Chapter 25
Cass
I was supposed to be getting a head start on my metallurgy paper.
My books lay strewn over the coffee table, while my eyes stayed glued to the TV screen.
I was watching Mason slide his arm around a blonde puck bunny with a dress that surely cut off circulation to all her major organs.
Around them, cameras flashed like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
“Hate to break it to you, but you’re not even his type,” I muttered to no one.
The interview played out in front of me, all bright smiles and perfect soundbites. Mason looked good. Clean-cut and composed. His answers were sharp, confident. He’d been prepped, obviously, and I was sure the bimbo on his arm was Bob Trent’s doing.
Anything to get the fans swooning and keep them invested.
And talking about swooning— Mason wore a tailored suit that clung to his shoulders, and his hair had that just-rolled-out-of-bed look that seemed to be working overtime.
Bimbo Barbie curled closer, and he laughed at something she said. Chances were good that she was coached too. I’d been around this game long enough to know this was all for show. But that didn’t mean it didn’t sting, seeing the two of them all cozy like that.
I clicked the remote so hard it creaked in my hand, and my living room turned deathly quiet. It was just me again, and my failed attempt at getting an assignment in early.
My laptop mocked me with its blank document, and blinking cursor.
Screw it.
I grabbed my keys and headed out.
The cool April breeze tugged at my hair as I marched across the parking lot to the garage unit my neighbor let me use.
The garage was dimly lit and drafty, but felt like an extension of home.
My tools sat waiting on the workbench, and I pulled on my gear.
I didn’t know what I was going to do when I left, but now that I was here, the welding final that was only halfway finished caught my attention.
I dragged the steel tubing from the corner and got straight to work.
My project wasn’t small. An ambitious abstract sculpture that was also kind of chaotic with its half arc, half spire.
It was meant to look like movement captured mid-motion.
The first time I sketched it, I was thinking of Mason.
Of the way he skated, leaning into turns, like the laws of physics bent around him.
Now, though, I didn’t know what the hell it meant.
Maybe nothing. Like whatever the fuck it was that happened between us.
Heat flared. Steel hissed and spit.
Welding forced you to be present. That’s what I loved about it. There was no room to spiral when you had molten metal in your hand. Move too slow, and it bubbled. Too fast, it cracked. Too much heat, and the whole seam warped.
Mason once said that I looked calm when I did it. That I looked the way he felt when he was on the ice.
Maybe that’s why I kept welding long after my arms ached and my knees started to lock. I lost track of time. The sculpture was taking shape, joint by joint, and it rose from the platform like something fighting to break free.
I ground the seams until they were so smooth they were practically invisible. A clean weld was honest. Solid. There was no faking it. Not like relationships, or press events.
I stood back, sweat cooling under my layers. The steel glinted in the orange glow as if it were trying to say something. It wasn’t perfect, but it was mine. And even though I’d planned to get an extension, it was ready for submission the next day.
I exhaled hard and stripped off my gloves, apron, and mask. Every part of me felt tender with that good ache you get after hard work done right. My fingers, my spine, even the place between my ribs where Mason used to live.
This is what I wanted, I reminded myself. To be good at something and prove I could do more than just fix engines and follow rules. That I could create something out of nothing.
But it brought me no satisfaction.
When I finally collapsed into bed that night, everything inside me still felt a little beat up and broken. I didn’t cry, and I didn’t replay the hallway talk for the umpteenth time. I just closed my eyes and let the weight of my exhaustion drag me under.
By morning, my muscles screamed at me like I’d gone ten rounds with a jackhammer. I popped my hood up, shoved two Tylenol in my mouth, and got myself to campus for the welding critique.
Our class was small, and my sculpture sat under one of the overhead lamps, marked with a sticky note that read: Dalca. I swallowed back the lump in my throat and waited my turn as a few other students got called up, mostly to the tune of “good effort” and “consider your heat zones next time.”
When it was my turn, my professor didn’t make a big deal of it. Just gestured toward my piece and said, “That’s a pleasant surprise, Cass. Thank you for finally applying yourself.”
I got an A. It should’ve felt like a victory, because I hadn’t scored one of those in a while. But I mostly felt… hollow. Empty.
Because Mason was out there living the dream. Headlines, fans, glittering lights. I’d fought so hard not to be in his spotlight or his shadow, and that I wasn’t—I was just… nowhere.
Later that afternoon, I buried myself in the stream of repairs needed at the arena. The maintenance room was my sanctuary, and nothing and nobody could penetrate the defensive walls.
I had my visor flipped down, one hand braced against the workbench and the other holding a rotary wire brush against a corroded intake pipe the size of my forearm.
It was supposed to be a lost cause, but I needed something to throw myself into.
Repairing busted hardware felt a whole lot safer than trying to fix a heart I didn’t understand.
It was honest work. Tangible. The whir of the brush echoed in my ears like static, sharp enough to drown out the noise in my head. So when the door creaked open behind me, I didn’t hear it right away.
But I felt it.
The shift in air. The prickle at the back of my neck.
I shut off the tool and straightened, heart skipping in spite of myself. I didn’t turn around at first, but thought about the last time someone had walked in like that… unannounced, confident, too close to the bone.
My throat dried.
Please don’t be him.
Please be him.
“Damn,” came a voice behind me. Not Mason’s. “You working or welding a tank? This place smells like a war zone.”
