Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Kyle
The rink is quietest just before the team arrives for practice.
The only sound is from the compressors humming under the ice and the vents pushing out cold air that burns when I breathe too deeply.
The sound settles something in me in a way silence never does.
I push through the tunnel, stick slung over my shoulder, and the air hits like a cold baptism, faintly sweet with the smell of ice and the burnt coffee someone left in the coach’s office.
It smells like mornings where you rebuild yourself from the outside in.
And I need to rebuild. There are only a few days until the gala, and my head is full of noise I can’t skate fast enough to outrun.
I still can’t stop thinking about last night.
Alycia’s name lighting up my phone. The way she said she would wear emerald green, like it was just logistics and not a slow torture.
Me telling her to make it blue because she looks beautiful in blue.
Now I see those words every time I blink.
I drop my stick onto the bench and wedge tape between my teeth as I wrap the blade.
One layer, smooth, another to seal. The ritual is automatic, but my pulse is not.
I meant that text to make her smile, to give her something that wasn’t duty for once, and somehow, it did what everything between us does: turned a simple thing into something complicated.
When I finally step onto the ice, it groans under my blades.
I push off the boards and start a slow lap.
The air stings my cheeks, but the burn helps.
I like the rink this way, empty and stripped down to the sound of steel carving into fresh ice.
Out here, there is no press, no pretending, no story to sell.
Just motion, rhythm, and the ache in my legs.
The door clanks open behind me, and a burst of laughter spills into the cold. Cole is the first one out, coffee in one hand, stick in the other, like he can’t decide which one he needs more. He raises his mug in a lazy salute.
“You trying to beat the sunrise now?”
“Someone’s gotta show the other rookies what commitment looks like.”
He snorts, setting the cup on the boards and gliding toward me. “Or maybe someone’s trying to skate a certain PR intern out of his system.”
“You talk too much before caffeine.”
“And you think too loud before breakfast.” He tosses me a protein bar from his jacket pocket. “Eat. You’re skating like a man trying to solve philosophy, not hockey.”
“Maybe I’m multitasking.”
“You sure? Because one of those things you’re bad at.”
I tear the wrapper, take a bite, and chew. The silence stretches just long enough for him to notice. He studies me the way only a brother can.
“You good?”
“Yeah.” The standard question and the automatic lie.
He doesn’t buy it, but he lets it go, bumping my shoulder with his stick before skating backward toward the other end. “Try not to think so hard out here. It ruins your stride.”
“Since when do you notice my stride?”
“Since you started looking like you’re trying to outrun something.”
He is right, but there’s nothing I can say that wouldn’t sound like a confession.
He nods once, satisfied enough, and peels off as the rest of the team filters out.
The quiet breaks apart, replaced by chirps, tape snapping, and sticks smacking the boards.
Cooper’s whistle cuts through it all, sharp as always.
“Let’s go! Warm-up laps. Keep the tempo high. ”
I push into the drill, blades carving clean lines into the ice, lungs expanding against the cold. Each stride feels like a heartbeat, steady and precise. For a few minutes, I can almost forget the way her voice still lives in my head.
Almost.
Pucks clatter against the boards as we move like clockwork, muscle memory taking over where thought usually tries to ruin it.
We run suicides, pivots, and passing drills until my thighs burn and my shoulders ache under my gear.
Sweat slides down my spine and cools too fast, but I keep going.
Pain is the cleanest distraction I know.
“Pick up your edges, Hendrix!” Cooper’s voice cuts through the noise.
“Yes, sir,” I call back, sharper than I mean to.
He gives me that flat coach look that used to scare me when I was sixteen. Now, it just means he is paying attention.
“He yells because he loves you.” Cole snorts as he glides past.
“He yells because he’s allergic to praise.”
“Same thing.”
He is already gone, easy and unbothered. I wish I could shake things off instead of storing them. The puck slides across the ice, I chase it down, pivot, and fire from the blue line. The crack against the post is satisfying, but not enough. Lately, nothing is.
