26. April 3, Sunday
Chapter twenty-six
Ilya
The first hint that tonight was going to be a problem was the way the puck kept hopping Christian’s stick.
It was a nothing drill: warmups, loops through the neutral zone, a few easy touch passes to wake up feet and hands. They’d done it a hundred times. Muscle memory.
Ilya came off the half boards, took a feed from Jason, and sent a lazy wrister in on Teemu, more about loosening his shoulders than scoring. Teemu snagged it with his glove, snapped it down, and tossed it aside with a look that said, next.
Ilya cut through the middle again, eyes doing what they always did; sweeping, cataloguing.
Tommy was loose, laughing loud as he stole a passing teammate’s puck. Ty’s shoulder didn’t hitch on his turns. Bobby’s knee held on his pivots, even if his grimace promised hell after the game.
Near center, Christian was running his own little circuit. Stop, start, cut, pivot. The mechanics looked fine, his edge work crisp. But once he added quick stickhandling—basic puck control they’d all mastered before they were teenagers—his hands fumbled just enough to make Ilya’s brain itch.
More than the bobbles, it was where his eyes kept going.
Up. Past the glass, past the lower bowl, toward one corner of the stands. Over and over again, like a compass needle stuck on true north.
Ilya followed the line of his gaze on the next loop.
If he tracked it right, Christian was monitoring a few empty seats.
Not searching the crowd.
Looking for someone who wasn’t there.
Christian’s edges squealed as he hit another tight turn and nearly clipped his own back foot.
“Hey, rookie!” Ian called as he went by. “Careful. Ice is slippery.”
Christian flashed him a subtle middle finger, careful of the coaches’ eyes.
The overhead clock ticked down on warmup. The music cranked up. Fans in the lower bowl slapped the glass, kids shrieking, homemade signs wobbling in their hands.
Inside, Ilya felt off.
Playoffs were only a couple of weeks out, the standings were tight, and they were at home. Energy should have been sharp, crackling.
Instead, everything felt half a beat too slow.
He finished his last lap, flicked another puck at Teemu, and skated off with the rest of them, the thud of blades on rubber echoing up the tunnel.
Helmet off, gloves off, he took his spot in the room as staff moved through with water, tape, and last-minute questions. The usual noise rose—jokes, routines, rituals.
Mitch’s stall was two down from his, just like in college. Same grin, if a little more lined. Same loud laugh over the music.
And somewhere outside the room, Zoey was already in place—lanyard, clicky pen, clipboard.
Ilya rolled his neck until it cracked and told himself the same lie he always did. Once the puck dropped, all of that would dim.
On the ice, there was no Zoey, no Mitch, no hard-to-reach sister, no missing dog, no half-answered texts. Just the game. His quiet place. The one place in his life where the rules made sense and distractions burned off under speed and cold air.
Except, for the next forty minutes, he never quite found that place.
Neither did the rest of the guys.
The first period was a choppy mess. Ugly hockey. No rhythm.
They traded chances, penalties, and insults.
They got in each other’s way in the neutral zone. They weren’t terrible. They just weren’t… them.
The second period wasn’t much better.
They killed one penalty only to take another on a line change. They went down by one on the kind of goal that made goalies and captains grind their teeth—double deflection, wrong place, wrong time.
“Christian doesn’t look like himself,” Ty said quietly, leaning on the boards, sweat beading at his temples. “He’s puck watching.”
“He’s fine,” Tommy shot back reflexively, squirt bottle halfway to his mouth. “Rookie shit. Too in his own head. He’ll shake it off.”
Two spots down, Christian slumped with his helmet tipped back, chest heaving harder than the shift warranted. His hands spun his stick in tight, agitated quarter turns. Between whistles, his gaze kept twitching to that same slice of stands.
Ilya added another mark to the invisible list in his head.
He hadn’t caught Christian for more than a high five in days.
Hadn’t asked if the baby was okay, if his girlfriend was still sick, if the anxiety was letting him sleep.
He’d meant to. Like he’d meant to call Kira.
Like he’d meant to check the garage again for Fido.
Like he’d meant to sit down with Jason after that miserable mini-intervention weeks ago.
Later. Always later.
They went into the second intermission down one. Not out of it, but not in control, either. The guys were tight with unspent adrenaline and thinning patience.
Players stripped down, gulped water, toweled off. Trainers worked through their triage—ankle tight, shoulder hot, ribs barking—while coaches huddled over clipboards, arguing in low voices.
Ilya sat in front of his stall, sweat cooling down his spine, mind already ticking through the third-period checklist.
