Chapter 56
Nikolai
I smack one puck from the line in front of me into the back of the net, then another, and another. Cooper half lunges at the
last one—which he could definitely stop—but lets it hit the net with a satisfying swoosh.
“You’re terrible at this,” I tell him. “Thank God we don’t need you in the net, we’d be fucked.”
He barks out a laugh as he taps his stick against the ice. “I’ll stand here, but I’m not fucking up my knee for you.”
When we arrived at the practice facility, we grabbed a bunch of pucks from the equipment room. He’s been letting me work out
the lingering edge of panic with smack after smack of my stick. Penny and Isabelle are on the bench, splitting a bag of gummy
bears, and despite how literally unimpressive this is, my girlfriend cheers whenever the puck crosses into the net.
I shake my head as a shard of the nightmare pushes back into my mind. I used to have them more when I was younger, and they’d
center on memories—a fragment of a disagreement between my mother and father, magnified, or a snatch of a negative moment
in hockey training. This one, however, wasn’t just a memory. I fucking hope it never becomes one.
It started with my parents, slammed doors and shouting and darkness. But somewhere along the line, it morphed. First, I looked
through my father’s eyes, and then I was my father, but I wasn’t looking at my mother. It was Isabelle, her hair curled, wearing the blue gown from Boston. Isabelle, crawling away from me with a torn skirt, blood leaking from her lip, a bruise around her eye. Pleading with me in English, in Russian. Her voice entwined with my mother’s. Dream me looked down at my knuckles, saw the smear of red, and went in for more.
I force myself to take a deep breath. I don’t feel angry now, but in the dream, I couldn’t escape the cocktail of rage and
hopelessness. I drank it down like poison, and instead of killing me, it went for Isabelle. When I woke up and saw her safe
and whole... I don’t know if I’d ever been so glad to be dreaming.
“Come on,” Cooper says, as if he can tell I’m thinking too hard. “Let’s keep going.”
Instead of winding up with my core and smacking the last puck into the net, I skate towards him slowly, flicking it from side
to side.
He lunges when I act like I’m about to shoot, but at the last moment, I fake him out, hooking the puck around him neatly.
He scrambles to his feet, wiping the ice off his knees, and grins. “Prick.”
I rotate my stick in my hands as I roll my shoulders. I snag a puck from the net, skating backwards in the direction of the
neutral zone.
“Come and steal it!” I call as Cooper chases me.
“Is this a preview of next season?” Isabelle says, raising her voice so I hear it across the rink.
“Yeah,” Penny says. “Show us what it’s going to be like.”
Cooper raises his eyebrows as he skates around me. I catch the silent question—no, I haven’t told Isabelle about my agreement
with Grandfather yet—but ignore it. I’ll tell her soon; I just haven’t found the right time and place.
We loop around the ice, skating as hard and fast as we dare without pads. He manages to snag the puck, only for me to check it away from him. He pushes harder, forcing me to pull out all of my best moves to keep possession.
I can’t help but smile when he backs me against the boards, pressuring me into a turnover. I haven’t played the sport like
this in years. It makes me think of evenings at an outdoor rink my father liked; he’d challenge me to race him, to steal the
puck from him, to play a little dirty to prevent him from scoring. Sometimes it would be in the middle of the night, like
this. He’d carry me out of bed and put me in the car before I was fully awake. Mom hated when he did it on school nights.
Moments like that, tucked away in my mind, make the nightmares even harder. They make it impossible to block his number, even
though I know that Isabelle hates every time I pick up the phone. He hasn’t tried outright to lure me to his team again—apparently,
he’s given that task to other people—but he’s reminisced with me. Asked how I’m doing. I know he’s just playing nice so he
can bring down the hammer later, but I’m falling for it anyway. I even mentioned Isabelle to him the other day.
Part of me can’t believe that he’d actually set foot in America again. But who knows?
When Cooper and I are finally out of breath, we skate to the bench. I hang over the edge, smiling when Isabelle kisses me.
She grabbed one of my sweaters on the way out the door; the dark blue cable-knit looks adorable on her.
“Want to skate?” Penny asks as she laces her skates. “I brought my extra pair; they should fit okay.”
“No, no,” Isabelle says with a groan, flopping the sleeves over her hands. “You know I’m terrible at it.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say. “And I highly doubt it.”
“I don’t know, man,” Cooper says. “The athleticism doesn’t extend to the rink.”
