4 #3
“I outrank you in every house because I made your skeleton.”
Briggs whispered from the living room, “That was powerful.”
“It was,” Rider agreed.
Mom sat me at the island and opened the kit with the efficiency of a nurse who had patched too many people together to be impressed by blood. She cleaned my knuckle without babying me, pressing her thumb down once to hold the skin steady. The sting cut cleanly through the noise in my head.
“You look like hell,” she said.
“I’ve been cleaning all day.”
“You looked like hell before cleaning. This is simply lemon-scented hell.”
I glanced toward the living room. Skylar had taken control of Briggs’s phone and was judging his playlist with the mercy of a firing squad. Vivi stood beside Cade, watching him demonstrate how he taped his stick, while Rider sat on the arm of the couch and Ryan leaned nearby with his arms folded.
They were all calm enough that I could feel my shoulders trying to come down.
Mom watched me watching them, then looked at my face again. The humor eased from her mouth without fully leaving her eyes.
“You’re stretched thin.”
“I’m fine.”
“Baby, I have worked emergency intake on holiday weekends and raised children on shift sleep and vending-machine dinners. Do not stand in front of me with those dead eyes and tell me ‘fine’ like I’m new.”
My throat tightened. “I said I’m fine.”
“I heard you. I’m choosing to be unimpressed.” She wrapped gauze around my knuckle, neat and tight. “Why don’t you tell Coach you’re overwhelmed?”
I looked at her sharply. “I’m not overwhelmed.”
She gave me a look, and I hated that look. It had raised me. It had caught every lie I had told since kindergarten.
“I can handle it,” I said, quieter.
“I didn’t ask if you could handle it. Wades handle things until they crack a tooth, lose hair, and yell at refrigerators.” She taped the gauze down. “I asked why you won’t tell the man in charge that you’re carrying too much.”
“Because captains get seen by scouts.” The answer came out before I could sand down the edge. “Captains get minutes. Captains get talked about. Scouts look at leadership, Mom. They look at how you handle pressure, how the room follows you, and how you respond when shit goes sideways.”
I looked down at my bandaged hand. “Cade being back with an A is huge for the team, but the C is on me now. That means eyes are on me. I need that.”
Her face softened in the most irritating way possible. “At what cost?”
“It’s worth the stress.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Our lives change if I get signed, Mom. Trust me with this. I can handle the pressure.”
“Are you sure because it’s worth the stress, or are you sure because you think every good thing in life has to hurt before you’re allowed to keep it?”
I looked away.
She made a small sound in her throat. “That one left a mark. I’ll write it down as excellent mothering.”
“Can we not?”
“Fine, but only because I’m hungry and your sister is about to emotionally dismantle that goalie.”
From the living room, Skylar’s voice carried. “You have four hype songs in a row. That’s not a playlist. That’s a cry for help.”
Briggs sounded wounded. “They each serve a different emotional purpose.”
“They each sound like a truck commercial.”
Mom smiled, tired and bright. “I like her so much.”
“Yeah, me too, even though she’s meaner than me.”
“You had the same teacher.”
I huffed despite myself, and her eyes warmed like she had won something.
Then her gaze sharpened again. “Are you dating anyone?”
The question felt like a hard turn considering where the conversation had been.
I turned my head toward her. “What?”
“You heard me. You’re handsome, tense, and cleaning like a woman is coming over even though the woman arriving was me. That usually means either shame, love, or both.”
“I cleaned because Vivi was coming.”
“Mmm.”
“That sound means you’re about to be annoying.”
“That sound means I brought you into this world and know when your face is lying.”
Skylar looked up from Briggs’s phone like she had been waiting for this exact blood sport. “Easton has a girlfriend?”
“No,” I said immediately.
Vivi, still beside Cade, turned with interest. “Easton said no fast.”
Ryan’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s damning.”
Rider looked at me with quiet amusement. “Very fast.”
Briggs pressed a fist to his mouth. “Our captain has secrets.”
“I have teammates who want drills.”
Skylar narrowed her eyes. “What’s her name?”
“There isn’t a her.”
Mom hummed again.
“Stop humming,” I said.
“I’m not humming. I’m observing with sound.”