By the time we break for water, my legs are jelly. I rip my helmet off, drag my glove across my forehead, and take a long swallow from my bottle. The air bites at my damp hair. Someone cracks a joke about Cooper’s haircut, and laughter spreads down the bench.
Then the energy in the rink tightens, a current pulling everything inward as heads turn toward the tunnel.
Alycia steps onto the concrete in black slacks and a pale blouse, coat open at the front, a flash of deep green at her collar that makes my stomach drop.
Not emerald and not blue, something in between, like she picked a color that would ruin me and still call it neutral.
She doesn’t look my way, and that somehow makes it worse. She is talking to Janine, pointing toward the far boards where the cameras are setting up. Her hair is loose today, one strand sticking to her lip until she tucks it behind her ear. It is such a small motion, and I feel it like an impact.
Cole elbows me lightly. “Eyes front, Rookie.”
“I am.”
“Not where it counts.”
He skates off before I can respond, which is good, because I have no defense.
Every nerve in me is tuned to the cadence of her voice and the way she shifts her weight like she is trying not to take up space.
I drag in a breath, center my stick on the ice, and try to force my brain quiet. All it does is get louder.
Cooper calls us into a half-moon drill—three forwards curling around the circle, taking quick passes before snapping shots from the slot.
The rhythm builds, pucks hissing across the ice, sticks cracking like metronomes.
My mind fractures between the play and the woman at the boards.
I tell myself to focus, but every time I glance up, she’s there, with her head bent over her notes, pretending she doesn’t feel me watching.
By the third rotation, my passes come in too hot. One of the rookies yelps when the puck glances off his blade.
“Dial it back, Hendrix,” Cooper warns.
I nod and loosen my grip, trying to steady the pulse pounding in my wrists. The rink hums around me, steady and indifferent. A puck skims past, black against pale blue ice. That color, cold and endless, always makes me think of her.
Make it blue.
The words have been lodged behind my ribs since last night. I meant them as a joke, a throwaway line she could roll her eyes at. Instead, they landed like a confession. I didn’t take them back because, with her, restraint is the only kind of wanting I am allowed.
“Reset!” Cooper’s whistle slices the thought apart.
We fall into the next drill—battle work, two-on-two. Another rookie and I pair off, muscle memory doing what my mind can’t. Cole checks me into the boards with brotherly enthusiasm. The glass rattles, laughter spilling from the bench.
“You’re distracted,” he mutters low enough that only I can hear.
“You hit like a truck.”
“Don’t dodge the question.”
“That was the answer.”
He smirks and shoves back into the play. I focus on the puck, cutting through the slot, chasing the cleanest version of myself I know. For a second, I forget she is here. Then a camera light blinks in the corner of my vision, and the world pulls tight again.
She’s moved closer to the glass now, talking to a cameraman.
Her reflection glances across the plexiglass right beside mine.
For one second, it looks like we are side by side.
The puck banks off the boards and slides toward me.
I catch it cleanly, shoulders tightening as I line up my shot.
The rink narrows to a single point, and I drive through the motion, blade connecting with a sharp crack that echoes across the ice.
The puck screams past the goalie, hits the crossbar, and ricochets into the netting.
The sound rings through the rink, sharp enough to turn heads. For a beat, it proves my body still knows what to do even when my head is a mess. Sticks bang against the boards in rowdy approval.
“Still got it, Hendrix,” Beau calls.
“About time,” Cole adds, though he’s grinning.
I tap my stick to the ice and let myself look toward the boards.
She’s not looking. Everyone else saw it, but she’s already turning away, head bent back over her notes.
She gives the moment back to the noise like it never belonged to me at all.
The rush drains fast, leaving only the hollow echo of what it could have been, had she seen it.
Funny how a perfect shot can still feel like missing.
The rest of practice blurs. Conditioning drills.
Breakout patterns. Neutral-zone scrimmages.
Every stride scrapes against the hollow spot she left by not looking.
My body keeps moving on instinct, chasing something that refuses to be caught.
By the time Cooper calls it, my lungs are raw, and my legs shake, but I keep skating.
One more lap. One more shot. One more reason not to think.
The cold air cuts through my gear, sharp and unforgiving. Pain is simple. This is not.