I let out a breath that was equal parts relief and disappointment, and pulled off my gloves. “What do you know about war zones?”
Hunter grinned, one shoulder propped against the doorframe. His hands were deep in the pockets of his Surge hoodie.
“If you have to ask, then I’d have to assume you’ve never watched me play,” he said, with all the swagger of a backwards baseball cap. “Or is it that you’ve seen the games, but only had eyes for another player?”
Wow. He wasted exactly no time at all.
“What do you want, Hunter?”
He sauntered inside, sweeping the space with a curious gaze that was somehow also bored. “Nice setup. I thought I’d missed you. Didn’t your shift end an hour ago?”
“That’s Wednesdays,” I replied. “Although I will be working late tonight. Need something?”
He picked up a broken gear set, turned it over in his hand, then put it back down again. “Bagging the overtime, huh?”
“The way you say that lets me know you have no idea how shitty the pay is,” I said with a light laugh. It was unforced, and all the more surprising for it. “Anyway, busy hands keep me out of trouble, and it sure beats sitting at home thinking about…”
I trailed off, returning to the workbench. I didn’t want to talk about Mason. Or think about him, for that matter.
Hunter, of course, had other ideas.
He rummaged through a crate of outcast nuts and bolts, and without looking up, said, “He’s a wreck, you know.”
“Don’t,” I warned.
“I’m not trying to stir up anything,” he said, inspecting a rusted bolt a little too closely. “Just figured someone should tell you.”
My hand stilled on the pipe. “Mason Calder is none of my business.”
“He’s down bad.” He met my eyes, all joking gone. “The guy’s doing pressers like a robot and winning games like a man possessed. I’ve never seen him like this.”
“You’re mad that he’s winning?”
Hunter shook his head. “I’m worried that he thinks he’s winning.”
“Did your mother never teach you not to circle the point of your story? Some of us are working here.”
“Look, on paper, he’s killing it,” Hunter said, coming over to the workbench. “But off the ice? He’s a ghost.”
“Luckily for your type, people only care about the win on the ice.” I didn’t mean to come off that harsh, but there was no avoiding the edge in my voice.
What was he expecting from me? To wave a magic wand and right all the wrongs in Hockey World?
He pursed his lips and stared at me.
Sighing, I asked, “Why are you really here, Hunter?”
“Mason thinks he’s doing the right thing,” he said, and for the first time since he walked in, it looked like he was dead serious. “He thinks it’s helping his game, but it’s the thing that’ll end up ruining him.”
“Have you told him this?” I asked, wiping my hands on my jeans. “I’m not Mason’s keeper, you know.”
“I didn’t say you were.” Hunter rested both hands on the shelving to his left and stretched his back. It looked like he was thinking too hard about this, but again, not my problem. “He’s just scared, Cass. It’s not like he doesn’t care.”
“So am I,” I said before I could stop myself. Before I even knew those words were on their way out of my mouth.
“Yeah, that’s the thing about guys like us,” he said with a nod. “We get scared, and run straight into the one thing we understand. Hockey. There’s nothing complicated about that puck on ice.”
I exhaled slowly, watching the steam rise off the pipe as it cooled. “He made his choice.”
“No,” Hunter said. “He made a guess. You don’t have to agree with it, but don’t let him make it for both of you.”
I hid my sudden vulnerability behind a sardonic laugh. “No truth bombs on an empty stomach, please. Have a little heart.”
The laugh he gave was only somewhat committed. “I’m not here to play matchmaker,” he said. “But I’d be a fuck-up of a friend if I didn’t say something. You don’t have to do anything except say you’ll think about it.”
Mason was all I thought about, but I didn’t want Hunter to know that.
“Will that be all?”
He finally accepted his efforts as fruitless, and thankfully left without saying another word about it.
I sat there for a minute, staring at the collection of items in varying states of disrepair. My hand hovered over the rotary tool again, not quite ready to go back to work, not quite ready to sit with the ache.
The silence crept back in. I flicked the brush on and started again, letting the grind pull me into that hyper-focused space where nothing else could touch me. The pipe hissed as I turned it, a faint shimmer from the weld catching the light.
The thing I was most proud of in metal work was that we didn’t erase damage, but reshaped it into something viable again. Reinforced it to outlast another break.
My phone buzzed from the back pocket of my jeans, and habit won as I pulled it out.
Mason: Did you catch the game?
I managed to stop another habit before it thawed my cold shoulder, and changed my mind about replying. He didn’t have that kind of access anymore. Maybe not ever again, if our last talk was anything to go by.
The phone went back into my pocket, and I steadied the pipe with both hands. The rotary tool bit into the metal with a sharp, high-pitched screech.
The door stayed closed. No more unexpected visitors or surprises. Just me and the work.
I found a rhythm and leaned into it like some form of meditation. Far away from the press, the spin, and the lucky flick of the wrist. Here hands moved without thinking and it was all about grinding, smoothing, and hiding calloused fingers in gloves.
Down here there were no headlines, and no perfect game replays. This world was hot steel, a healthy dash of stubbornness, and a woman who didn’t know how to stop feeling for someone who’d already walked away.
I adjusted the torque and pressed harder, sparks lighting up the dim corners of the room. If I worked long enough, maybe I’d forget what it felt like when he told me it was over between us.
My phone buzzed again, and exasperated, I pulled it out.
Mason: I can’t stop thinking about you.