She makes a face at her brother. “Dad is the same way.”
“Yes,” he says with a snort. “At least he’s terrible at something.”
Penny reaches into her bag and pulls out a pair of white skates and rolled-up socks. “It’ll be fun.”
“I won’t let you fall,” I add.
“You have to promise,” she says as she takes them, staring like they’re an alien artifact.
“Promise,” I say, biting back my smile as I rest my hand on my heart. “Let me lace you up.”
I can’t believe I didn’t know this about her sooner. I could’ve been helping her this whole time. Maybe if she gets confident
enough, we can go to one of the open skates at the rink Penny works at. After I get the skates laced tightly, I help her onto
the ice. Cooper and Penny are skating together in the middle of the rink already, but I don’t take her there. We skate around
the edge—she’s shaky, but stable enough that she doesn’t fall—with our hands clasped together.
“There, you’re getting the hang of it,” I say, squeezing her palm. “Your body remembers.”
She glances up, bottom lip caught between her teeth. “How are you doing?”
“Fine. Better,” I add, at her look.
“You scared me.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Were you dreaming about that night?”
I hate to lie, but I can’t tell her what I was actually dreaming about. That’s not an option. “Yeah. It happens sometimes.
Not so much lately, but I guess... I don’t know. Something triggered it.”
“Your dad?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I steady her with a hand on her back. “Take longer strides. Good.”
She skates with a bit more confidence, her body leaning into the movement. She’s quiet for a full lap before she speaks again. “If there’s anything I can do to help... you’ll tell me, right? These attacks—”
“They only happen sometimes,” I interrupt. “I’m handling them fine.”
“Maybe if you spoke to someone about it, it would help.”
I nearly stop in my tracks, but I promised her I wouldn’t let her fall, and an abrupt change in movement would definitely
make her lose her balance.
Therapy. Like talking about my feelings would lead anywhere. Speaking about that nightmare, bringing it into existence, even
to denounce it? The thought makes me sick.
“I’m good,” I say shortly. “It’s fine, really.”
“I think telling me about it helped,” she says. “It brought us closer. If you shared some of this with a therapist, maybe
then you’d be able to actually cut your dad out of your life.”
“I can’t do that.”
She reaches for the boards, stopping us both in our tracks. I’m the one who nearly falls.
“Come on, Nik,” she says softly.
I can’t cut him out of my life, but I can quit hockey. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s something. It’s all I have, no
matter how it hurts. I could tell her about my post-graduation plans right now, but I have the sense that it wouldn’t do anything
but start a fight.
There was anger in that dream. Anger that burst out in a physical way. If I lost my temper in real life...
I shake my head, somehow managing a smile. “Let’s try skating in the middle of the rink.”
The next morning, the four of us slump around the kitchen table, fighting through our exhaustion. By the time we got back to the house, it was nearly dawn. Isabelle rests her head against my shoulder, eyes half-shut as she sips her coffee. I’m trying to avoid face-planting into mine.
“I’m skipping my seminar,” Penny says, her voice cracking on a yawn. “I don’t even care.”
“I have work to do,” Isabelle says. “Ugh.”
“At least we don’t have an early practice,” Cooper says. “Ryder would kill us if we showed up looking like this.”
“He would,” Penny agrees.
“Thank fuck,” I say. I accidentally take a sip of Isabelle’s coffee, wrinkling my nose at the sweetness. She laughs as she
rescues her mug.
“By the way, I have something for you,” Cooper says to me. “Figured we might as well make it official.”
“Make what official?”
He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a set of keys and tossing them across the table.
Isabelle lifts her head from my shoulder, eyes wide. She looks at her brother, who gives her a half smile before pouring his
girlfriend more coffee.
I look down at the keys.
House keys.
I meet Cooper’s gaze. He nods at me.
If he knew what I dreamt about last night, I doubt he’d be doing this. He’d want me away from his sister as fast as humanly
possible. But I just return his nod, closing my fist over the keys. The cold metal digs into my palm. “Thank you.”
Stupid, stupid. And yet there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be than right here. However selfish, I want to be by Isabelle’s side. The more time we spend together, the deeper I fall. She’s everything I want, everything I thought I could never have. If I make a mistake—if the switch flicks at the exact wrong moment, proving my grandfather right—I don’t know how I’d live with myself.
If she’s sunshine, I’m the guy who hopes it never starts raining.
But deep down, I worry that I’m the typhoon.