Chapter 1. Mads #4
“Can you please stop fussing?” I say, the words sharper than I mean them to be. “It’s hot in here, and you’re making it impossible to breathe.”
Rodriguez turns to look at me, and his expression is back to the same one he’s been wearing since he got here: unamused, unimpressed, like I’m an interruption he’s decided not to engage with.
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t roll his eyes, doesn’t sigh, doesn’t tell me to fuck off.
Just looks at me with that flat, infuriating stare and goes back to patting his jacket.
That kind of pissed-off silence is worse than if he’d snapped at me. At least anger would be a reaction. But Rodriguez is being Rodriguez, and it makes me want to throw something.
“Are you looking for your cigarettes?” I ask, because it’s obvious and because I need to fill the silence before it swallows me whole.
He stops patting and looks at me again. “Yes. Do you know where they are?”
“Nope.”
The flicker of interest disappears, and he goes back to searching.
I lie back down and stare at the ceiling, listening, for what must be five minutes, to the rustle of fabric and the soft, frustrated sounds he makes when he still doesn’t find his fucking cigarettes.
A few minutes ago, I would’ve enjoyed hearing Rodriguez this close to losing his shit.
But after what my brain just did to me, all it does is feel weird and piss me off even more.
Jesus.
“Can you just stop?” I finally snap, sitting up on the bunk.
Rodriguez looks up from his rummaging, his expression closer to pissed than anything I’ve ever seen on his face.
“Just go to sleep,” he says, like the whole sentence is a more polite version of shut the fuck up.
“I can’t,” I say. “You’re making it impossible. You’ve been digging through your shit for twenty minutes like a fucking mouse.”
Rodriguez sets his jaw and turns back to the search with even more focus, as if my complaint has somehow made him more committed to finding the cigarettes.
His fingers go through the same jacket pockets again, checking places he’s already checked in case this time they decide to magically produce a pack.
I watch him, and part of me wants to say nothing else. Let him waste his night turning his things inside out. But the heat has shoved my patience past its limit, and watching him sweat through this pointless little ritual feels like sandpaper against my nerves.
“Why are you even smoking again?” I ask, sitting up straighter. “You quit, right? So fucking stop.”
The words come out harsher than I intend, but I don’t care at this point. If I’m going to spend the night in this hellbox with him, I might as well make it interesting.
Rodriguez freezes. His eyes lift to mine, dark and unreadable. For a second, he looks like he’s deciding whether this is finally worth telling me to fuck off. Then his jaw tightens, and he says, “I’m trying to.”
“Well, you’re clearly not succeeding,” I say with a snort, because I’ve already pushed this far, and backing off now would feel like admitting I was wrong. Which I’m not. “You checked your fucking pockets twice already. You probably dropped the pack somewhere outside.”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, then maybe someone stole it from you.”
He gives me another long, silent look. “Did you?”
“Maybe,” I say, just to see if I can finally piss him off properly.
Rodriguez doesn’t believe me. He only lets out a breath through his nose, looking more tired than anything now.
Annoyingly, I still take it as a victory.
It’s a tiny crack in the composure he’s been wearing like armor since the day he walked into our locker room, and apparently I’m desperate enough to count it.
“What do you want from me?” he asks after a moment, his voice almost resigned.
The question hits harder than it should, mostly because it doesn’t sound like one of his usual shutdowns. It sounds defensive. Tired. Too blunt to hide behind. There’s none of that controlled distance he usually keeps between us.
I stare at him, the question hanging in the hot air.
The honest answer is complicated enough that I don’t have a version of it I’m willing to say out loud.
At least not right now. I want him to talk to me on the ice instead of leaving me to guess.
I want him to admit tonight was as much his fault as mine.
I want him to stop being so fucking impossible to read that I spend entire games trying to get his attention instead of stopping pucks.
But all of that will sound small and petty after I’ve just spent the last couple of minutes needling him like an asshole. Probably not the ideal time to start an honest conversation.
So naturally, I choose the worse option and keep needling him.
“Nothing, of course,” I say, rolling my eyes. “God forbid we talk like normal people.”
I’m not backing off now. Not when he’s finally showing something besides that infuriating blankness, even if I have nicotine withdrawal to thank for it.
Rodriguez stares at me. “What is that supposed to mean?”
His voice is level, but there’s a hardness to it that wasn’t there before. Like I’ve finally pushed him to a place where even his precious control has limits.
“It means you don’t talk,” I say. “You stand there. You say nothing. You make me guess what you’re thinking, and when I guess wrong, I look like the asshole. That’s what it means.”
He holds my gaze, and for a moment I think he might finally bite back. But the moment stretches, and his expression slides back toward that neutral mask. I sigh, the familiar frustration building in my chest.
“Right,” I huff, and the word comes out angry. “Of course. Keep ignoring me.”
I wait another second, because apparently I’m still stupid enough to think he might actually say something.
He doesn’t.
So I jump off the bed, ready to get the fuck out of here. If I stay in this compartment one more minute, I’m going to say something I can’t take back, and Toledo will have my head on a plate by morning. I jam my feet into my boots without bothering to tie them and head for the door.
“Where are you going?” Rodriguez asks.
Oh, so now he wants to talk?
“To find Han,” I say, not looking at him. “See if there’s another compartment. Or a luggage car. Or literally anywhere that isn’t this fucking sauna with you in it.”
I step toward the door and grab the handle. Slide it to the right.
It doesn’t move.
I try again, harder this time, putting my weight behind it. The door gives a metallic groan but stays exactly where it is. I shove at it again, then pull the handle with more force, but it still doesn’t move. Like it’s locked.
The only problem is, this door doesn’t have a lock.
“What the fuck,” I mutter.
“What?” Rodriguez asks, watching me from his bunk.
I brace my feet against the floor and shove with my whole body.
The door doesn’t budge.
“It’s stuck,” I say, my voice climbing before I can stop it. “The door is fucking stuck.”
Rodriguez stands and crosses the compartment in two steps. He reaches past me, his arm brushing mine—the contact suddenly too much in the thick, overheated air—and grabs the handle.
Then he pulls. Hard.
The muscles in his forearm pull tight, his bicep bunching under the sleeve of his T-shirt, and my brain, traitorous piece of shit that it is, decides to notice.
The door still doesn’t move.
He tries again, bracing one foot against the lower frame and putting his shoulder into it. The door groans, creaks, and holds firm.
“Shit,” Rodriguez says.
And it’s the first time I’ve heard something even remotely close to panic in his voice.
We stand there for a moment, looking at each other, the heat of the compartment pressing down on both of us. The train rattles on beneath our feet, carrying us deeper into the Norwegian night, and the reality of the situation hits me with the timing of a bad joke.
We’re stuck.
We’re fucking stuck in here.