11. Briggs
brIGGS
Ispent Thanksgiving in Charlotte, eating turkey off a caterer’s tray at Hartwell’s with the rest of the guys who didn’t fly home.
I called my dad. Evie was at her family’s thing by then, but we texted through the afternoon. She gave me live coverage of her woo-woo aunt who insisted they light incense, and I sent back the play-by-play of Augie attempting to deep-fry a turkey in Hartwell’s driveway.
Nobody died. The bird got burnt to hell, though.
Everything was fine, for what it’s worth. I’ve logged enough miles in this league that the holidays are mostly just another day on the calendar, and this year, that meant a phone that vibrated more than I’m used to. A minor performance of normalcy.
Then the road schedule called us back. That’s where I work best anyway. Three cities in two nights, pillows that feel like cardboard, and a pressurized tube full of men who get paid to hit things. Just perfect.
The Kings fly in a gutted commercial jet, all leather recliners and card tables bolted down in the back third. There are fifty of us occupying a space meant for two hundred, and it still isn’t nearly enough real estate to escape August Kessler.
We’re mid-hand somewhere over Tennessee. It’s Augie’s deal, which means the math gets creative the second his chips start to dip. We’re currently four amendments into a game that didn’t even have rules when we took off.
“That’s not how you play,” Kyo says, frowning. He swipes a strand of black hair away from his forehead. “You made that up.”
Augie tips his chin. “It’s an old Kings standard.”
Kyo huffs but plays along, because he’s nineteen and hasn’t earned the right to actually litigate a rule with Augie. He’ll get there. Right now, he just tosses a card and mutters something about a rigged system.
“I think they’ve been counting cards over there,” Fozzy accuses.
“You can’t count cards in this,” I tell him. “There’s nothing to fuckin’ count.”
Fozzy considers this, deeply. “I’m sure I could try.”
“You couldn’t count your own fingers,” Kyo says, and the row loses it.
My phone buzzes against my thigh. I glance down to check it.
Evie
update. Phil got a live bird for a dove release during the service this weekend
I repeat. ONE. and did you know it’s actually a homing pigeon? they don’t use real doves because doves get lost and die. pigeons just fly home
I chuckle out loud.
Augie’s head comes up like a dog hearing a can open. He watches as I type back.
Briggs
a release, huh? isn’t that just the bird’s daily commute?
Evie
THANK YOU. that’s what I said. Phil says it’s “symbolic of a singular soul ascending”
Briggs
it’s symbolic of Phil being cheap
Evie
you know him so well already
I tilt my head back against the leather seat, staring at the cabin ceiling and trying to kill the grin before anyone notices. It’s a losing battle.
Augie lets out a low, appreciative whistle. “Maxie. You dog.”
I cut him a tired look, the performance already fraying. “What?”
He leans over the card table, his smirk widening. “You’ve got that phone smile again.”
“I’m folding,” I announce, tossing my cards face-down and shoving the phone into my pocket.
Augie clutches his chest in mock agony. “You can’t fold now. We haven’t even—” He shakes his head, recalibrates. “So, what’s your girl up to tonight?”
I groan, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Mind your own damn business, Kessler.”
He makes a playful grab for my pocket, and I roll toward the window. Now the whole back of the plane is tuned in. There is nothing this team loves more than a man refusing to offer up a name.
I might be chronically single, but half this roster is anchored to someone back home.
Hartwell’s been with Lily since they were kids and still does the nightly FaceTime ritual without fail. Duval got engaged last summer and has since become the most insufferable romantic in the league. Even ?berg and Ekman have been a package deal since juniors.
They claim it’s just friendship, but they’ve shared a room for three seasons, and nobody in the front office made them sign the request.
Augie insists he’s “emotionally available,” which usually just means he won’t stay with a woman for more than six weeks. The rookies are still too terrified to have pulses yet. And for the most part, I’ve stayed out of the rotation.
The last time I let a woman in, the exit was messy enough that I never found the energy to try again.
“Is this the girl who’s helping your dad?” Hartwell asks from the next row.
I frown. “How do you know about that?”
“Our fathers talk,” Hartwell says, unbothered. “They met at a prospect camp once, and now they apparently trade intel on our personal lives.”
I drop my head back against the seat. “There is literally nothing to know.”
I’m not just giving the party line. There really is nothing to report about me and Evie. I like the distraction of her, and I need to talk to her because she’s currently the only thing keeping my father steady.
But there isn’t space for anything more. My life is split between two time zones, my contract expires in April, and I’m still half drowning in the silence of my brother’s death. I’m already carrying too much.
“You’re blushing,” Fozzy notes, sounding awed. “I thought you were carved out of granite and spite, Maxwell.”
“Leave it,” I say, and something in my voice must hit home because Augie sits back and shuts the table down with a single look.
He waits until the noise shifts—Hartwell accusing Duval of hiding an ace in his hoodie—and then he speaks low, dealing a fresh hand.
“It’s good, though,” he says from the corner of his mouth. “Whatever it is. It’s good to see you back in your own skin for a minute.”
I look at my cards, the static at the back of my skull finally quieting. “It’s nothing.”
