Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Tarmek's stick connected with Kowalski's helmet instead of the puck.
The crack echoed through the practice rink like a gunshot, and Kowalski went down hard, sliding across the ice while the rest of the team scattered.
Whistles shrieked. Coach Morrison's voice boomed across the space, but Tarmek barely heard it—he was already skating towards his fallen teammate, horror and confusion warring in his chest.
He'd miscalculated.
He never miscalculated.
"I'm fine, I'm fine—" Kowalski was already pushing himself up, waving off the training staff rushing towards him. Blood trickled from a small cut above his eyebrow, and his grin looked slightly manic. "Good thing I'm pretty enough to spare a few brain cells, eh Cap?"
"Stonefist!" Morrison's bark cut through the ice. "Off the rink. Now."
Tarmek didn't argue.
He couldn't.
Because this was the third time this week he'd made a mistake that could have injured a teammate, and he had no explanation that didn't involve admitting things he wasn't ready to admit.
Focus. Breathe. Control.
The familiar mantra meant nothing. His mind was a static-filled void where hockey instincts should have been, every thought fragmenting into images of Edie—Edie painting, Edie laughing, Edie loading her belongings into that ridiculous camper while he stood there like a carved stone monument, saying nothing, doing nothing, letting her walk away.
The locker room was empty when he reached it.
Good.
He dropped onto the bench in front of his locker and buried his head in his hands, breathing through the tight knot in his chest. His body ached in ways that had nothing to do with physical exertion—a hollow, persistent pain that had taken up residence somewhere behind his sternum and refused to leave.
Four days.
Four days since she'd moved back to the camper, and he hadn't slept more than three hours any of them. His apartment—condo, he corrected himself, because "apartment" was what she'd called it, her voice warm with teasing—felt like a mausoleum. Too quiet. Too clean. Too empty.
He kept finding traces of her everywhere.
A purple hair tie tangled in his bathroom drain. A smear of paint on his counter that he couldn't bring himself to scrub away. A coffee mug shaped like a sloth, sitting in his cabinet like it had always belonged there.
Glitter.
Fucking glitter.
He'd found it in his sheets, on his towels, somehow embedded in the grout of his shower tiles. It sparkled at him mockingly every time he entered a room, reminding him of her laugh, her chaos, the way she'd looked at him like he was something worth keeping.
You let her leave.
The thought had been circling his mind for days, a vulture waiting to pick clean the bones of his denial. He'd told himself he was respecting her wishes. Being supportive. Giving her space.
Lies.
He'd been terrified.
Terrified that if he asked her to stay, she'd say no. That he'd finally put words to the thing growing in his chest, and she'd look at him with pity, or worse—relief at having an excuse to run.
So he'd said nothing.
"The camper's ready whenever you want it."
He'd meant to say something else. Something real. But the words had stuck in his throat like broken glass, and what came out instead was permission to leave—the exact opposite of what he'd wanted.
Coward.
The locker room door banged open.
Tarmek didn't lift his head. He could tell from the footsteps who it was—multiple players, moving with purpose, the particular rhythm of skate guards on concrete that he'd memorized over years of playing with these men.
"Team meeting." Dmitri's voice, calm but firm. "You too, Captain."
Not now.
"Practice isn't over."
"Coach called it." That was Kowalski, sounding far too cheerful for someone who'd just been nearly concussed. "Something about 'regrouping our mental focus.' Pretty sure that's code for 'Stonefist has lost his goddamn mind.'"
Tarmek lifted his head.
The entire team stood in a loose semicircle around him—twelve players in various states of undress, their expressions ranging from concerned to exasperated to something uncomfortably close to knowing.
"We need to talk," said Makron, the team's assistant captain and one of the few players who'd been with the Enforcers longer than Tarmek. "And before you give us that 'I'm fine' bullshit, don't. We've been watching you self-destruct for four days, and we're done pretending we don't notice."
"I'm—"
"If you say 'fine,' I'm throwing my gear bag at your head." Kowalski dropped onto the bench beside him, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. "You nearly decapitated me out there, Cap. I love my face. I'd like to keep it attached to my body."
"It was a miscalculation."
"It was your third 'miscalculation' this week.
" Makron leaned against the nearest locker, arms crossed.
