Chapter 5
I’m pounding the shit out of this bag like it personally suspended me from the league. Sweat burns the cuts on my knuckles, my shoulders scream with each impact, but I keep hitting because standing still means thinking and thinking means remembering how badly I screwed up.
The chain squeals in protest as the heavy bag swings back at me, demanding revenge for the beating I’m giving it.
I don’t give it the chance. Right hook, left jab, another right—each strike uglier and more violent than the last. My form is garbage, all rage and no technique, but I don’t care.
This isn’t about boxing. This is about survival.
I should be on the ice right now, channeling this energy into something that matters—into hockey, the only thing I’ve ever been good at. Instead, I’m here, beating up gym equipment like some washed-up has-been who never made it past minor league.
The irony tastes like blood in my mouth.
Sweat drips off my chin and seeps into the cuts across my knuckles, making them sting.
I swipe at my face with the back of my forearm, but it’s just as soaked, so the gesture is pointless.
The whole gym reeks of disinfectant trying to mask the smell of old sweat and desperation.
My lungs burn, craving clean air, but I’m not ready to leave this self-imposed prison yet.
Behind me, someone’s working the weight rack, metal plates clanging against each other in a steady rhythm.
I don’t turn around. Can’t risk making eye contact with anyone who might recognize me, who might want to talk about what happened in that locker room.
The last thing I need is some gym rat asking for my autograph or, worse, telling me what they really think about Seattle’s fallen hockey player.
I throw another punch, then another. The bag barely moves now—I’m too exhausted to put real power behind it. But I keep going because the alternative is going home to that apartment where she’s probably making coffee in my kitchen, humming some cheerful song while I fall apart.
The voices in my head are getting louder now, cutting through my exhaustion like blades. You’re nothing without hockey. You’re exactly like him. You destroy everything you touch.
I grit my teeth until my jaw aches and hit harder, ignoring the jab of pain up my wrist when I miss my target. I should stop now and tend to my hands, but I can’t. The shame, rage and pain still has me in its claws.
My career is dangling by a thread. Everyone sees it, hell, I see it.
The worst part? I’m the one sawing through it.
My own scissors, my own hand. Every outburst, every fight, every time I can’t keep my damn mouth shut.
Jack taunts me, I snap. Reporters poke, I bite.
Coach lectures, I storm off the pitch. Most people mistake it for pride but it’s just a demon in me that I can’t control.
It’s like my existence is cursed and everything I touch burns. My father was right, I’m not fit to live but if I take my life, there’s no victory there either.
Another punch, bag rattling, chain screaming. My knuckles are raw meat now, bleeding and throbbing, but my fists won’t stop.
The phone buzzes on the bench against the wall.
A sharp vibration cutting through the noise.
I ignored it initially. Then it rings again, longer, more insistent, like it knows I’m avoiding it.
I turn my head, breathing like I just crawled out of a fire, and walk towards it. The name on the screen makes me scowl.
Collins is my PR manager and the guy who fixes things when I wreck them. I’ve been expecting his call, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time than when I’m drowning in my emotions.
For a few moments, I just stare at his name lighting up the screen. My thumb hovers over the answer icon. It feels like if I answer, the whole roof will cave in, but I answer anyway.
“You never learn, do you?” he asks once I pick up the call, skipping the formalities. “What’s it going to take to teach you, huh? Tell me, Gray. Why do you want to waste your talent?”
I don’t say a word. My jaw locks, my back sticky with sweat cooling into the fabric of my shirt.
“I’ve told you a hundred times to put a leash on that temper,” he keeps going, probably irked by my silence. “But you don’t listen. You never listen. You think the league wants you like this? You think sponsors are lining up to spend their money on you when you’re a ticking time bomb?”
My teeth grind so hard I swear they’ll crack. I want to tell him to shut up, but he’s right. He’s absolutely right. Every word hits a raw nerve and there’s no buffer.
“Do you even understand the magnitude of what you’re doing to yourself?” he says, louder now, like he’s shouting through a megaphone inside my skull. “The big game’s coming and you’re the liability. We both know I can’t sell liability. Liabilities end up on the shelf.”