Augie studies me for a split second, then shrugs and tosses a chip at Fozzy instead.
“Alright,” he announces. “Fozzy owes me twenty bucks.”
“On what grounds!”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I don’t check it while they’re watching. But I want to, and that’s the tell.
When I’m not talking to Evie, I find myself wondering what she’d say next—whether some bizarre thing I saw at the rink would make her laugh. I don’t know if this is friendship or the front edge of a problem, but I know I haven’t tried very hard to find the exit.
The Motors Arena is a packed red fortress of a building that has held a grudge against the Kings since long before I was ever drafted.
Detroit comes out chippy, and the opening frame is mostly a collection of shoving matches after the whistle. Sticks are up in the corners, their bench is yapping at ours over the glass, and it’s scoreless through twenty.
It feels more like a bar fight than a professional hockey game.
By the second period, it’s a war. I love that part, at least at the start. The game gets fast and mean, and I finally stop thinking entirely. Augie levels a guy so hard the glass shudders, and for a second, the whole building forgets whose barn it is.
Detroit gets the first one eight minutes in, a deflection off a shin pad that Duval never had a chance at.
Then, midway through the period, I chip a puck past their defenseman and find an extra gear, getting there first. I feed Fozzy back door for the tap-in that ties it, and our bench comes up as one.
Out here, I’m not a man with a dead brother and a nightstand full of insurance forms. I’m fast, and I’m useful, part of a machine that moves when I move. This is the performance I’d pay them for, if the math worked the other way around.
We keep pushing after the tying goal. It’s the best I’ve felt in weeks—the reads are coming easy, and the puck sits flat on my tape every time I ask for it. I nearly bury a second on a two-on-one, but their goalie flashes a desperate glove and robs me clean.
Even that feels good, getting robbed on a night the legs are finally there. Then Detroit answers with a long, grueling shift in our end that has Duval standing on his head. The crowd is up the whole time, letting out a low, sustained roar.
The horn ends the second even, both benches skating off, jawing at each other the whole way to the tunnel.
The tie holds well into the third. Chances are trading both ways, the building is at a full-blown roar, and it’s clear someone’s going to crack.
It’s them.
There’s a whistle for an icing, and I go out for the defensive zone draw. One of their fourth-liners lines up beside me, thick through the shoulders, leaning on the top of his stick like we’ve got all night.
“Heard about your brother,” he says. “Real shame.”
I don’t bite. I’ve heard the whole rotation this month. Prayers up, so young—all delivered with the same solemn cadence.
He waits until the linesman turns to get the puck, then leans in close enough that I catch stale gum on his breath. “Heard you two weren’t even on speaking terms. Buried him, and you hadn’t said a word in, what, years?” He offers a little smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Pretty fucked-up.”
The building goes far away, the noise of eighteen thousand people fading into static.
He knew it would land. That’s the whole job, and he’s already got a glove off before I’ve turned to face him, because he came out here for this, and we both know it.
Mine are gone a half second later.
I get his jersey in my left hand, and I hit him three times, and the third one is the one that lands right.
I hear the crack before I feel it. He’s still throwing, catching me high on the cheek, and then his legs go, and we’re down on the ice together with my fist cocked back and nowhere left to put it.
He’s turtled underneath me. I stay there over him, breathing like a horse, wanting it more than I’ve wanted anything in weeks.
Then Augie’s arms come around my chest from behind and haul me off.
“Enough, Maxie. That’s enough.”
Whistles are blowing. My helmet’s gone somewhere. There’s blood on my knuckles, and I couldn’t tell you whose. The linesmen have the other guy up on his skates, and he’s yelling something at me over their shoulders, and I want to go through both of them to get to it.
The ref skates at me with his arm already up, pointing toward the tunnel. I don’t need the script. Game misconduct. Done.
I skate for the exit with the crowd screaming, and then the heavy double doors close it down to a dull, muffled roar.
The equipment room off the visitors’ hall is empty this time of night. Racks of sticks, a wall of tape, and no one in it. I put my back to the cold cinder block and mean to just breathe.
It doesn’t work like that.
The weight of it comes up from somewhere under the rage, fast, and I can’t seem to get in front of it. Ziggy is gone. We never fixed it. I buried my brother after two years of silence, and now the silence will last the rest of my life.
My face is wet before I understand it’s happening.
Then it takes me all at once. I go down the wall to the floor in my gear. I didn’t cry at the service. Didn’t cry at the headstone. Haven’t since I was a kid, really. Now it’s all of it, out of order and out of my hands.
I’m coming undone, heaving, my forehead pressed against the rough leather of my bloody glove. My shoulders won’t settle. Every intake of air snags halfway down.
I lose track of the minutes on that cold floor. All I register is the crushing weight of it, a sensation that feels like drowning with a jagged, horrible edge of relief.
Soft footsteps land on the ground, then echo down the hallway.
I use a handful of jersey to scrub the wetness from my skin, dragging myself back onto my blades just as the equipment kid clears the turn.
He slows down, his gaze scanning me. “You doing alright, Maxie?”
I reach for a roll of tape, bracing myself.
“Yeah,” I say, “just perfect.”