Breaking Ice (Veil Lake #1)

1. The Wrong Turn

THE WRONG TURN

The apartment smelled of coffee, old wood, and a faint sweetness Caleb couldn’t name.

More telling was what it didn’t smell like: home.

Or at least the place he’d called home for the last nineteen years.

During all that time his world had smelled, looked, sounded, and felt the same.

And now for the first time, it didn’t. It wasn’t their home.

This was his home. Sure, it was his sister’s place, but it was his now too.

Get it together, Caleb, he told himself. Let’s not get sappy.

He’d only recently arrived, after all. So what if he was still noticing things like that? Every morning he still expected to open his eyes to the same room, reminding him where he was and what his life would be.

The ceiling above his sister’s couch was smooth and white, as opposed to the one in his old bedroom, where a water stain had spread into the shape of a pointing finger. He didn’t miss that. As a kid, he’d been convinced it was the finger of God, aimed straight at him.

He had spent a lot of nights under that divine judgment, lying still with the sheet pulled to his chest, waiting to feel “repentant” enough to make some kind of difference.

The room had smelled like laundry soap and old carpet.

His Bible sat on the nightstand where his mother liked to see it, spine cracked at the Psalms because that was where he opened it when he did not know what else to do.

Downstairs, his father would be moving through the kitchen, turning off lights, checking the back door, clearing his throat the way he did before bed.

Caleb would stare at the ceiling and think about a boy from pond hockey whose hair curled damp at the back of his neck under his toque, and then he would close his eyes and apologize to God for noticing.

Not out loud. Never out loud. He had learned early that the safest prayers were the ones nobody else could hear.

Shaking it off, he rolled to his feet and threw aside the Hudson’s Bay blanket.

The cold air raised goosebumps across his bare forearms as he stretched, shirt pulling tight across his shoulders and the lean line of his stomach.

He wasn’t big, but there was strength in him all the same, the kind of strength built by splitting wood and hours on the ice.

He rolled his neck once, trying to work the couch out of his spine, then dressed quickly, not lingering in the chill.

His parka was already on the hook by the door, stick and skates waiting beneath it.

No note for Maya. He’d be back before she was up.

Down the stairs and into the pale morning, Caleb gasped as the air struck his lungs.

He had always found winter invigorating, and this morning was no exception.

Crossing his fingers, he turned the key, hoping the truck would turn over, and while it would have been an exaggeration to say it roared to life, the old beater started all the same.

Caleb pulled out and headed to his new favourite spot.

He had found the bay on the lake by accident a few days before.

He’d gone exploring that morning, trying to get the lay of the land in his new home in Veil Lake, a town of around four thousand people not far from Thunder Bay.

It didn’t take long to see all “the sights,” so he widened his search into the surrounding backroads.

That’s where he found it. A frozen bay on a small lake tucked between pines. No signs. No parking lot. Just ice and silence and the grey light that meant winter in northwestern Ontario. He went back the next day with his skates and hockey stick. It was glorious.

Caleb loved hockey, but he had no idea if he was any good at it.

He’d never had the chance to really find out on a real team.

He’d played pond hockey as a kid, the informal kind, with the other church kids, his cousins, and a few of the dads who took the time.

His father never joined in. At least not anymore.

His mom had told him once that his dad had been a great player, but gave up when “he gave his life to Jesus.”

“The locker room is a den of iniquity, son,” was all his dad would say.

To his credit, though, he let Caleb play in any casual scrimmage he was invited to, even smiling at his son’s natural talent.

And Caleb was a natural, moving on the ice with an ease that surprised even him.

When he first picked up a stick, the clumsy attempts had quickly become practiced skill.

His hockey stick became an extension of his arms. Caleb took every opportunity he could to get on the ice, especially in places like this, quiet and free of prying eyes.

There had been a year when someone from town told his father Caleb should register for minor hockey.

Caleb had been eleven, maybe twelve, old enough to know better than to look too eager and not old enough to manage it.

