Chapter 27 - Karter
Matt dropped onto the bench beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. Two weeks ago he’d been sleeping in other people’s rooms to avoid catching whatever he acted like I was carrying. Now his elbow knocked against mine as if the rumors had never happened.
“Are you good, man?”
“Yeah.” Breathing hard, I rested my forearms on my knees. “Just need a second.”
Aleksey was still out on the ice, throwing his body into every check. Shoving guys off the puck, he cleared a space for our forwards like he’d been doing all night.
Elliot leaned over from two spots down. “Next shift, Karter. We need a push.”
“I’m ready.”
Coach barked a line change. I went over the boards and my skates bit into the scarred ice, white gashes crisscrossing the surface, just as the puck squirted loose at center ice.
The goalie sat too deep in his crease. And the defenseman was flat-footed at the blue line. But the rink told me everything I needed without thinking, though.
Across the zone, Aleksey had his man pinned against the boards, forearms braced on his stick, shoulders rigid. That tight line of his spine was a command as loud as a shout.
Two periods of cheap shots, and he hadn’t dropped his gloves once. But that kind of discipline cost him. I’d watched him take cross-checks and slashes from the opposing team the whole game, but he just skated away. He’d kept his word to me, and now the game balanced on this shift.
Sweat rolled down my back, and my quads burned, but I tightened my grip and locked onto the puck.
Aleksey glanced over from the blue line. No nod, no signal, just a half-second hold that said go. After months of hiding behind locked doors, we didn’t need words on the ice. The play was already forming in my head before it developed.
The puck hit my stick. Breakaway.
There was no time to think. I skated hard, faked left, and the defenseman lunged. A quick drag to my forehand and I snapped the puck into the top corner.
The goal horn blared as red lights flashed behind the net. My teammates swarmed me against the glass, shouting something I couldn’t hear over the noise. Gloves pounded my helmet, but the celebration was just noise and bodies. I twisted through the pile, searching.
Aleksey was still at the blue line, helmet shoved back, chest heaving as our eyes locked.
Seconds later, Coach barked a defensive change. I dropped back onto the bench, legs still burning as I got sidelined for the final three minutes of the game. The other team pulled their goalie for an extra skater. Every second seemed to drag.
Two minutes left. All we had to do was survive.
Perez gripped the top of the boards beside me, chewing the mouthguard dangling from his chin strap. “They’re pressing hard, bro.”
I nodded. The ice was chaos. Bodies crashed against the glass. Sticks hacked at shins. Our goalie turned away one shot, then another; the puck squirting into the corner.
“Clear the damn crease!” Coach’s voice ripped down the bench, his cap already off and crushed in one fist.
Elliot leaned out over the boards, shouting at the ice. “Outside lane, Dom! Force him wide!”
A forward in the opposition’s dark jersey drove hard into our zone. Aleksey stepped into the lane, planted his feet, and took the hit shoulder-to-chest. The impact slammed him backward. He went down hard, sliding across the ice and crashing into the corner boards.
I locked my hands on the top of the boards until the plastic bit into my palms, waiting as Aleksey stayed down.
Ten seconds seemed to go on for an eternity, the crowd noise fading to nothing. I waited for him to move, to twitch, to show he wasn’t hurt.
“Shit,” Perez muttered. He swallowed hard, gaze fixed on the corner. “If he stays down, nobody blames him. He already did enough out there.”
My throat had closed up. “He’s not done.”
Leaning further over the ledge, I locked my gaze on Aleksey crumpled in the corner. “Come on, you can do it. Get up.”
I let loose a breath I didn’t realize I was holding when Aleksey shoved himself upright, both hands pressed flat against the ice. He kept his weight on his left skate, the right leg barely taking any of it.
Our team trainer yelled over the crowd. “Zotov! Come off!”
Aleksey shook his head and waved him away, limping over into position for the defensive faceoff. He still kept his weight off that right skate, but he lined up as if he had every intention of finishing this game on one leg.
“Thirty seconds, Karter.” Coach grabbed my shoulder pads and hauled me toward the boards. “Get out there. Win this face-off.”
Without another word, I went over the boards, and the chaos swallowed me whole.
The other center beat me on the draw. Their defenseman wound up from the point and let a slapshot fly.
The puck rang off the post, a sharp ping that sliced straight through the arena noise, and kicked into the corner.