Skylar leaned over the back of the couch. “Is she pretty?”
“There’s no girl.”
Briggs looked personally betrayed. “Captain, this is a safe space full of unsafe people.”
Cade’s mouth curved faintly as he continued wrapping tape around his stick for Vivi. “That was almost profound.”
“Thank you. I’ve been growing.”
Vivi’s eyes moved from me to Mom. “Easton’s heart rate changed.”
Conversation dropped out around me.
I stared at her. “You cannot possibly know that.”
“You touched your neck,” she said. “You do that when you’re lying or after phone calls with Mom about money, and both of those raise your heart rate.”
Mom’s head turned slowly toward me.
Skylar whispered, “Snitch.”
Vivi blinked. “It is data.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, then immediately stopped because every asshole in the room saw it and nearly all of them had the decency to pretend they hadn’t.
Briggs did not.
“Data says Captain is cooked.”
“I will make you skate until your soul leaves your body,” I said.
He nodded. “Respectfully received.”
Mom finished taping my hand and smoothed her thumb over the edge of the gauze. “You don’t have to tell me today.”
I glanced at her.
Her eyes were tired. Too tired. The kind that came from years of putting everyone else’s needs ahead of her own and smiling anyway because bitterness required energy she refused to waste.
They were also clear and sharp. She saw all of me, including the parts I hid from my team, my sisters, and myself because naming them made them harder to control.
I looked back into the living room.
Skylar had moved closer to Rider and held his phone while he listened with genuine interest to whatever song she was explaining with ruthless intensity.
Briggs had lowered himself to the floor near the coffee table so Vivi could inspect the cartoon skeleton on his goalie mask without him towering over her.
Cade sat on the edge of the couch with his stick across his knees, answering each hockey question Vivi asked as if it mattered.
Ryan stood behind them with his arms folded, offering occasional dry comments that pulled tiny smiles from Skylar and made Vivi glance toward him like she was filing him under acceptable.
Mom followed my gaze and leaned her shoulder gently against mine. “Whoever she is, she put that look in your eye.”
I swallowed hard. “What look?”
“The one your father had when he was about to do something brave and stupid because his heart got there before his brain.”
My chest tightened at the mention of Dad. It still did. Maybe it always would.
I kept my eyes on my sisters because looking at Mom felt too dangerous. “It’s a story for another day.”
She was quiet for a moment before patting my cheek, not gently enough to be sweet and not hard enough to be a slap.
“Fine. But when another day gets here, don’t insult me by pretending there isn’t a story.”
I looked down at my bandaged hand and flexed my fingers. “I won’t.”
“You will try.”
“Probably.”
“Good. I like knowing what kind of dumb to expect from my children.”
I laughed beneath my breath, and for the first time all day, it didn’t feel like something breaking.
The door opened again before Mom could interrogate me further, and a few more guys from the team stepped inside. They immediately slowed when they saw my family in the living room and my face in the kitchen.
The threat I had issued earlier must have traveled fast because even the freshmen entered like they were walking into a museum with emotional consequences.
Briggs looked over his shoulder and pointed two fingers at his own eyes, then at Vivi’s headphones, then at the floor in what I assumed was his interpretation of silent leadership.
Ryan stared at him. “What the hell was that?”
Briggs whispered, “Nonverbal house management.”
Vivi looked up from his mask. “That was confusing.”
“Thank you for the feedback,” Briggs whispered.
Skylar snorted.
Mom squeezed my shoulder once, then let go. “Go be captain, baby.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know.” Her smile softened, but the steel remained beneath it. “Try not to confuse being needed with never being allowed to need anyone.”
I didn’t answer because I had nothing clean to give her.
Instead, I pushed away from the island and walked back toward the living room, where my sisters were surrounded by the loudest, roughest, most ridiculous men I knew, all of them trying in their own awkward ways to be careful because I had asked them to be.
The pressure in my chest did not leave. The scouts, the C, the money, the shifts, my family, and the girl I refused to think about before puck drop stayed exactly where they had been.
For one afternoon, Hockey House held it with me.
As captain, brother, and son, with too many people looking at me like I knew what I was doing, I pulled my shoulders back and made myself look steady enough to believe.