Eighteen
The laces on my right glove are a problem.
I re-tighten them. Loosen. Do it again. The leather creaks under my fingers. The arena beyond the bench is noise—crowd rumble, organ blare, skate scrape during warmup—but it’s distant. Muffled, like I’m underwater.
I pull the lace tighter. The friction bites into my palm hard enough to leave a mark.
Cold, clean, sharp.
A shadow blocks the ice. I don’t look up, but I know who it is before he speaks. The “C” on Holt’s jersey catches the overhead light, absorbing it like a black hole.
“On my team tonight, Castellano.” His voice is low. No room for negotiation. “Not in your own head.”
I give a single, sharp nod.
“Got it, Cap.”
He lingers for a beat—long enough for me to feel the weight of his assessment—then moves on. I don’t watch him go. My eyes drop back to the glove. Pull. Release. Pull. Forcing the chaos down to a single point of friction.
The “C” he promised me.
The thought arrives unbidden, sharp as a skate blade dragged across bare skin. A betrayal of Holt, who bled for his letter, and a betrayal of the man I used to think I was.
Past Holt’s shoulder, Thompson laughs at something Andersson says. The sound is easy. Carefree. It grates like nails on a chalkboard.
Yanking the lace one last time, I shove off the bench and step onto the ice for the starting shift.
We take our positions. The buzzer sounds. Puck drop.
The pass comes clean to my tape in the neutral zone. Open ice ahead. The playmaker’s move is to skate—carry it, read the defender, make the play.
I dump it.
Hard. Into the corner. The puck ricochets off the boards with a metallic clang that reverberates through my bones.
I don’t chase the puck to score. I chase the body that gets there first.
The hit rattles the glass. The crowd roars—approval, bloodlust, I don’t know and don’t care. The Seattle defender crumples against the boards, and I skate away before the whistle.
Every motion is a rejection of finesse. I don’t glide; I carve. I don’t deke; I drive through players like wet paper. The puck is secondary. The violence is the point.
This is what you paid for, Westfield. A blunt instrument.
I bury another check along the half-wall. The impact reverberates up my spine, rattles my teeth. My shoulder throbs. I lean into it.
Thompson calls for support in the slot. I’m three strides away, perfectly positioned to cycle the puck.
Instead, I slam into the Seattle winger trailing the play. Off-puck. Unnecessary. The kind of hit that draws penalties if the refs are watching.
They’re not.
The winger shoves back. I welcome it. Let him push. Anything to feel something other than the hollow ache that’s been living in my chest since I shook Westfield’s hand. Since before that, if I’m honest. Since the night I heard my own voice on that audio and didn’t recognize it.
The whistle blows. Offside. My fault—I was too busy hunting hits to track the play.
Thompson skates past, shaking his head.
I don’t look at him.
Second period. We’re down 1-0, and I’m playing like I’m allergic to the puck.
Suzuki corners me along the boards during a scrum, his breath hot through his cage.
“Saw your little PR stunt in the storm,” his voice drips with amusement. “How many crystal bottles does it take to buy back your spine? You’re Westfield’s bitch and everyone knows it.”
I go still.
My head turns slowly, eyes locking onto his.
Suzuki grins wider. “No wonder the Marauders cut you loose. You fold the second someone yanks your leash.”
My right hand flexes on my stick. Once. Twice.
Then I drop it.
The gloves hit the ice with a muted thump.
Suzuki swings first. I duck under it and drive three short, jarring impacts into his ribs. All precision. No rage.
He counters with a wild hook that glances off my helmet. I feel the crunch of his jersey fabric under my knuckles, the give of padding and bone beneath. A distant, disconnected sensation.
This is all you are.
Blood—his or mine, I don’t know—smears warm across my knuckles. I don’t wipe it off.
The linesmen are on us, pulling us apart. I let them. My face is a blank mask, the same one I wore in Westfield’s office when I shook his hand and sold my soul for a letter.
I see Coach Wilson on the bench. He doesn’t yell. Doesn’t gesture wildly like he did in Seattle.
He just points.
Down the tunnel.
The walk is the loudest silence I’ve ever known.
Faces and noise blur in the stands, a roar that doesn’t penetrate the glass. Beneath it all, the click-clack of my skates on concrete beats out a slow countdown. Ten steps. Nine. Eight.
My breath comes shallow, controlled. I keep my head up. Shoulders square. The performance of composure even when no one’s watching.
Leadership means discretion.
Westfield’s voice in my head. A splinter I can’t dig out.
I reach the equipment rack in the hallway. My stick—carbon fiber, custom curve, top-shelf—rests against the wall where I left it during warmup.
I should smash it. That’s the move. The cathartic explosion. The kind of moment that makes highlight reels and feeds the narrative: Castellano’s Lost It.
Instead, I lift the stick gently. Turn it over in my hands. The tape on the blade is pristine. I haven’t taken a shot all game.