"First the missed pass during Monday's scrimmage.
Then yesterday's checking drill where you basically assaulted a practice dummy like it owed you money.
Now this." He gestured at Kowalski's still-bleeding forehead. "Something's wrong. Talk."
Tarmek's jaw clenched.
He didn't talk. That was the entire problem. He showed his feelings through action, through service, through the quiet reliability of simply being there. Words were slippery, dangerous things that could be misinterpreted or rejected.
Words meant vulnerability.
"It's personal."
"Yeah, we figured." Dmitri claimed the bench on Tarmek's other side, trapping him between bodies. "Would this 'personal' thing happen to be five-foot-four, covered in paint, and currently living in a camper behind our parking structure?"
Tarmek's silence was apparently answer enough.
"Knew it," muttered Singh from somewhere behind him. "You all owe me twenty bucks."
"Thought they were still together," someone else said.
"Have you seen him this week? That's not 'together' body language. That's 'I made a terrible mistake and I'm too stubborn to fix it' body language."
"Can we not do this?" Tarmek's voice came out rougher than intended. "I appreciate the concern, but my personal life isn't—"
"Team business?" Makron cut him off. "It is when it affects your performance.
When you're so distracted you can't complete a basic passing drill.
When you nearly hospitalize our starting right winger.
" He pushed off the locker and moved closer, his expression shifting from exasperation to something gentler.
"We're not trying to embarrass you, Tarmek.
We're worried. You've never played like this. "
"I'll handle it."
"How?" Kowalski asked. "By staring at the wall and hoping things fix themselves? Because that seems to be your current strategy, and I gotta say, it's not working great."
"You don't understand—"
"What's there to understand?" The new voice came from the back of the group, and the other players parted to let Yuri Volkov through.
Volkov was the oldest player on the team—a grizzled bear shifter in his final season, with more experience than the rest of them combined.
He'd been married for twenty-three years, had four kids, and possessed the kind of blunt wisdom that came from decades of navigating both professional hockey and family life.
He also had approximately zero tolerance for bullshit.
"I've been watching you moon over that girl for weeks," Volkov said, lowering himself onto the bench across from Tarmek with the careful movements of a man whose knees had survived one too many body checks.
"Watched you rearrange your whole life to make space for her.
Watched you look at her like she hung the goddamn moon. "
"It wasn't—"
"Don't lie to me, boy. I've been mated longer than you've been playing hockey.
" Volkov's pale eyes, sharp despite his age, pinned Tarmek in place.
"You found your person. Happens to the best of us, and there's no shame in it.
What there is shame in is letting her walk away because you're too scared to ask her to stay. "
The words hit Tarmek like a physical blow.
Scared.
Too scared to ask.
"I'm not—" His voice cracked. He tried again. "She wanted to leave. I was respecting her choice."
"Were you?" Volkov leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Or were you just telling yourself that because it was easier than risking rejection?"
Tarmek couldn't answer.
The truth sat heavy in his chest, undeniable now that someone had spoken it aloud. He'd had a hundred opportunities to tell Edie what she meant to him. A thousand moments when he could have found the words, pushed past his fear, laid himself bare.
Instead, he'd hidden behind practicality.
The camper's ready whenever you want it.
He'd meant to say I don't want you to go. He'd meant to say stay with me. He'd meant to say I know I'm rigid and difficult and terrible at expressing emotions, but I've never felt this way about anyone, and the thought of you leaving makes me feel like I'm drowning.
What came out was logistics.
What came out was permission to leave.
What came out was nothing.
"She's not a mind reader," Volkov continued, relentless. "None of them are. You can't just do things for someone and expect them to understand what it means. You have to tell them. Use your words, even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard."
"I don't—" Tarmek's voice was barely audible. "I don't know how."
"You learn." Volkov's tone softened slightly.
"You think I came out of the womb knowing how to communicate with my wife?
First five years of marriage were a disaster.
I thought fixing things around the house meant 'I love you.
' She thought I was avoiding her. Nearly divorced twice before I figured out that feelings need words, not just actions. "
"She doesn't want words from me."
"Did she say that? Specifically? Or are you assuming because it's more comfortable than finding out the truth?"
Tarmek had no answer.