1. The Wrong Turn #2
“Hi, Caleb.” He smiled and Caleb felt the heat rise in his face.
He coughed, looking down to cover it, but Connor gave no sign he noticed.
Instead, he skated circuits around Caleb, showing him how he had dropped his shoulder, how to remedy it, and why it made such a difference.
There was no condescension in his explanation, just the friendly advice from one player to another. Caleb nodded, taking in every detail.
Connor was really good. That was the first thing, the obvious thing: he was very good, in the way that only shows when someone isn’t thinking about it, when technique has gone all the way through the body and come out the other side as instinct.
He shared other tips with Caleb, breaking them down.
Caleb watched attentively, but Connor soon pulled him into the drills himself.
Before long, they were mirroring each other with ease, Caleb feeling the improvement in measurable ways.
They skated for another hour.
Caleb couldn’t remember the last time an hour had passed without him noticing it.
“Wow,” Connor said, breathing hard as they both came to a stop. “You’re a natural. Where do you play?”
“Oh, I’ve never played on a proper team. Just scrimmages on the pond back home. A little floor hockey.”
“And where’s home?”
“Home…” Caleb wasn’t sure how to answer that quite yet. “Well, I grew up a ways west of here, a little town called Stratton.” Connor nodded, though Caleb doubted he knew it. “But I just moved here. I live with my sister in Veil Lake, above the bar.”
“Ah, the ol’ Sin Bin, eh?” Connor chuckled.
“I’ve seen your sister there, chatted a few times.
Good people.” He didn’t push for more, which was a relief to Caleb.
He wasn’t ready to get into the why of it all.
Graduating from years of home school, turning nineteen, and getting the hell out of that house, that life.
“There’s a senior hockey team in town,” Connor said, pulling off his toque, his sweaty curls encircling his flushed face.
“We play in a regional league, but nothing professional. Guys get together twice a week, have a skate, argue about the Leafs. We play a few road games, which is fun. You should come check it out. We could use another player.”
“I’m not that good,” Caleb said.
Connor studied him, steady and unhurried, weighing the true thing against the polite one.
Cocking his head slightly, he smiled and said, “You’re better than you think. And you’d get better playing with other people on a proper rink and in real games. Seriously, you’re good.”
It was the most direct thing anyone had said to Caleb in recent memory. He dropped his eyes to the ice, blushing again.
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
“Good.” Connor pulled out his phone, and they exchanged numbers, and that was that.
They skated together for a while longer, chatting about hockey, the town, the lake, and the forest that surrounded them. It was comfortable. Too comfortable, maybe, though Caleb couldn’t have said what rule he was breaking. He fought down a wave of guilt and tried to let himself enjoy it.
“So, how does your sister like running the bar?” Connor’s question pulled Caleb back to the present.
“Uh, yeah,” he replied, “she—oh crap!” At the mention of his sister, Caleb suddenly remembered that she’d be up by now. With no note and the truck gone, she was going to be worried. He needed to get back.
“Crap?” chuckled Connor. Caleb flushed, wanting to say shit to cover his childishness, but knowing that would have only made things worse.
“Sorry, I’m late. My sister is going to kill me. See ya!” Without waiting, he turned and sprinted across the ice toward the shoreline where his boots waited.
“Hold on!” shouted Connor after him. “Don’t go that way—”
But it was too late. He heard the sound before his body could process it. He might have been fine if he had kept moving, but in the panic of the moment, he stopped.
A crack exploded beneath him. Not a brittle break, but the sharp report of enormous pressure suddenly released, like a cable stretched across the lake had finally given way.
A low groan followed, travelling through the ice beneath his feet.
The groan had a strangely rounded quality, as if it had passed through the dark water below before surfacing again.
For a terrible instant there was only silence.
Then he went down.
There was nothing he could do, nowhere he could turn. There was just the sickening drop, the shock of cold so total it erased everything, the weight of his skates dragging him down fast.
He was going to sink to the bottom and a strange thought arrived with absolutely absurd clarity: would he freeze to death before he drowned?
Strange what the mind thinks of in moments like that.
Somehow, his stick jerked sideways in his grip and caught across the broken edges.
His hands locked around it with desperate strength, leaving his head barely above the surface.
The icy water bit into his wrists and shoulders.
