Chapter 12 Declan
Declan
The arena is dead.
The Sunday recovery skate ended an hour ago. The rest of the guys are in the gym or the showers, flushing the lactic acid from last night’s game out of their legs. The main lights are off, just the dim utility strips humming above the sheet, throwing long gray shadows over the ice.
The crease looks wrong.
Ruts cut too wide, butterfly slides that drifted past the angle, lazy snow piles where there should be clean lines. Even after a win, the ice feels messy. Chaotic.
I step down onto the sheet. Cold cuts straight through my feet, up my legs, into my ribs. Good.
This isn’t practice. This is correction.
I skate into the crease—my crease—and drop into stance. Left post. Right post. Center. Breathe.
Addison’s voice is still lodged behind my eyes from the meeting on Monday. Not some new revelation. The same words from his office, door shut, jaw tight.
“You’re on thin fucking ice with me.”
“She doesn’t need to be collateral damage in someone else’s war.”
Short leash. Not noose.
Back in net. Not benched.
My muscles remember every second of the week I wasn’t here anyway. But last night, Saturday, the crease was mine again. I felt the puck, felt the posts, felt the rhythm return. But it wasn’t perfect. I let in a soft one in the second period.
A fracture.
I plant my skate against the left post. Push. Slide. Hit the right.
My edges carve over the ruts, erasing the mistakes one pass at a time.
Butterfly. Recover. Shuffle.
Again. Again.
The burn in my legs climbs fast. Heat claws at the back of my throat, riding the cold air in and out. The anger is still there—Rylan’s smirk, the sound of metal hitting frame, the way my hands closed on his throat—but it’s channeled now. It’s angles. It’s crease work.
I slam my stick into the post once. Wood on iron. The crack ricochets around the empty bowl, sharp and clean. My knuckles sting through the tape.
Pain is honest.
I reset. Tap left post. Tap right. Sweep the crease with the brush until the snow piles are gone and the blue paint shows through. Order restored.
Only when the ice looks like it’s supposed to—clean lines, my grooves—do I step off.
The tunnel is colder, somehow. The rubber under my blades hisses as I walk it, that familiar low scrape that usually settles me. Today it just dulls the static a notch.
I wait in the hallway until the last echo of the Zamboni fades, until the janitor’s cart squeaks past and the outer door clicks shut. Let the building empty. Let the noise burn itself out.
Then I head for the locker room.
It’s dim, just the utility lights humming. Nameplates, empty hooks, the ghost of sweat and tape and detergent in the air. My stall waits like it always does.
I sit and unstrap the armor piece by piece and lay it out in front of me in perfect symmetry. Left pad. Right pad. Blocker. Glove. Helmet. Everything in its place, edges aligned. I take the towel from my bag. The one I only use for gear.
Helmet first. I wipe the inside padding, then the cage, polishing until the metal catches the weak light and throws back a warped reflection I don’t bother to look at for more than half a second.
Then the pads. Every buckle, every strap. My hands move on autopilot, checking for frayed stitching, worn leather, anything that might give. It’s not cleaning. It’s interrogation.
Is this going to fail me?
Is there any weakness I haven’t controlled yet?
The cage isn’t just steel on my face. It’s everything. My name. My father. Beatrice. The ring box waiting like a landmine. The way Addison looked on Monday.
“She needs quiet. She needs consistency.”
His words echo. A command I broke the minute I put my hand on Rylan's throat. A command I keep breaking every time I seek her out.
When the last strap lies flat and clean, the gear looks right. It belongs to someone who owns the net.
It’s not enough. The anger is still riding low, a quiet, coiled thing. I need a different kind of hurt.
I head to the gym.
The weight room is its own kind of assault. Too bright, music too loud, bass jumping in my ribs in a rhythm I didn’t choose. The air is thick with sweat and rubber and cheap body spray.
Rylan’s voice slices through it, grating and smug, like a dull knife on metal. He’s at the cable machine, talking too loud at Calder, laugh catching on the edges where my hand bruised his throat.
“—Coach is just making a point,” he rasps, bitterness leaking through the bravado. “Whatever. I give it a week before he realizes the third line is garbage without me.”
He sees me come in.
His voice stutters. The weight stack clanks down. His eyes flick to mine and away fast, like he touched a hot stove.
Good.
I walk past without breaking stride, giving a short nod to Gio and Adrian at the squat rack.
Dante and Cole are trading sets at the bench.
The room shifts around me, small glances, conversations hitching and rerouting.
The team has already taken its sides; nobody says it out loud. They don’t have to.
