3. Captain Energy #2
Noah felt the pull in two directions so hard it almost made him dizzy.
He could smooth this. Could hand the kid a safer sentence, a cleaner angle, a way to stay technically near the truth without bleeding all over the floor.
He knew how. He had done versions of it his whole life.
At home, growing up, peace had been built on edited stories and strategic omissions and saying maybe later when what you meant was absolutely not because nobody in the room could survive one more fight.
He could do that here too. God knew everybody seemed to expect it from him.
And then Talia’s voice came back, precise as a blade.
You have confused carrying people with respecting their ability to stand in the truth.
Noah looked at Cole and hated how much that line had lodged under his skin.
“Then tell them yes,” he said.
Cole blinked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“What if—”
“No if.” Noah kept his voice level. “Say what happened.”
Cole stared at him like the answer had somehow been meaner for being simple.
Maybe it was.
Noah squeezed the back of his neck once, not gentle, not rough. “You’ll survive an honest sentence.”
He hoped that was true.
The rink hit him in the lungs like it always did—cold enough to sharpen thought, bright enough to strip excuse.
Ice laid out under stadium lights. Boards scarred white and yellow.
The Wolves logo huge at center. Skates carving warmup arcs into a clean sheet while pucks cracked against glass and the first whistle split the air.
This was the only place where things ever made immediate sense.
Push, cut, accelerate. Read the angle. Trust the lane. Finish through contact. No committee. No paperwork. No fluorescent rooms where one wrong phrase could follow a kid for years.
Noah stepped over the boards and the cold climbed instantly through his blades into bone.
Practice started hard.
Coach usually used the first ten minutes to wake them up.
Today he came for blood. Quick-touch passing under pressure.
Neutral-zone regroup until somebody puked or solved geometry with their feet.
Battle drills in the corners where freshmen got reminded that college hockey was not junior and definitely not high school.
Noah skated center in the first line rotation, lungs burning fast, thumb protesting on every hard stick handle.
He loved it anyway. Maybe because it hurt honestly.
“Move it, Mercer!” Coach barked from the boards.
Noah took a pass off his backhand, absorbed a shoulder from one of the defensemen, rolled off it, and fed Dylan across the slot. Dylan hesitated a fraction. Shot late. Saved.
Whistle.
“Feet died,” Noah called, not unkindly.
Dylan slapped his stick once against the ice. “Yeah, no kidding.”
Reset. Again.
The younger roster had talent. Everybody knew it. But talent under scrutiny did stupid things. Grip got too tight. Heads came up looking for mistakes before they made the next play. The whole team felt a half-second behind itself, and in hockey a half-second was blood in the water.
By the fourth drill Noah’s hoodie-warm locker-room ease had burned off completely.
Sweat cooled between his shoulder blades under the pads.
His breath sawed white in the rink air. He took another hit in front of the net, planted, screened, tipped one barely wide, and heard Coach cursing somebody’s gap control over his shoulder.
“Again!”
They ran it again.
Noah circled out of the crease and saw movement at the far entrance near the benches. Black coat. Campus lanyard. Dark hair pulled back. Clipboard in hand.
The entire rink reacted before the whistle even came.
It was almost comical.
One assistant coach broke off mid-sentence.
A sophomore nearly fumbled a puck with nobody within ten feet of him.
Dylan’s head snapped toward the boards like he’d spotted a sniper.
A trainer by the gate looked at Coach with the stunned, resigned expression of a man informed his tax audit had arrived in person.
Talia Shah stepped into the rink and somehow managed to make a winter coat and a legal pad look like tactical gear.
Noah glided to a stop and pushed his visor up with the back of his glove, staring.
She was not dressed for the romance of the place.
No team colors. No effort to blend. Charcoal coat to the knee, sensible boots, cream scarf tucked tight against the cold.
There were tiny drops of melted snow darkening the shoulders as if she’d crossed campus fast. The rink lights caught at the gold edge of her earrings when she turned her head. Composed. Alert. Entirely herself.
The men around him looked like the IRS had learned to skate.
Coach skated to the boards. “Doctor.”
So formal Noah almost smiled.
Talia nodded once. “Coach.”
Her gaze moved out over the ice and found Noah almost immediately. Not lingering. Not startled. Just precise. He had the absurd thought that she noticed everything in layers: who looked away first, who overcompensated, who tightened on their stick. He hated how interesting that made her face.
