Grizz #2
I feel the cheap shot on my legs again. I feel the skipped puck. I feel the scoreboard. I feel number 15’s mouth near my ear, spitting that word.
I look straight into the camera. “The league lets some fuckwad take cheap shots at me all game,” I say, voice flat and deadly. “That makes it hard to do my job out there. It’s a complete fuckin’ joke.”
The reporter’s eyes widen and her smile dies.
For a second the whole world pauses because everyone knows what happens next.
She clears her throat too loudly. “All right—Grizz McAvoy, thanks for your time,” she says, rushing. “Back to you in the booth—”
The red light goes off and the second it does, I turn away like the interview never happened.
I’m already moving toward the tunnel when a hand clamps around my arm.
Daisy.
Her fingers are firm, nails pressing through my sleeve. She pulls me just enough to stop me.
“What was that, Grizz?” she demands.
I whip my head around. “It was a bullshit question,” I bite back. “She was trying to provoke me.”
Daisy’s eyes flash. “And you handed her exactly what she wanted.”
“It’s the truth,” I spit.
Her grip tightens. “It’s a nationally televised game. You can’t say that on live TV.”
“Why not?” My voice rises, and I don’t care that players and staff are filing past us, that the bench area is still full of movement and noise. “Why not call it what it is? Why does he get to whack me behind the knees and skate away grinning while I’m supposed to—what—smile for the camera?”
Daisy’s nostrils flare. She drags in a breath, and when she speaks again, it’s like she’s fighting to keep her tone even. “This isn’t just about you, Grizz,” she says. “It’s about more than you.”
The words hit me like a fist to the sternum because they’re familiar.
I was fourteen, sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s pickup truck, still in my sweaty gear under my coat because he refused to wait while I changed.
The car smelled like cold coffee and tobacco and the leather of his gloves…
and an exhausted kid. The windshield was smeared with salt and the radio was off.
We’d lost and my heart was hammering—a mixture of worthlessness and fear.
It all ran through my head like a bad movie on a loop—my missed assignment on the back-check, the way the other team’s forward slipped behind me, the puck sliding in like it was inevitable. I could still hear the final horn in my head, definitive as a judge’s gavel after a guilty verdict.
My dad’s hands were a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and a muscle ticked by his temple, a sure sign that it was going to be bad.
He didn’t speak at first, a tactic he often employed to amp my fear. He let the silence work on me, let it tighten around my throat like a rope. The streetlights smeared by in orange streaks.
And then the explosion came. “What the fuck was that?” His voice filled the truck, rattled the windows. “You just watched him go right by you. You didn’t move your feet. You didn’t take the body. You didn’t do a fucking thing.”
“I—” I started, throat dry.
He slammed his palm against the steering wheel. “Don’t. Don’t ‘I’ me. Not tonight.”
I stared at my knees, at my hockey bag wedged by my feet, at my still-damp gloves. “I tried,” I whispered.
My father laughed, an ugly sound filled with so much disdain, I shrank further into the seat. “Tried. Jesus Christ.” His eyes flicked to me, cold. “This isn’t just about you, Grizz. It’s about more than you and you’re too fucking stupid to realize it.”
My stomach hollowed as he jabbed a finger toward the windshield like he could point at my future. “It’s about your name. It’s about what I’ve invested. It’s about what people think when they watch you play. You embarrass yourself, you embarrass me. You get that? You’re not out there for fun.”
I swallowed hard and my eyes burned.
It didn’t escape his notice, though. “Don’t you cry,” he snarled. “Champions don’t cry. Champions don’t come home losers.”
My dad gripped the wheel tighter, voice lowering into a hateful and controlled register. “You want a second chance? You want to be worth a shit? Then you stop making it about your feelings and you start making it about winning. About more than you.”
The truck kept moving. The salt-streaked streetlights kept sliding by. And I sat there, small in my seat, trying to shove every feeling down into a place where he couldn’t see it.
It’s about more than you.
I kept repeating that phrase in my head, over and over again, knowing that this wasn’t the end of it. I’d physically feel my dad’s fury when we got home.
It’s about more than you.
I blink and I’m back, Daisy’s hand still on my arm, her mouth still forming the last word like it’s nothing. Like she didn’t just reach into my chest and pull out my heart, rotted and raw.
“It’s about more than you,” she repeats.
I stare at her, the blood roaring in my ears again. My skin feels too tight.
