5 #3
The roar hit us the second the hallway opened.
Cold air moved over my face, sharp and clean through the bars of my cage, while the tunnel lights flashed pink, yellow, then black.
The crowd stomped hard enough to make the concrete breathe as the freshmen in front of me bounced on their skates.
Briggs muttered something that sounded like a prayer to his goalie posts before catching himself and amending it into a threat against the opposing team.
Rider looked calm enough to be declared legally suspicious, and Cade took his place near the front with the steady focus of a man who knew exactly who waited for him behind the glass.
I tried not to look toward the stands before warmups.
That lasted until the first chant rolled down from the student section.
Easton.
It started low and scattered before gathering weight.
Easton.
My name filled The Furnace, rough and hungry, bouncing off the glass and rafters while the announcer dragged out the introduction like the building had been waiting all summer to say it.
“Your captain, number thirteen, defenseman Easton Wade.”
I pushed onto the ice, and the crowd exploded.
For one clean second, hockey did what hockey always did. It gave me rules, edges, speed, cold air in my lungs, and consequences beneath my skates. I took a hard lap, let the noise blur, and tried to leave the rest of it in the tunnel.
Then I saw them.
My mom stood behind the bench in the section Cade had arranged through Bliss. She kept one hand on Vivi’s shoulder and the other near Skylar’s sleeve, trying to keep both girls anchored while pretending she wasn’t exhausted enough to fold.
Skylar had her chin lifted and phone in hand, acting like filming me was no big deal. Vivi wore her purple headphones and my old hoodie, her eyes tracking the players in the warmup lines like she was counting the order to keep the noise from breaking apart.
Mom found me through the glass and smiled. Her expression was proud, tired, and worried in the way that told me she knew too much.
My throat tightened, and I turned before she could read more than I wanted her to.
I took a pass from Rider and fired it hard at Briggs.
He kicked it away with his pad and yelled, “Violence against goalies is still violence!”
“Occupational hazard,” I called back.
“Hostile captaincy!”
Cade skated past me. “Stop giving him material.”
“He makes his own.”
Coach shouted from the bench for the next drill, and I moved because movement was easier than standing still with my family watching. I hit the blue line, took the puck clean, shifted my weight, and shot through traffic.
The puck snapped into the net before Briggs finished sliding.
The crowd roared like I meant something.
Then my eyes moved farther down the section, even though I knew better.
Aura stood beside Bliss and Charm in a black leather jacket and neon-pink top, her long braids half pulled back from her face.
No jersey. No name across her chest. No public claim. Nothing that belonged to me.
It was exactly what I claimed to want, so the sight of her without my name shouldn’t have felt like another hit.
Her hand curled around the railing, her chin lifted, and her mouth remained unsmiling. She wasn’t performing, flirting, or pretending the night was easy. She was simply there, watching me with eyes too honest for a woman who had built an entire life from sharp edges and controlled exits.
I looked away first because if my mom could read me from behind the glass, Aura had always been worse. She saw the cracks and made me hate myself for wanting her near them.
Cade drifted beside me as the horn sounded to end warmups. “She came.”
“She has friends here.”
“She came for the team.”
I adjusted my glove. “Great. The team thanks her.”
“East.”
I looked at him. “Fuck, enough, Cade.”
“I was going to say don’t let her in your head.”
“She isn’t. Get the fuck out of my ass about it.”
Cade’s eyes held mine through his cage. “Then stop playing like every shot is aimed at her.”
The horn blasted again before I could answer, but Cade had already pissed me off, and playing angry had never steered me wrong.
We lined up beneath lights fractured into streaks of pink and yellow while the crowd thundered around us. My family stood behind the bench, my team waited for my lead, and scouts sat somewhere in the building writing down whatever version of me they thought they saw.
Aura watched from the section I had told myself she had no right to stand in, wearing nothing of mine and still feeling like a claim I had never figured out how to break.
I set my edge against the ice and forced everything soft inside me quiet.
The puck dropped, and Cade won it clean.
The pass came back to me as The Furnace rose around us and the season began, but for one brutal second, all I could hear was Aura’s voice from the night before.
You don’t get to take what I survived—when you don’t know what I survived—and twist it into a personality flaw.
I caught the puck, lifted my head, and hit the ice like pressure had finally found somewhere to go.