Coach said something to her Noah couldn’t hear over the scrape of drills restarting at the far end. One of the assistant coaches shouted for movement. Nobody moved with any quality for a full thirty seconds.
Noah coasted toward the bench at the change whistle and caught Dylan muttering, “Why is she here? Why is she here here?”
“Because the universe hates freshmen,” said the goalie.
“She observing us?”
“Apparently.”
“That’s insane.”
Noah braced both gloved hands on the top of the boards and kept his own eyes on the ice. “She’s not the boogeyman.”
“No,” Dylan said, “she’s worse. She writes things down.”
A couple of nervous laughs crackled down the bench.
Noah’s mouth almost twitched. “Then maybe don’t provide material.”
He felt her before he looked at her. Not physically. In the way awareness changed shape when one person in the building saw too much. He turned his head.
Talia stood beside the assistant athletic director now, speaking quietly, pen moving over her notes.
She looked toward a posted schedule on the wall, then toward the study area tucked behind the tunnel where players sometimes checked assignment logs between lifts and ice.
She was here for protocols, she’d said. Oversight.
Verification. Probably counting who signed what and when and whether the system matched what administration pretended it was.
She caught him looking.
No smile. No challenge. Just a calm, assessing look that somehow felt more intimate than either.
Noah pushed off the boards before the feeling could settle under his ribs.
Coach ran line rushes next. Noah took the first rep and drove the middle lane hard enough to rattle his own shoulder. Shot. Rebound. Net-front battle. Again. The work helped until it didn’t. Until every stop at the bench came with somebody leaning in.
“Mercer, if they ask about last semester—”
“Mercer, are they really pulling guys?”
“Mercer, my mom saw something online—”
“Mercer—”
He answered while gulping water and trying not to sound like a man with too many plates spinning over his head.
“Stick to facts.”
“No, nobody’s told me that.”
“Get off your phone before practice if you want to live.”
“Talk to compliance, not your roommate’s cousin.”
Public role. Peacekeeper. Human sandbag against panic.
By the second hour his thumb had gone from dull ache to sharp complaint. Nothing catastrophic. Just enough to punish every faceoff grip. He flexed his hand once between reps and saw Talia notice from the boards.
Of course she did.
Noted injury, his brain translated in her voice, and he nearly laughed at himself for the insanity of that.
Coach whistled them in for a final special-teams set. “Eyes up,” he snapped. “I do not care who is standing near my bench. I care whether any of you can complete three connected passes under pressure without acting like your skates are rented.”
That got a few grins. Not enough.
Noah lined up with the first power-play unit. Quick half-wall exchange. Down low. Bumper. Back to point. Rotate. He called for the puck, took it on his forehand, and saw Dylan on the weak side with daylight. Fed him hard. Dylan one-timed wide.
“Reset!” Coach barked.
Dylan cursed.
Noah skated over as they circled back. “Open your hips sooner.”
“I know.”
“Then do it.”
Dylan shot him a glare all young players eventually earned the right to give. “You’re in a mood.”
Noah leaned in just enough for only him to hear. “Then stop giving me homework.”
Dylan’s mouth twitched despite himself.
They ran it again. This time Dylan buried it clean, glove side, bar and in. The sound rang like a bell through the rink.
“There,” Noah said.
Dylan pointed at him with his stick as they peeled off. “Tell your brownies I take it back.”
Practice ended with sprints because Coach was offended by something existential.
By then Noah’s legs were leaded out and every breath cut cold through his lungs.
Helmets came off. Steam lifted off heads and shoulders.
The rink quieted from battle noise to the rough, human sounds after—breathing, blades scraping slow, coaches conferring in low irritated voices.
The guys started funneling toward the gate.
Talia was still there.
Not planted for effect. Not waiting in anyone’s path.
She was speaking with the assistant athletic director beside the posted academic-support board, gloved finger tracing sign-in procedures that had been laminated at some point by a person who believed lamination could solve institutional rot.
She asked a question. The assistant answered too quickly. She wrote something down.
Agency, Noah thought tiredly. She didn’t orbit hockey. Hockey was an object under her microscope, and she chose where to stand around it.
He didn’t know why that made his pulse pick up.
Dylan, coasting past him, muttered, “I’m going out the other tunnel.”
“That makes you look guiltier.”
“I’m already nineteen and from Wisconsin. I look guilty by default.”