Daisy frowns. “Grizz—”
“Don’t,” I say, my voice different now. Rasping. Ice cold. Wrong. “Don’t say that.”
She looks genuinely confused. “Say what?”
“That,” I snap, jerking my arm slightly, but she doesn’t let go. “That exact—” My throat closes. I swallow it down just as I always have. Like I’ve been trained to. “Don’t.”
Her eyes soften, and that softness—God, it makes me angrier.
“I’m trying to protect you,” she says, quieter. “I’m trying to protect the team. There are fines, there are—there’s the league office, there are headlines, there’s—”
“There’s control,” I cut in. “There’s always control.”
Her brows knit in confusion. She’s in the present and I’m in the past. “This is my job,” she says.
“No.” The word comes out harsh. “This is you telling me to swallow it. To take it. To pretend it doesn’t matter.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” she insists, voice rising now too. “I’m saying you can’t go on live TV and call someone a fuckwad—”
“I just did.”
“And it’s not just about you,” she says again, frustrated, and she doesn’t even realize she’s repeating it, doubling down.
Daisy’s eyes widen slightly, like she senses the temperature drop but doesn’t know why.
I study her face—the way she’s so sure and righteous, so convinced she’s saving me from myself—and inside me, I make the ugliest connection.
The words. The tone. The demand that I be bigger than my pain because other people’s comfort matters more.
My dad’s voice overlays hers so cleanly it makes my stomach turn.
I pull my arm out of her grip with a sudden, violent jerk.
Daisy flinches. “Grizz—what—”
“You sound like him,” I say, and the words come out before I can stop them.
She freezes. “Like who?”
“My dad.” I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “That line? That exact line? You think you’re the first person who’s ever said that to me?”
Daisy’s face drains of color. “Grizz, I didn’t—”
“You didn’t mean it,” I mock, and my voice grows louder, rougher. My chest hurts. My legs throb. Everything is pressure. “You never mean it. You just say the thing that gets me to shut up. The thing that makes me small enough to fit into whatever picture you’re trying to frame.”
“That’s not fair,” she says, and her voice cracks on the last word. “I’m on your side.”
“No, you’re not.” The certainty of it scares me even as it leaves my mouth. “You’re on the league’s side. You’re on the team’s side. You’re on the broadcast’s side. You’re on everyone’s side except mine.”
Daisy’s eyes flash with hurt. “That is not true.”
“It is,” I insist, and my hands are shaking now. I can’t stop it. My body is a live wire. “You want me to swallow it and smile. You want me to pretend it doesn’t hurt so it’s easier for everyone else.”
“I want you to not get suspended,” she says. “I want you to not get fined. I want you to not become the story in a way that hurts you.”
I stare at her, breathing hard.
And I hate—hate—that part of me hears the logic. That part of me knows she’s right and wants to step forward, take her face in my hands, apologize, tell her I’m bleeding in places she can’t see.
But the louder part—the trained part that’s wounded and beaten up—only hears the painful echo.
It’s about more than you.
Daisy takes a step toward me, softer now. “Grizz. Look at me. I’m not him.”
Her mouth opens, then closes. Her eyes shine, not with manipulation, not with strategy—just with raw emotion.
I should stop and take a calming breath. I should defuse this, but I don’t. I choose not to.
I turn toward the boards, toward the bench area, toward the only thing in my hands that knows how to take violence and turn it into motion.
Daisy’s voice is tinged with panic. “Grizz—don’t—”
I lift the stick above my head with both hands.
For a split second, time holds its breath.
Then I bring it down.
A tomahawk swing, full force, all anger and heartbreak and humiliation channeled into wood and carbon fiber. The stick cracks against the boards with a sound like a gunshot. It shatters and pieces fly.
The impact reverberates up my arms, into my shoulders, into my skull. The arena noise feels far away now, muffled by the ringing in my ears. I stand there for a second, chest heaving, staring at the broken remaining piece of my stick in my hands like I don’t recognize what I’ve done.
Then I drop it, and it clatters to the floor between us.
Daisy is staring at me, eyes wide, lips parted. I think I just punched a hole through something we can’t patch back up.
I look at her and the rage drains enough for the devastation underneath to show itself.
“This,” I say, voice hoarse, “is what you do. You take the worst moment, and you tell me to make it about everyone else.”
Daisy’s chin trembles. “Grizz—”
And then I turn and storm down the tunnel toward the locker room, leaving the splintered stick behind.
Leaving her behind.
Leaving us behind.