19. Zach
ZACH
I wake with a jerk.
I’ve always been this way, since the earliest days of juniors when the anxiety of missing morning skate was a constant reminder in my brain all night, alarm set and checked then checked again.
For a second I’m disoriented. There’s hair in my mouth and my left arm is completely numb and both of those things are because of Mackie, who is asleep on my chest, because she stayed.
She stayed.
And the thing my brain won't let go of isn't the guilt or the math or the ticking clock on this lie.
It's that out of everyone she could have done this with she chose me.
Me. She could have had anyone and she showed up here and gave me something she's never given anyone and I still don't know what I did to deserve it but I need to figure it out and never stop doing it.
She’s in my shirt—the one she pulled out of my dresser at 2AM after sitting straight up in bed, scaring the hell out of me, and declaring “I’m cold” while climbing into something three sizes too big for her.
My arm is dead from the shoulder down and I don’t move it because moving it means this changes and I’m not ready for this to change.
Her dad is going to find out. That’s not a question anymore, it’s math—the probability of maintaining a lie decreases every single day you maintain it and we’re at what, four months now, and Kara can only cover so many late nights before someone checks, and every time I sit across from Anderson in the locker room I’m counting how many lies I’ve told him and the number is somewhere north of three hundred and climbing.
I think about Christmas dinner. His hand on my shoulder at the ceremony.
The way he said I believe in you and meant it so completely that I wanted to hand every word back and say here’s why you shouldn’t.
But she’s here right now, her breathing slow and steady against my chest and I tighten my arms around her until she lets out a surprised little squeak and I loosen them immediately. She reaches up and runs her fingers through my hair, pressing her body closer to mine.
“Don’t let go, I like how tight you hold onto me.” She mumbles.
Her breathing slows again and I think she’s maybe fallen back to sleep but she lifts her head and I jerk my gaze to the ceiling.
“Were you watching me?”
“No.”
She laughs and presses a kiss to my chest and I’m instantly, painfully hard.
“Okay, for a while,” I admit. “Your hair was in my mouth.”
“Sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all. She runs her hand down my chest, letting her nails scrape lightly along my skin. “Why don’t you have any tattoos?”
I shrug. It’s never occurred to me. Money spent on ink is money I could’ve spent on ice time and my brain has never thought past that.
“We should get matching tattoos.”
“That’s a little insane and probably something you’d regret.”
“When you win the Cup we’ll do it.” She says it like it’s decided, like last night when I told her what I wanted most in the world and she just nodded and said I can see it someday. Game seven. Tied score. You in net.
“Do your parents think you’re at Kara’s?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Does Kara know you’re not?”
“Obviously.”
She planned this. That thought has been circling in my head since I woke up.
The cover story, Kara knowing, showing up last night like she’d already decided where she was going to wake up and just didn’t tell me.
She wanted to be here badly enough to build a strategy around it.
I’ve been turning that over and over and I still don’t know if I understand.
“Didn’t you want me to stay over at some point?”
“Well, yeah,” I say. “I just didn’t know how to ask without making it weird.”
She starts to say something and then stops. Her hand runs down my chest slowly, past my ribs, and she pauses just above the waistband of my boxers and glances down.
“ZACH!”
“I can’t help it. You’re half naked in my bed.”
She looks at me. The sleep is completely gone from her eyes now. “What should we do about that?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer. Her fingers slip under the waistband and she tugs them down slowly, just enough, and the elastic catches and snaps back against my stomach and she giggles, this bright startled sound that somehow makes everything worse and better at the same time.
Then her hand is on me. Warm and hesitant at first, then firmer as she wraps around the base. She leans down and her hair falls forward and brushes across my stomach and I watch the red of it against my skin and she hesitates for one second before she kisses the tip.
I blow out a breath. Everything in me wants to move but I don’t.
She looks up. Cheeks pink, eyes wide, checking if this is okay even though she started it. She does it again. Braver. Her tongue against the underside, tentative, figuring it out. “Is this... am I doing this right?”
“God, yes.” I swallow. “Keep going. Please.”
She nods once and sinks down farther. Just enough that the heat of her mouth is everywhere, her hand gripping me, stroking what she can’t reach. I thread my fingers into her hair without thinking about it. She pauses and lifts her head. “You can pull a little. If you want.”
“Jesus Christ, Mackie.” But I tighten my grip, just enough to guide her, and she lets out a tiny surprised sound and hums around me, bolder now, following the pressure of my hand.
She finds a rhythm. Her hand and her mouth together, the slide of her fingers matching the pull of her lips. She grips my thigh, nails digging in just enough that I hiss through my teeth.
My hand tightens in her hair on instinct and she makes a sound I’ve never heard from her before—low and startled and completely different from everything else, from last night, from the basement, from any of it.
My brain locks onto it the way it locks onto a release point, filing it, tagging it, because she didn’t pull back when I pulled.
She pushed closer. And the sound she made wasn’t pain or surprise, it was something else entirely.
I don’t have a word for what it means but my body understands it even if I don’t.