Shorter shifts. Smarter dumps. Less hero shit.
“Kid’s playing scared.”
Mitch dropped onto the bench beside him like a stone, towel around his neck, hair sticking up in damp spikes.
He jerked his chin toward Christian’s corner. “You see it?”
Christian sat with his head tipped back against the wall, eyes closed, stick propped between his knees, hands loose, chest rising faster than it should at rest.
“I see…something,” Ilya said.
“Those pucks at the wall?” Mitch went on. “He’s got half a step on their D and still pulls off. Doesn’t want to get hit. That’s fear.”
Ilya thought about the plays. The bobbles, the darting eyes, the late reads. It didn’t read like fear. It felt like fog. Distraction.
“Maybe he’s tired,” Ilya said. “Been a lot lately. Kid just found out—”
“Serge.” Mitch scoffed. “Everybody’s tired. That’s the job.”
He slapped a hand on Ilya’s shoulder, easy as always.
“That’s the adjustment. You gotta teach him to lean into it.
If he pulls up every time the boards look scary, the league eats him alive.
You tell him to go in harder on those loose pucks.
Trust his body. Trust the hit. You’re the captain.
Give him the kick in the ass. We’ll be fine. ”
The words sat wrong in Ilya’s gut.
Not because they were absurd. On another night, with another player, in another situation, Mitch might have been right. Young guys did get scared. They did peel off. They did need veterans to remind them that hesitation could hurt worse than contact.
But Christian’s eyes kept going to those empty seats. His hands were too busy. His breathing was wrong.
“That’s not all that’s happening here,” Ilya said, mostly to himself.
Mitch’s hand tightened briefly on his shoulder. “You trust me, right?”
Like the last ten years hadn’t already answered that question. Ilya trusted Mitch with a lot. Trusted him with more than most people deserved. Kira. His own career. His early sanity. He’d trusted him with college secrets and ugly nights and the kind of loyalty that didn’t expire.
Now, under all of that, sour and quiet, sat the fact that he was carrying on a secret affair with Zoey and hadn’t said a word.
Mitch didn’t know that while Ilya sat in his living room last night listening to him spiral over whether Zoey might be seeing someone, Ilya was that someone. That Ilya had bite marks on his shoulder and her perfume on his sheets.
Saying no to Mitch here, pushing back on his hockey read, felt like adding another notch on the disloyalty tally.
“I’ve been there,” Mitch said, misreading the hesitation. “A veteran had to snap me out of it. You do that for him, he’ll thank you later. You’re good at this stuff. You talk, people listen.”
Ilya stared at his taped knees for a heartbeat, jaw tight. He should say, He doesn’t need a go-harder speech. He needs an are-you-okay speech. Instead, he heard himself say, “Okay. I’ll talk to him. We’ll get him going.”
The hallway back to the ice was short, well-lit, and vibrating with the noise of the fans above. Christian stood just inside it, helmet dangling from his fingers, staring at the scuffed rubber flooring like it might offer answers.
“Christian,” Ilya called, catching his elbow. “Walk with me.”
They moved a few steps from the doorway. Enough that the fans couldn’t see them anymore.
The hum of the crowd came through the walls, low and expectant. The sharp smell of the rink mixed with sweat and stale popcorn.
“You’re doing a lot right,” Ilya said, planting his feet and looking down at him. “You’re in the right spots. You’re reading plays. But you’re holding back.”
Christian’s jaw clenched. “I know. I just—”
“Those pucks at the wall?” Ilya instructed, the words still tasting slightly like someone else’s. “You’ve got more in you there. No more peeling off. If you know it’s your puck, go. Full commit. Trust your read.”
Christian met his eyes. For a second, something raw flickered there—panic, maybe, or exhaustion—then vanished under a nod.
“I…actually, I’ve been…” he started, voice catching.
Ilya’s stomach tightened. There it was. The thing under the thing.
“Serge! Zebras are yelling, let’s go!” an assistant coach hollered from down the hall, popping briefly into view before disappearing again.
The moment snapped.
Christian’s mouth closed. His shoulders straightened. The kid was good at that. Too good. “Yeah. Okay. Full commit. No fear.”
The prickle at the base of Ilya’s skull sharpened. Something about Christian’s look felt off. He should push. Ask the standard questions: What’s going on? Head okay? Sleeping? Baby and girlfriend okay?
He should say, If you’re not right, you sit. Game be damned.
Movement snagged his attention.
At the tunnel entrance, Zoey hustled in, clipboard wedged under one arm. She leaned toward another staffer, pointing at a laminated sheet, whispering quickly.