Chapter Thirty
LUKA
The hotel room is quiet.
Built to be forgettable, with sealed windows and recycled air, and that low hum from the vent that never shuts off.
It’s the kind of quiet that is supposed to make it easier to sleep because there’s nothing personal in the space to hold your attention, no familiar corners where memories collect and wait for you.
I usually prefer it that way.
This morning, it only makes it harder to escape my own head.
I wake before my alarm, staring at the ceiling and trying to convince myself that all I’m feeling is fatigue from travel and not the restless, jagged awareness that I left something unfinished behind me in Switzerland.
The bed is too soft. The air is too dry.
My shoulder aches from sleeping wrong. None of that should matter, but it all stacks together until my body feels slightly wrong inside itself.
My phone sits face down on the nightstand.
I don’t reach for it immediately because reaching for it would mean admitting that I’m waiting for something. It would mean admitting I care whether she kept trying, whether she gave up, whether she is still begging for the kind of conversation I’ve spent my entire life avoiding.
Eventually, I flip it over anyway because pretending not to care has never actually stopped me from caring.
There are no new notifications.
No missed calls. No messages.
No desperate attempts to wedge her way through the wall I threw up in that concrete hallway above the stands.
She stopped.
The realization settles somewhere unpleasant beneath my ribs, like a bruise you only notice when you press on it.
For two days straight my phone lit up with her name, apologies and explanations and requests for five minutes of my time, and I told myself it was annoying, that it proved my point, that persistence was simply another form of pressure and I wanted no part of it.
Now the silence feels worse than the noise ever did.
I set the phone down harder than necessary and swung my legs off the bed. If I think too long about what it means that she stopped, I might start wondering whether she finally listened to me.
And that is a thought I don’t allow to take root.
Today is about hockey and about proving that nothing off the ice bleeds onto it. That is the only reason I’ve survived as long as I have.
The away arena smells different from ours. The lighting is harsher too, brighter and less forgiving, like it wants to expose every flaw. I can tell what kind of building it is the moment I walk into it, the kind that holds noise in the walls and spits it back at you.
None of that should matter.
I move through the familiar routine anyway because routine is something I can control, and control is the closest thing I have to calm.
I drop my bag at my stall, strip down, start dressing in the same order I always do, layering gear over muscle with the kind of focus that has nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with armor.
Because my mind keeps replaying the moment I saw her in the stands, the cap pulled low over her face, the stubborn set of her shoulders as if she could hide from me and still refuse to back down.
It replays the moment she said she didn’t sleep with me for leverage, as if she could find the one sentence that would cut through my certainty and make me hesitate.
JP plops down next to me. "You look like you’re thinking too hard."
"I don’t think," I reply, and I can hear the dryness in my own voice even though my throat feels tight. "I react."
"That’s not always better," he says, half joking, half not.
I don’t answer.
Because he’s right and I hate that he’s right, and I don’t have the patience to let anyone see the crack.
Warm-ups should be automatic.
The puck comes to me clean off Slade’s stick, and I mishandle it just enough that it skips off my blade instead of settling. I recover quickly, fast enough that no one says anything, but I notice. I notice because I don’t make small mistakes.
My timing feels half a second off, and my edges aren’t as sharp.
I tell myself it’s travel, fatigue, unfamiliar ice, anything except the truth, which is that my focus is fractured and I can’t put it back together no matter how hard I try.
Wolf skates past me, grinning. "Dial it in, Popeye."
I nod once—dial it in. That is the job.
The first period starts, and I tell myself to keep it simple, to play smart, to read the ice instead of chasing impact. For the first few shifts, it works. The rhythm comes back. The puck moves how it should. My body remembers what it knows.
Then I see a lane open and I take it without thinking, stepping up for a hit I don’t need to make, chasing contact instead of position. The puck slipped past the space I had just abandoned. Their winger cuts inside.
Goal.
The sound of their arena erupting feels sharp and ugly, as if it’s celebrating my mistake specifically.
I glide back to the bench without looking at anyone, but I feel the subtle shift anyway, the recalibration of energy when the room decides something has just changed.
Between periods, the locker room air is thick with sweat and controlled frustration, and Slade drops down beside me with the kind of quiet presence that says he isn’t here to chirp. He’s here because something is off.
"You good?" he asks.
"Yes."
He studies me. "You’re playing angry."
"I always play angry," I reply automatically, because anger is safe, anger is familiar.
"Not like this," he says.
The words land heavier than they should because they’re true.
I look up at him. "What does that mean?"
"It means you’re chasing something instead of reading it," he says evenly, like he’s talking to a man he respects and not a teammate he’s trying to manage.
I hold his gaze for a second longer than necessary, then look away because I don’t want to give him anything he can file under concern.
"I’ve got it," I say.
Slade doesn’t argue.
He just looks unconvinced, and that irritates me more than if he’d pushed.
Second period, I force myself into discipline again with short shifts, clean decisions, and minimal risk… the way I should have been playing all along. For a few minutes, it works well enough that I almost believe I’ve pulled myself back into control.
Then one of their forwards clips me late after the whistle, not hard enough to justify retaliation, but just enough to needle the part of me that hates being tested.
I turn and cross-check the player right in front of the ref, but I couldn’t care less. He had it coming, and tonight is not the night to fuck with me.
The whistle blows immediately.
As I skate to the box, I keep my face neutral, but under my skin everything feels too tight. The camera follows. It always follows. The commentary will start building the narrative because that is what the world does when it smells weakness.
Popovich is struggling to keep his composure.
I sit in the box and stare ahead, refusing to look up at the screen, refusing to watch my own mistake replayed for entertainment.
The puck drops and they move it fast.
Goal.
I close my eyes for a second because that one is on me too, and I can feel the team’s frustration even through the glass.
And for what?
For a woman I told myself meant nothing.
We lose.
Not by a landslide, but enough that the bus ride back to the hotel will be quiet and heavy, and Coach doesn’t waste time with speeches afterward.
He stands in front of the room, hands on hips, and his gaze lands on me with the kind of disappointment that feels like being watched by someone who expected better.
"You’re forcing it," he says.
"I’m fine," I reply, even though the lie tastes bitter.
"Then start playing like it."
There’s no anger in his tone, and that makes it worse.
Because anger would mean he thinks I can fix it quickly.
This sounds like a warning.
The locker room empties slowly, the noise draining away until it’s just the low hum of the building and the faint clatter of a lone stick being tossed into a bag. I sit longer than I need to, my gear half off, my thoughts running in circles I don’t want to acknowledge.
I stand and sling my bag over my shoulder, moving through the hallway toward the bus.
The truth is that tonight wasn’t about the loss.
It was about the fact that for the first time in years, I’m not entirely convinced that walking away was the stronger move.
And that uncertainty feels more dangerous than any opponent I’ve ever faced on the ice.