The cold wrenched an involuntary gasp from him that would have filled his lungs with water had his head gone under.
His skates pulled relentlessly toward the bottom of the lake.
Only a few inches of fibreglass separated him from drowning.
Then he was there. Connor, crawling across the ice, his body flat, his weight spread out as widely as he could. Reaching out as far as he could, he extended his own stick to Caleb.
“Grab it and pull. Fast, while your muscles still work.” He spoke with a calm authority that was only betrayed by the fear on his bloodless face. “When you come over the edge, stay flat and crawl toward me.”
Caleb reached for the stick, but his hands barely seemed to belong to him. The cold was making them clumsy and slow. His glove slipped once before he managed to hook it around the shaft.
Caleb kicked hard. The skates that had been dragging him down now fought against him, catching at the water. For a horrible second, nothing happened. The edge of the ice dug into his chest, cracking. The ice groaned around him, panic surging through him.
“Pull!” Connor shouted. “Just your arms. Your legs can’t help until you’re on the ice.
Now pull!” Caleb pulled with everything he had left.
Connor crawled backward at the same time, never rising from his stomach.
Suddenly Caleb lurched forward. His chest slid onto the ice.
Then his stomach. Water poured from his clothes as he clawed his way farther from the hole.
Neither of them stopped.
They crawled together, dragging themselves across the frozen lake while the dark opening receded behind them, already freezing over.
Only when they were well clear did Connor finally roll onto his back. Caleb collapsed, coughing violently, his head almost touching Connor’s. Every breath burned. His entire body shook so hard his teeth rattled.
For several seconds neither spoke. Then Connor rose to kneel beside him, hands on Caleb’s arms, saying his name.
“I’m fine,” Caleb said.
“You’re not fine.” Connor was already pulling off Caleb’s sopping coat. “Get up. My cabin’s just through the trees. We’ve got to get you warm.”
The small cabin smelled of cedar and woodsmoke. Connor had a fire going in a matter of minutes, moving with urgent efficiency. Caleb wondered groggily why he was so worried. He was no longer feeling all that cold, a warning sign he might have recognized if his head were clear.
Then Connor was crouching in front of him with an expression that had moved from urgency to focused concern.
“We need to get you out of those wet clothes,” he said. “All of them. I’ll get blankets.”
“I’m—”
“Hypothermia is no joke. We have to get the wet clothes off now.” He wasn’t unkind, but it wasn’t a suggestion. “Do you need help?”
Caleb’s hands were shaking too badly to manage anything requiring dexterity. Without a word, Connor moved forward to help him with it, matter-of-fact, quick. Together they slowly peeled the sopping, frigid layers off. Caleb hesitated when they reached his boxers. Connor seemed to read his thoughts.
“All of it,” he said gently. “It’s okay.” He pulled several thick blankets over Caleb’s shivering shoulders. Caleb tried to keep the blanket in place as he pulled off his underwear, Connor turning away out of respect.
Connor assessed the situation again and stepped back, concern deepening on his brow. The absence of cold was wrong. With a sigh of resignation, he nodded once to himself.
“We’ve got to get your body temperature up now. I’m going to have to use my body heat. That okay with you?”
The question was plain. What surprised Caleb was how quickly the answer came, his body already ahead of him.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s fine.”
The fire was starting to take but it would take time for the warmth to fill the cold space. Outside the window the light had gone flat and pewter and the pines were still. Caleb pulled his knees to his chest and waited, a practiced move perfected over a lifetime.
Connor turned to the side once again and pulled his shirt over his head.
Caleb’s breath caught.
The firelight moved over Connor’s chest and shoulders, catching in the dark hair at the center of him before it narrowed beneath the waistband of his pants.
He was broader than Caleb had realized under the winter layers, solid through the arms and chest. Not in a polished way.
In the way of someone who worked hard and played harder.
Connor bent to untie his boots. Caleb fixed his attention on the fire.
Leather creaked against the floorboards. When Caleb’s attention drifted back, Connor was standing. Light caught the faint scar near one shoulder, another along his ribs, and the yellowing edge of a bruise at his side. Caleb tried not to study them. That didn’t work either.
When Connor pushed down his thermal pants, Caleb became intensely interested in the blankets a second too late.