Chapter 2
Game Time
Faulker
The locker room buzzes with half-whispered exchanges, the distant pulse of a bassline playing in the arena, and tape tearing. I settle onto the bench, roll my shoulders, and indulge in the quiet before the storm.
Hank Marshall flicks me a sideways look. “You’re too damn relaxed for being thirty minutes to puck drop.”
“Time’s a human construct.” I shrug.
He snorts.
I’m never in a rush to tighten my skates. Hurry breeds mistakes, and mistakes always get blamed on defensemen. I like it here. Like my contract and my lifestyle, so it’s better to wait until the last possible second in hopes to avoid the inevitable from coming too quickly.
Across the room, Kozlov is stretching out in nothing but compression pants, feet propped up on his duffel, scrolling through something on his phone with indifference.
Callahan sits backwards on a folding chair, chewing a grimy mouthguard and eyeing the headlines on the wall-mounted TV, but his ears are clearly tuned to Kozlov.
The two are locked in a low-stakes competition for Most Aggrieved Tenant—each story more grotesque than the last, and everyone else in the room an unwilling juror.
“My last place, landlord left a meat freezer unplugged in the garage all summer,” Kozlov says, voice carrying easily over the clatter of sticks. “By July, could smell it in the street.”
“Mold is technically not alive after it’s been microwaved,” Callahan retorts, deadpan.
Kozlov considers this, nods judiciously. “Microwave was broken. Used the oven.”
Several rookies glance up, unsure if this is the setup to a prank or a confession.
Hank snickers, but he’s careful not to join in too loudly— he, too, is a rookie, but has been pulled in from the fray by our veteran goalie, Deacon Moretti.
I meet Kozlov’s eyes above the phone and raise my brow.
He winks, as if to say: All performance art.
Callahan leans back, chair creaking, and points his stick at me. “Faulker, you’ve lived everywhere. Bet you got stories.”
I shrug, reticence mistaken for coolness. “I summer in the guest house of an old estate. The worst thing that ever happened was the gardener left a wheelbarrow in the driveway.”
Hank laughs. “Of course you do. And I bet your landlord brings you strudel.”
I shrug and pretend not to notice that half the team is waiting for me to elaborate. I don’t. Revealing the truth of your living situation is a minor form of exposure, and I prefer not to let the reality of my other life scorch the ice.
Callahan makes a show of sighing. “Lease ends in May,” he says. “I’m thinking of somewhere less…alive.”
Kozlov nods sagely toward me. “Same. Those rooms cleaned out yet at The Puck Pad?”
Hank grins because he took over Deacon’s room when he moved out. “Almost.”
Kilovac and I were ‘lucky’ enough to have found a place when we were drafted.
Lived very much like Callahan and Kozlov are now.
I could have stayed in a suite at any number of the five-star hotels in the city, and that was the plan, but Kilovac refused to move into a place that pricey.
He doubled down on that when I offered to foot the bill.
He did not want to owe anyone else. He had already set a budget that would enable him to live a decent life and still help his brother do the same.
We found a place within his budget, and I found myself discovering the depths of the privilege I was born into.
It was an adventure. One that horrified my family, which of course is why I reveled in it.
That adventure only lasted a year. When Koa and Dash were drafted, they found a place and had mentioned five bedrooms, the location, and well, the Puck Pad became all of our homes.
When Koa moved out, we had a very unlikely roommate move right in, Paul Bronski, the legendary hockey player, who everyone had believed to be long gone, but was in fact still residing in the City.
He was tucked away in a brownstone affectionately referred to as the Hen house.
When it needed major repairs, he became ours.
The man does not hold back. He has since moved out, and it’s just Marshall and me.
I could easily buy a home, hell, I could buy a block, but unlike the rest of my family, I view our privilege to be more of a burden.
Kilovac has changed the way I look at it.
I now see it as an inevitable responsibility.
Oddly, the weight of that is far heavier.
Luckily, I can easily block all of that noise and focus on the present.
The life I have chosen, not the one that chose me, one that is waiting on this one’s inevitable end.
I know, I know, first-world problems. But it is what it is. And what it is, is very seasonal and temporary.
Callahan and Kozlov had expressed interest in moving in, and I am all for it. When Koa bought his place, and we all knew wherever Koa went, Dash did, much like Kilovac and I; they came from the same college and were brothers by everything but blood, just like Killer and I.