The man had seen him on the pond behind the church one afternoon, keeping up with the boys who had played on teams for years.

He had said it casually, one glove tucked under his arm, breath clouding in the cold.

Kid’s got feet. You should get him playing.

His father had laughed then, pleasant enough, the way men laughed when they wanted to leave a thing where it was.

Later, in the truck, with Caleb’s skates wet in a plastic bag at his feet, his dad had explained that organized hockey came with things their family did not need.

Expenses. Travel. Sundays. Dressing rooms. Language.

Boys learning to become men from the wrong sort of men.

He said it gently, one hand loose at the top of the wheel, like he was protecting Caleb from a danger Caleb should be grateful not to understand.

No one had taken hockey away from him, not in any way that counted if you tried to explain it. But for years afterward, boys carrying hockey bags through arena doors could still open the old ache, sudden and private.

Sitting on a log at the edge of the lake, Caleb tightened his skates.

He stood, taking in the sweeping polish of ice before him.

By a chance of wind and weather, no snow had stuck, leaving a glassy field in all directions, the clear dark water visible below.

With a powerful heft, he threw the puck across the ice ahead of him, then immediately launched himself after it.

And he played.

Caleb wasn’t sure how long he’d been at it when he noticed the other person.

In truth, he had heard him before he saw him, the telltale sound of other skates moving off to his left.

It was distant, but sound carried clearly across the still air and smooth ice.

Sure enough, there was someone else over at the far end of the bay.

Caleb carved sideways, coming to a hard stop, a fan of snow spray from his blades.

Whoever it was seemed to have the same idea as him, skating hard, stick in hand, chasing a puck through an invisible field of opponents.

He was good, every movement practiced and controlled, yet somehow effortless.

Caleb was mesmerized. So much so, he didn’t quite register that the guy was moving steadily toward him.

He pulled up about thirty feet away and smiled at Caleb. A question lingered behind the smile: how had someone found his private playground?

“Hey,” the man said.

“Hi,” Caleb said.

The man skated a slow circle, not looking at Caleb anymore, just moving.

He was maybe twenty-one, twenty-two, solidly built, wearing a Lakehead U hoodie that had been washed enough times to look like a vague memory of itself.

His stick moved with a practiced deftness, the puck already somewhere else before Caleb’s eyes caught up.

Without a word, the guy pointed to the puck with his lips and raised his eyebrows. Caleb nodded, scooped up his own puck, and slipped it into his pocket. Then he launched himself across the ice as the other man’s puck came rocketing toward him in a perfect pass.

They did that for maybe twenty minutes. Parallel and in sync, connecting like teammates with years of established rapport.

The guy was clearly better than Caleb. Wanting to impress, he tried to remember what he had read online about weight transfer.

Concentrating to get it right, he forgot to be self-conscious, catching a new rhythm, matching his companion’s pace.

“You’re dropping your shoulder.”

Caleb stopped.

The man had drifted over, kicking the puck between his skates with casual ease.

Up close he was taller than Caleb had first thought, six feet without the skates, maybe more.

He had dark brown eyes and a beard that had just moved past stubble into deliberate roughness along a sharp jaw.

Under the washed-out hoodie, his shoulders were broad in the way of someone built by hard work as much as by training.

Caleb took the ease in his body for certainty.

He did not seem arrogant. The self-possession was mildly irritating all on its own.

“Which shoulder?” Caleb asked, attempting to sound only passingly interested, trying not to betray how annoyed he was with himself for making a rookie mistake.

“Your left. When you push off the outside edge you dip left and it kills your momentum.” He wasn’t unkind about it. “You want me to show you?”

Caleb considered refusing. Considered claiming he was fine, thanks, and would work it out. But the prospect of seeing this guy skate up close with an open invitation to watch? He said, “Sure.”

“I’m Connor,” he said, a slight upward note an invitation for Caleb to return the favour.

“Caleb.”