and return one that makes his eyes blink slow.
The crowd goes feral. Whistles detonate somewhere distant and useless.
My knuckles bark against his helmet; I aim lower.
We turn in a stumbling waltz, skates carving crescents into the ice.
He talks while he bleeds—“Touch her with those hands?”—and I see red so vivid it whitens everything else.
My hook catches his cheek; a second shot thumps into padding hard enough to fold him.
The linesmen pick their moment, arms snaking in, voices rough with practiced calm: “Let it go, ten, let it go.”
I don’t want to. I do anyway. The smart part of me pries the angry part’s fingers off his sweater. The whistle shrieks, the crowd roars its mix of love and hate.
They march us to the boxes, two sharks nudged apart with aluminum sticks. My chest heaves. The penalty flashes on the board—five each, fighting—and I drop into the hard plastic seat while the door clanks shut like a cell.
Across the red line, he presses gauze to his cheek and mouths something elaborate about my mother.
I ignore him. The Jumbotron loops the replay: me, helmet askew, lip split; him, grinning through blood.
Then the chyron slides up under the footage in glossy tabloid font: STAR FORWARD ERUPTS AMID STAFF RUMOR.
The broadcast team’s mouths move, and maybe it’s better I can’t hear the words.
My phone vibrates under the towel by the water bottles because I’m an idiot who can’t leave it behind.
It buzzes twice, a trapped insect. I don’t pull it out.
I already know what waits there—push alerts, messages from Julia, Nolan’s office, maybe a notification spelling her name.
Rage drums under my ribs, looking for somewhere to land.
I force my eyes back to the ice. Our kill unit hops over the boards.
Kitson taps his stick twice, gives me a look that says breathe.
I do. In through blood, out through consequence.
My hand throbs in time with the crowd. The linesman skates past and taps the glass with his knuckles like a coach reprimanding a dog. I nod once to prove I’m listening.
The clock crawls. I press the hem of my glove to my lip, tasting copper. Every second I sit here is a second she’s out there with my name in the headlines. The thought makes my vision tunnel.
The glass at my shoulder is cold enough to sting through pads.
I lean into it anyway—a poor man’s ice bath for a brain that wants to sprint.
The truck keeps finding me—tight, then wide, then split-screen with the chirper dabbing his cheek like a beauty tutorial.
The chyron cycles through synonyms for tantrum as if the alphabet can make this my fault in more fonts.
My phone won’t stop its small, polite seizures. Three buzzes stack, hesitate, stack again. I give in, angling the towel to peek without making a show of it.
Julia: Interview wall only. No mixed zone.
Julia again: Sponsor wants statement by midnight. Draft in email.
Unknown: Jason, CityNow—off the record if you want to steer this.
Then one from Kit: You good?
I type: Fine. Delete. Clean. Delete. Finally: Win your draws. Send. One breath. It’s not enough.
The Jumbotron throws up last night’s tunnel footage for anyone who missed it during dinner, the red REC dot circled like an omen.
The crowd reacts—oohs, laughter, the beginnings of a chant I refuse to decipher.
I look away and meet my own reflection in the glass instead: visor nicked, lip swelling, eyes too bright.
If I didn’t know me, I’d believe whatever caption they wrote under that face.
Across the red, the chirper knocks his stick against the dasher like he’s summoning a dog.
I let the sound pass through me and picture Riley instead—the way she steadies a wrist before taping, thumb firm against tendon, voice soft and certain: You’ll feel pressure, then release.
It’s ridiculous that my chest loosens at the memory, but it does.
Rage makes noise; fear is quieter and sharper.
I’m more afraid for her than I am for me, and that truth sits beside me like a person.
The clock gutters under two minutes. The kill is clean; our guys keep lanes tight. A camera catches Adams at the bench, speaking into Riley’s empty space. The absence is visible. I shove the heel of my hand against the glass to keep from pounding it.
Another buzz: Julia again. Owner wants you out the side door. No comments.
I thumb back: Not running. Delete. Not hiding. Delete. I pocket the phone because I can feel the part of me that wants to light a match, and the smarter part that knows oxygen isn’t our friend tonight.