I place it beside the others on the rack. The gesture is careful. Reverent.
Turning, I walk into the empty locker room. The overhead lights hum, fluorescent and cold. My stall waits in the corner, my nameplate bolted to the wall above it.
CASTELLANO #3
The show is over.
I sit. Unlace my skates with the same methodical precision I used on my glove. One loop at a time. Slow. Controlled.
My phone buzzes in my jacket pocket, hanging in my stall. I ignore it.
The only sound is the hum of the lights and the distant, muffled roar when the crowd gets loud.
I don’t need to look at my phone. I know what the text will say. Accusation. Disappointment. Control.
Flexing my right hand, I watch the skin pull taut over swelling joints. Blood—Suzuki’s, not mine—has dried in the creases of my palm. A dark map of my own making.
The arena noise filters through the walls. A whistle, then a heavy, hollow hush. The away team just scored.
I lean back against the cold metal of my stall and close my eyes.
The lace pattern is still pressed into my palm.
A neat, orderly grid.
On the surface of the chaos.
The elevator hums up from the parkade, that low mechanical purr that sounds way too calm for the way my pulse is hammering.
I watch myself in the mirrored steel. I didn’t stay for the post-game shower.
Couldn’t stand the silence in the room. Helmet hair mashed flat.
Sweat-damp collar of my rink suit clinging to my neck.
A smear of someone else’s blood dried near my thumb.
The skin across my knuckles is already puffed and tight, a faint shadow starting under the surface where Suzuki’s ribs met bone. It’ll be ugly by morning.
We lost 4-1. I played eight fucking minutes.
The doors slide open into the lobby—marble, glass, warm lighting, no soul.
“Evening, Mr. Castellano.” The night concierge straightens from his screen. Younger guy. New. Still looks impressed when he says my name. “There’s something here for you.”
He bends, unlocks a drawer, and pulls out a slim, branded courier envelope. WSE logo in the corner. Red stamp across the front: PERSONAL I’ve never bothered to program that feature. Three months in this building and it still reads like a hotel I haven’t checked out of yet.
I navigate to the kitchen island by the blue wash from the windows, Blackcomb’s lights a cold smear through the glass. Keys and the keycard hit the marble. The courier envelope lands beside them.
Coat slides off my shoulders, pooling on the floor near the stove. Shirt next. Jeans. Socks. The motions are automatic, muscle memory from a thousand times I shed the uniform and tried to shed the game.
I pour whiskey in the dark. The bottleneck clinks against crystal. Two fingers. Three. I don’t measure anymore.
The island seats four. Dark marble, Westfield’s decorator’s choice.
There are four stools. I’ve used one, once, for game tape.
It has never had food on it. I eat standing up, or I don’t eat at all.
Sometimes I balance takeout containers on the window ledge.
The view there lets me pretend I chose this life for the scenery.
My phone lights up on the marble. Team group chat.
HOLT: Reminder: Araxi back room at 10 PM for the holiday dinner. Mandatory.
THOMPSON: First round’s on the captain ??
ANDERSSON: Already here. Where is everyone?
I stare at the screen. I completely forgot. My thumb hovers—On my way is three words, takes half a second, buys me an hour of normal. I push the phone away from me on the counter.
At the far end of the apartment, the sauna’s glow seeps warm under the hemlock door.
I set the timer from the rink, same as always.
It’s the one thing in here I picked myself—not the stone, not the steel, not the leather couches that still smell faintly like the showroom.
The sauna. Eleven by seven. Enough for a man and his mistakes.
Capable of being activated from the locker room.
Another ritual. Heat to burn out the cold; steam to soften the edges. Typically, I keep drinks and saunas separate.
Not tonight.
I push through the hemlock door, glass in hand.
The heat wraps around me like a fist. I close my eyes. Try to do the thing where I stop being anything for twenty minutes.
Inhale. Exhale.
I catch myself arranging the night into bullet points.
Tight game. Physical play. Team loss. The press conference framing, even though there’s no press conference.
My brain is running rehearsals for an audience that doesn’t exist, in a room where no one can see me, with the door latched from the inside.
I open my eyes.
The hemlock walls stare back. Pale, odorless, chosen for exactly that. No cameras. No Westfield. No Ivy.
No one.
Sweat beads on my chest and slides down my neck. The whiskey rushes to my head. Another swallow. Bigger.
The ritual burns.
Then it feels like drowning.
I drain the glass and step out. Cool air rushes across my overheated skin as I pad back through the apartment, a towel around my neck.
The envelope waits on the kitchen island.
I tear it open. A bead of sweat drips from my jaw, soaking into the thick paper of Westfield’s letterhead.
G –
Draft announcement for The Sin Bin Lounge. Please review and sign off by lunch tomorrow.
Looking forward to what we’re building together.
– M. Westfield
I peel back the note.