“Mackie.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “You need to stop or I’m going to—”
She looks up at me through her lashes. Then she takes me deeper, her hand moving from my thigh to cup me, rolling me gently in her palm, and every thread of control I have is gone.
My hips thrust up before I can stop them and then I’m coming, both hands fisted in her hair, and she jerks back in surprise at the first pulse but she doesn’t pull off.
She hollows her cheeks and takes me deeper and I make a sound that starts somewhere in my chest that I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to.
Everything gives. I’m boneless, sinking into the mattress, and my hands fall out of her hair because I don’t have the coordination to hold onto anything while she pulls off slowly.
Then she looks up at me and opens her mouth and I can see myself on her tongue and my brain screams mine, something hot unspooling in my chest that I’ve never felt before.
She closes her mouth and swallows, holding my gaze the entire time. I stare at her unblinking because my brain can’t even serve up words right now. I watch her confidence dissolves in real time, the flush climbing her neck.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“I think,” I say slowly, “you sucked out whatever brain cells I had left.”
She bursts out laughing, falling onto my chest and I wrap my arms around her and hold on.
“Good?” she asks into my shirt.
“Mackie.”
“Just checking.”
“Yeah. Better than good.”
She lifts her head and sighs. “I have to go. You know my mom and I are meeting the team in Vancouver tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“Text me your room number. I’ll find a way to sneak in,” she says, already informing me of the plan rather than asking.
“That’s a terrible idea.”
“Do you want me to or not.”
“Yes. Always yes.”
She grins and kisses me once before climbing over me to get out of bed. At the bathroom door she turns back. “Don’t look so smug.”
“I’m not.”
“Zach. You look extremely smug.”
“I just found out you’re sneaking into my hotel room in Vancouver even though it’s a catastrophically bad idea. I’m allowed.”
She laughs and closes the door and I lie there counting down the hours.
By noon I’m on the plane and the group chat starts before we’re off the ground.
Rodriguez
gentle reminder that we are heading to Vancouver where our boy Z has a whole entire family waiting for him
Dex
do the kids know you’re coming
Brody
what’s the wife’s name again
Rodriguez
Olga. She’s very tall and she plays volleyball.
Roman
did you bring gifts for your kids?
Dex
how old are they now
Rodriguez
oldest just turned 4. real shame he missed the birthday
I put my phone in my jacket pocket.
Rodriguez drops into the seat next to me approximately thirty seconds after we’re airborne, already grinning. “You nervous to see her?”
“There’s no her.”
“The kids are going to be so excited.” He leans back with the particular expression he gets when he’s decided to be annoying about something indefinitely. “You ever going to tell me what’s actually going on with you?”
“Nothing’s going on with me.”
He watches me for a second then puts his headphones on. “Sure,” he says, mostly to himself. “Sure there’s nothing going on.”
My phone buzzes.
Mackie
are you ready to see your three kids in Vancouver
Me
not you too
Mackie
bet your wife is excited
Me
I hate everyone on this team
Mackie
I feel like we should name the kids
Me
apparently the oldest is four and I missed his birthday.
Mackie
tragic. Little Puck will never forgive you
I know where she’s sitting at the game that night because she told me but I refuse to turn my head even once because Rodriguez has been watching me since we landed.
I’m on the bench. Luca is in net. This is how it works.
First period is physical and tight. Luca is doing Luca things—a glove save five minutes in where he picks the puck out of the air and the building groans because they know they didn’t score but they also know they should have.
I track every shot from the bench the way I always do, reading releases, running saves in my head.
Wrister from the top of the circle—I’m going glove side, the angle is narrow and he’s going to try to pick the corner. Luca reads it the same way.
Late in the first there’s a scramble in the crease, bodies everywhere, and Luca goes down hard on his left side. He gets up and plays on. But when he pushes off to reset his post there’s a hitch in his left hip. He doesn’t come out for the second.
Barrett is next to me before the Zamboni is off the ice. “Almardon, you’re up.”
The second period is good. Everything’s tracking—releases coming early, edges where they need to be, and I can feel the crease the way you feel it when it’s yours, when the angles make sense.
There’s a breakaway in the first five minutes.
I stay big, force the shooter wide, and the bench erupts and I let myself feel it for one second before I reset.
And then my brain serves up the sound she made when I pulled her hair. I can’t let it shake my focus, but it’s playing on a loop in my head. The specific pitch of the noise, how she sucked harder and took me deeper and then how she opened her mouth at the end. Stop. Lock in. Find the puck.
Third period undoes everything.
First goal is a point shot I should have had. I lose the release off the stick, and by the time I pick it up it’s past me. One goal. Recoverable but I let in two more goals and then it’s over. We lose 4-1.
On the bus Rodriguez sits next to Dex instead of me and I love him for it. I stare out the window running the second goal on a loop—the angle, the release, the three inches between my glove and the puck that might as well have been three miles. My phone buzzes.
Mackie
what’s your room number
I look at it for a long time. I should tell her not to come. I should say I need to be alone, that I need to sit with this and run the film and figure out where my positioning broke down. That’s what I should do.
I type my room number and hit send.