“Breathe,” says the penalty-box attendant, not unkindly.
He’s middle-aged, bored, immune to drama.
He cracks the door on a stoppage to cycle air.
It smells like cold, rubber, and a faint trace of mint that hits like a punch—her shampoo lingering from some earlier practice.
I close my eyes half a second and it’s the locker corridor again, her laugh tipping toward tears.
The horn blares for a TV timeout and the arena slides into a strange half-quiet.
The screen fills with a sponsor I suddenly resent.
The lower third teases a late-night segment with a countdown I recognize too well.
Nineteen minutes becomes fifteen while I sit in this plexiglass box practicing self-control like it’s a muscle.
“Thirty seconds,” the attendant says. I roll my shoulders, spit a mouthful of copper into a paper cup, and rest my stick across my knees like a metronome. Rage drums under my ribs, fear keeping time: where is she, what eyes are on her, what questions are sharpening on my name.
The door latch clicks, ready. I stand into the narrow space and make the only promise I can keep from here—when that door opens, I skate clean, I skate mean, and I don’t give them another frame to feed on.
The penalty expires. The door swings wide. I launch.
The horn shreds the last minute off the clock and the game ends like a slammed door. Handshakes are for May; January is nods and chirps. I tap our goalie once, pat Kitson’s helmet, and cut for the tunnel before a camera decides my face needs a paragraph.
Concrete sweats. The tunnel smells like hot rubber and victory gone thin. Julia materializes at my elbow like she’s been poured from the cinderblock—tablet in hand, headset crooked, eyes bright with bad news arranged in bullet points.
“Walk,” she says. “No stops.” Sponsor logos ripple down her screen like a stock ticker of my sins. “Vectra wants a morals-clause addendum effective immediately. Minimal bonus exposure until ‘the situation stabilizes.’”
“Define stabilizes,” I grunt.
“Silence, contrition, preferably a staff reassignment.” She doesn’t look up. “WaveTech is ‘re-evaluating’ Q3 unless we ‘restore brand confidence.’ FreshFuel wants you on their podcast to talk ‘values.’” Air quotes while walking. She knows better.
“Not doing a podcast.”
“Agreed.” She ticks a box. “ArenaVision pulled mixed-zone and will run clean B-roll. League left a voicemail about Code Twelve. Compliance interviews staff at seven.” She glances up, reading my pulse off my face. “I know.”
We pass the logo wall. My reflection—sweaty, lip split, eyes hot. Familiar and not. “Say it,” I tell her.
“The math says scapegoat Riley,” she answers, stitch-precise. “Cheapest fix, highest perceived value to sponsors, lowest cost to the product on the ice. You are not a cheap fix.”
“We don’t do cheap.”
“We do wins. So we give them a story that keeps you playing and keeps her employed. That requires paper.”
“It’s drafted,” I say. “Open doors. Second staff. Logs. Witnesses. I want Nolan, Ducks, and Adams signed by eight. Publish it if they need the show.”
“Good. Sponsors love a laminated boundary.” Pride tugs one corner of her mouth; dread tugs the other.
“If they still want blood, we give them yours—fine, suspension, community service, anything that doesn’t take your stick off the ice.
But if it comes down to ‘her or the money’…
” She lets it hang. We both know the rest.
“My money doesn’t matter,” I say, and the franchise money laughs behind my teeth. “I told Nolan to take me before he takes her.”
“Of course you did.” She swings her tablet between us, blocking a roaming camera. “Shower. Boring hoodie. Go home. No comments, no side doors, no detours past brand row. Keep your phone on for me and off for everyone else.”
“Make it expensive if they come for her,” I say.
“They will,” she answers gently. “And we will.”
I strip the night off in pieces. Jersey.
Pads. Salt drying on my skin. The shower hammers heat into my shoulders until anger thins, then scalds, then runs off in dirty threads.
Knuckles swell under the spray—stupid, honest. Enough shoulds.
I shut the water and let the drip count me back from a ledge.