I drop my bag by an empty bench, chalk my hands. Powder dusts the tape on my knuckles, turning the bruises ghost-white.
Adrian finishes a set with Dante, reracks the bar, and heads over, grabbing his water bottle.
“He made us sit through another speech before the game yesterday,” he says without preamble, sweat still running down his neck. “Locker room culture. Respect. Boundaries. Hour of my life I’m never getting back.”
“Coach?” I ask, even though I already know.
“Who else?” Adrian snorts. “Said it starts with the captain, which is his way of saying if Rylan breathes wrong again I’m the one who answers for it.”
Gio racks his bar a little harder than necessary. “Rylan should be the one answering for it. He’s lucky he’s only scratched.”
“He knows it,” Cole says quietly, stripping a plate off his side. “You heard him. He’s posturing. He knows Coach doesn’t trust him anymore.”
Dante snorts. “Lucky that’s all he lost.” His gaze cuts to me, steady. “You were solid last night. That’s what matters.”
Adrian’s expression sobers. “Coach didn’t have a choice. Donors would have rioted if Reid sat another game. But he meant what he said in his office. One more outburst and he’s done. His words, not mine.”
Rylan’s laugh spikes behind us, too loud, too forced.
“You heard what the old man said,” Gio mutters under his breath, eyes on the bar. “They used the word provoked in that meeting, Declan. Out loud. In front of admin. That’s more protection than most guys get.”
The word sits heavy in my chest.
Provoked.
That’s what they’re calling it now. Not ‘unhinged.’ Not ‘psycho.’
I shrug one shoulder, rolling the tension out. “I’m fine.”
The lie fits so well it may as well be scripted.
Dante watches me for a beat like he wants to push. Then he lets it go and reaches for the bar again. “Good. Because if you ever let the backup start a playoff game over something Rylan said, I’m bruising your other hand myself.”
A ghost of a smile tugs at my mouth. “Understood.”
The guys drift back to their racks. Conversation drops back into reps and numbers. The lines have been drawn; everyone knows who’s on which side.
Rylan wanders over, swaggering on a weak foundation. “Yo, captain,” he says to Adrian, too loud to be casual. “Great win last night, right? We’re good?”
Adrian’s jaw ticks. “We’re at the gym, Rylan. Focus on your set.”
Rylan laughs like that was a joke, but his eyes are tight. He looks at me, testing, daring. “Right, Reid? We’re good?”
I stare at him, expression blank. “Rack your weights.”
He opens his mouth again. Gio slams his bar into the rack, metal ringing, and looks over with a stare that could cut through plexi. “He said rack them.”
For once, Rylan listens.
He slinks back to his station. The air leaks out of him like someone punctured the bravado with a pin.
I put my Beats on. Blessed silence drops over the room, the music swallowed.
I load the bar heavier than I need. Get under it.
The weight settles across my shoulders like something I deserve.
I lift.
Up. Down. Up. Down.
Each rep is clean pain, the kind I choose. It’s not my father’s cold disgust or Beatrice’s sticky laugh. It’s not the look on Talia’s face when she realized what I’d done in the locker room—
And it’s not the memory of Wednesday. I remember the lecture hall. She let me anchor her when the noise spiked. The ghost of her forearm was under my hand, warm and trembling, then steadying.
The smell of peppermint cutting through the classroom air.
Up. Down.
This is simple. You either get the bar up or you don’t.
Spots of light creep at the edge of my vision. My lungs burn. Sweat runs into my eyes, stinging. One more rep. One more. One more.
When I rack it, my arms are shaking and my legs feel like they’re filled with wet cement.
Good.
I strip the plates, metal clanking dull and distant through the noise I’ve blocked out. Toss my towel into the hamper, grab my bag, and walk out.
The moment the gym door shuts behind me, the chilled air of the concourse cuts through the humidity like a blade. I breathe easier.
I should go back to my apartment. I don’t.
The silence there is wrong. Empty. The control I just earned in the gym feels abstract. Data is essential. Talia’s pattern needs to be known. I head for my truck. Slide into the cab. Turn the key. The engine rumbles, a low steady presence under my feet.
I tell myself I’m driving to clear my head. Checking traffic patterns around campus. Cooling the engine. Logical route.
But I know where I’m going.
I didn’t forget the search result from Monday night.
Academic Services. Proctor schedule. Library, Room 3B. Sunday nights.
I take the long way around the quad.
Lights glaze the sidewalks in sodium orange. Clusters of students move in loose knots—backpacks, hoodies, the glow of phones.
I turn down the road that runs between the library and the academic center. Study Hall is tonight.