“Don’t be jealous,” Marshall says.
Kozlov fires back. “You’re not my type.”
“Too many tattoos?” Hank flexes his sleeve, the ink stretching as his forearm tightens.
Marshall’s arm reads like a Texas archive carved into skin.
A longhorn skull crowns his shoulder, weathered and cracked.
Barbed wire trails down his bicep in loose coils.
Beneath it, a windmill rises from open plains, horizon wide and endless.
Closer to his wrist, a rope-woven star sits bold and centered, heritage stamped without apology.
And threaded along the inside of it all, scripture instead of decoration, 2 Timothy 1:7 wrapping faith around muscle like a reminder he carries into every arena.
I looked it up, For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.
It’s loud. Patriotic. Earnest in the distinctly American way. It’s Hank.
“Subtle,” I say dryly.
Marshall grins. “It’s called pride.”
“It’s called announcing yourself before you enter a room,” I correct.
Kozlov laughs. “You have one.”
“I do. My history,” I reply, pulling my gloves tighter.
“No one just has one.” Callahan chuckles.
“The rest of my history does not require illustration.”
Marshall shrugs. “Mine keeps me grounded.”
That part, I understand. Not the volume. But the reason.
There’s an easy rhythm to these exchanges, a practiced choreography that never quite tips into genuine cruelty.
It’s what passes for affection in a room where everyone is paid to be twice as tough as they feel.
The jokes and banter stills the nervous current beneath all of our skin, inked or otherwise.
I lean over to tape my stick, and the scent of eucalyptus balm blends with the sharp reek of open bags.
All around, the guys perform their rituals: someone mutters a Latin prayer, another lines up his pucks at perfect intervals, a rookie rubs his helmet with the same dirty towel for what must be the thousandth time.
It’s a pageant of superstition, but it works.
Keeps us from thinking too hard about the fans, or what we’ll learn about ourselves on social media tomorrow, true or not, or the men upstairs who hold the pen on our contracts.
I glance up and catch Dash Sterling’s reflection in the mirrored trophy case. He’s fussing with his pads, turning his head from side to side, checking out his reflection, ever the pretty boy.
“Faulker,” he calls when he notices me looking. “You ready to shut down McLeod tonight?”
I offer the faintest smile. “That’s the plan, unless you want to take a shift on defense.”
He grins back. “God, no. The only time I hit someone is when I have to.”
Hank chimes in, “Remember that time you tripped over the ref and took out three of their first line?”
Dash bows theatrically. “I call it strategic play.”
Laughter filters through the room, a release valve for the jitters. Even Kozlov breaks character and cracks a crooked grin.
Coach D appears in the doorway, arms folded, and instantly the noise drops by half. She surveys us, eyes flicking from veteran to rookie. For a few seconds, nobody moves, a display of anticipation and nervous energy.
She clears her throat. “Stick to the plan. No hero plays until we’re three up.”
“Noted,” I say, just loud enough for Coach to hear.
She nods, and for the briefest instant her mask slips—there’s a ghost of a smile before she turns away.
As soon as she’s gone, the tension evaporates. Everyone pretends they weren’t waiting for her approval, but everyone was. I glance at her husband, our left guard, Bass Giulietti, his eyes glued to her ass as she walks away.
I clear my throat, and he turns to me, eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Do not open a door for questions you would prefer me to keep to myself,” I warn.
His eyes narrow, but he says nothing.
I open my mouth to speak, and he cuts me off and sneers, “Never you mind.”
I chuckle. “I won’t say a word.”
“Good.”
I have many gifts; one is spotting a pregnant woman before she even knows she is carrying a child.
In Nalani’s case, I proved my theory when I mailed a letter to the Puck Pad three weeks before they made the announcement.
When they questioned me, I presented them with a sealed envelope bearing a postmark as proof.
Was this over the top? Of course, however, I like evidence to support my claims as much as I like being right.
It’s a little game I’ve played with myself for years.
I don’t use it, of course, unless called out.
That’s when the nickname ‘Mother Faulker’ was set in play again.
I didn’t like it then, any more than I do now.
But you know how these things go, you fuck one mother, and she shows up to your college dorm with children in tow because her husband found out due to the titty pics she DM’d you, and you’re tagged for life.