Liability. That one hits like a tsunami, making a mush of my entire confidence. My grip on the phone tightens until my knuckles blanch white, like I’m trying to strangle it into silence, but nothing comes out of me. I keep my lips sealed.
Collins breathes hard through the line. “You’re making it hard to use you, Cameron.”
He ends the call.
I stare at the black screen, hearing nothing but the dead hum of an empty gym.
My hands shake. I set the phone down too hard, nearly flinging it.
I flex my fingers like I don’t even recognize them.
They don’t look like mine. They don’t feel like mine.
They look like the fists of some other guy—the guy who just flushed his whole career.
If Mum saw me right now, she’d be disappointed.
I was doing this for her, even more than myself.
I was doing this to honor her memory but right now, I’m far from that.
I need to break out of this pity party soon and take action.
I collapse onto the bench, elbows braced on my knees, head hanging, sweat dripping onto the mat between my sneakers. My stomach knots up, and I sense bile rise to my throat.
Collin’s voice rings through my head. I groan aloud.
The words, ‘leash, liability, ticking time bomb,’ resound over and over again, louder each time until it’s mixing with the ugly thoughts I already had there, blending together, impossible to separate his voice from mine.
I stare at my hands again, turning them over under the bright fluorescent lights. Split skin, knuckles torn up, bruises blooming. What good are these fists? On the ice, they’re power but off the ice, they’re just weapons, useless weapons. The same weapons that are costing me everything.
I squeeze my eyes shut, nails digging into my palms, wishing it would all just go quiet, but it doesn’t.
Then my phone buzzes again, making me wince at the intrusion. My eyes open, and I stare blankly into space. I don’t think I can handle another voice telling me I’m a screw up, but I grab the phone anyway with trembling hands.
It’s not Collins this time but a message from Keith.
Keith: Bowling tonight. Don’t make me come drag your sorry ass.
I blink at the screen, reading it three times like it might change. My chest does this weird lurch thing, because it shouldn’t mean anything, just dumb words about dumb bowling, but it does. It’s like a rope tossed down into the pit and I grab it with both hands.
My lips twitch and I smile, an emotion that has been absent since the incident with Jack. It feels alien on my face now.
I rub my hand down over my face, groaning into my palm.
“Bowling,” I mutter. Like rolling a ball down a wooden lane is going to glue my career back together, like beer and greasy pizza is going to erase the fact I’m a screw-up but sitting here alone with my thoughts eating me alive? That’s worse, much worse.
I sit a while longer, sweat drying sticky on my skin, hands still pulsing, chest tight as hell. Then I grab the towel, wipe down, curse under my breath loud enough it echoes back at me from the walls.
Fine. Screw it. Losing at bowling’s better than sitting in my apartment counting every way I’ve ruined myself.
I shove my gym bag higher on my shoulder and push the back door open with a little more force than needed. The cool air hits me in the face and I welcome it with a sigh. I hum a tune as I head towards my car.
A blinding flash of light hits me in the face. Before I can fully process it, a reporter rushes up to me. My heart sinks to the pit of my stomach.
“Cameron!” she shouts, her microphone shoved towards my mouth before I even see her face clearly. “Do you regret what you did to your teammate? Is it true you told him you’d put him in the hospital?”
It’s like she’s loaded up every bullet in the chamber and firing them all at once. My fists are clenched but I keep my head low.
I don’t answer but I keep moving.
“Do you hate Monroe? Do you want him dead after the fight?”
That one makes me slow down. What is wrong with these people? Is that what they think? I keep quiet, refusing to take her bait.
“Why aren’t you answering, Cameron? Is the league suspending you? Are you finished?”
It’s not curiosity in her voice, not really. It’s desperate hunger. She wants blood, she wants to gut me in the headlines tomorrow morning.
“Come on, give me something. Did you or didn’t you threaten to end his career?”
My fists twitch, fingers curl, and I can taste blood in the back of my mouth, the memory of my knuckles hammering that bag until my skin split. One swing and I could smash his camera.
I finally get into my car and shut the door. She’s still talking even though I can’t hear her anymore. I blast the music on the radio and get the hell out of there.