I chased it down, pinned it against the boards with my blade.
A winger hacked at my shins, his stick cracking against the plastic guards, but I leaned my shoulder into the glass and held on, refusing to budge as the seconds ticked down.
And then the final buzzer blared.
We won.
The bench emptied, equipment raining down onto the ice as the guys threw their gear in the air. Pushing off the boards, I shoved through the crush of bodies, past Elliot’s outstretched arm, past Matt’s grinning face, and locked onto the one thing that mattered.
Aleksey stood near the faceoff dot, still favoring his right leg a little, but his face had split into a wide grin that made him look like a completely different person.
I stopped a foot away, just close enough to talk without drawing stares. “We actually pulled that off.”
“Told you.” His voice was rough, barely carrying over the celebration. “You owe me for listening.”
“Owe you what, exactly?”
Aleksey grabbed the front of my jersey and hauled me into a hug. Our embrace stretched a lot longer than any other teammate hug, but I didn’t care.
Cameras flashed from the other side of the glass; photographers pressed against the boards. And for a tense beat, my shoulders tensed, an old reflex kicking in.
My father. The campaign. The fallout.
But then I crushed it all down and held Aleksey tighter. I didn’t care who saw, cause I was done ducking away from this.
Aleksey’s breath was hot against my ear. “I knew you’d get that goal.”
“And I knew you wouldn’t stay down.”
He pulled back just enough for me to see his face. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead. A fresh bruise was already swelling along his chin, but his mouth curled into that sharp, feral grin that made my stomach bottom out.
Aleksey then grimaced, shifting a little. “This leg’s gonna hurt like a bitch tomorrow,” he said, patting his right thigh.
“Guess it’s a good thing we’re not skating tomorrow.”
The grin widened. “Have you got plans for me instead?”
His voice dropped even lower, leading me to imagine all the things I wanted him to do to me, and then I shook my head, letting out a rough laugh.
“You’re an idiot.”
“You’re still here.”
The next two hours dissolved into noise and chaos. We hoisted the trophy onto the ice, a heavy slab of metal that took three of us to lift, and screamed until our throats went raw. The locker room later was even crazier.
Champagne that someone had smuggled in got sprayed across the ceiling tiles. Sticks banged against lockers. Someone started a chant that made no sense, and everyone joined in anyway.
Coach let us have twenty minutes of it before he stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled the room silent. “No bars. Half of you are under twenty-one, and I’m not explaining a citation to the athletic director. There’s a diner three blocks south. You can be loud and stupid there.”
The diner was a grimy twenty-four-hour place with cracked vinyl booths and the deep, ingrained smell of burnt coffee and fry oil. It was the kind of place where the menus were sticky and nobody checked IDs.
We shoved tables together, and the whole team filled every cracked vinyl booth in the back.
A waitress with tired eyes and a notepad dropped off four platters of pancakes and a pitcher of Coke without asking what anyone wanted.
A flask followed the pancakes, passed hand to hand under the table, tipping whiskey into coffee mugs and soda cups.
Ten minutes later, the noise swelled, forks scraping plates, Elliot’s voice rising as he launched into a story that had the freshmen leaning across the table to hear.
Meanwhile, I nursed a Coke that was more whiskey than soda, watching Aleksey across the table.
He sat with a leg stretched into the aisle, laughing at something Perez said, a real laugh that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
Every few minutes his gaze cut to me and held there a beat too long before sliding away.
The flask came back around. I passed it on without drinking. The diner hummed with noise, forks clattering, bursts of laughter, Elliot telling some story that had the freshmen leaning in. Nobody was paying attention to who sat where or who glanced at who across the sticky tabletop.
Aleksey caught my eye again. One tilt of his head toward the back hallway, where the restrooms were. Then he slid out of the booth, favoring his right leg, and limped toward the back without looking over his shoulder.
I gave it thirty seconds. Then I grabbed my hoodie off the back of the chair and followed.
The hallway was narrow, lined with health inspection certificates, and smelled of bleach. Aleksey leaned against the wall by the back door, arms crossed, with a feral grin already pulling at the corner of his mouth.
“Took you long enough.”
I rolled my eyes. “I had to wait for Elliot to get to the good part of his story.”
Aleksey huffed out a laugh. “The hotel’s three blocks away. You good to walk?”
“You’re the one with the limp.”
“I can walk it off.”