21. Brashe
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
brASHE
Iwoke up before my alarm, my hip throbbing like I’d reinjured it in my sleep. Except I hadn’t. Ellie had cleared me. The pain lived in my head, which made it worse.
I did my stretches, going through the motions from the instruction sheet even though my hands were shaking too hard to hold the positions right. The coffee I made tasted like metal. The eggs I scrambled turned rubbery because I kept checking my phone for a text that hadn’t come.
Everything was exactly the same as every other game day other than my meeting with the sports psychologist.
“I can’t stop thinking about every mistake,” I said after I’d sat across from Dr. Holman in her office. “By the time the puck gets to me, I’ve already imagined screwing it up three different ways.”
She leaned back in her chair, studying my face. “And when you imagine screwing it up, what happens next?”
“The team loses. Everybody sees I’m not the same goalie. That the injury changed something.”
“So the thought isn’t really about the puck.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The puck is just the trigger. The story underneath is, If I make a mistake, people will find out I’m broken.”
I couldn’t meet her eyes. “Maybe.”
“How many goals have you allowed in your career?”
“A lot.”
“Thousands of shots, hundreds of goals against, and you still made it here. You’re the starting goalie for a pro-orc hockey team. So few get that far. So why does this loss feel different?”
“Before, I trusted myself.”
“No. Before, you trusted yourself to recover.”
I couldn’t see where she was going with this.
She leaned forward, bracing her arms on her desk. “Every goalie gets beat, even the best ones in the world. What separates them isn’t perfection. It’s that they don’t treat a goal against as evidence that they’re defective.”
“Feels pretty defective to me.”
“Feelings aren’t always facts.”
Hmm. She was right.
Her lips curled up on one side. “You’ve spent weeks asking, What if I’m not the same? I’d like you to try a different question.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you to ask, ‘What if I’m afraid because this matters to me?’”
It did. So much. It was all wrapped up in my feelings for Ellie. Compartmentalizing everything was going to be a challenge.
She suggested I visualize recovering from mistakes, not just making perfect saves, labeling my thoughts as, That’s the injury fear talking, rather than treating every anxious thought as truth, and exploring why my worth felt tied to performance.
“I’ll try.”
“That’s all any of us can do. We can talk again. Just reach out.”
“I will.”
I left and went to the gym to work out.
Later that day, the gear felt odd when I put it on in the locker room. Too tight across my shoulders, too loose at the waist. I’d worn this equipment a thousand times and suddenly it felt like I’d placed it on someone else’s skin.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Tolrek noticed first. He always did. “Everything alright?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
His expression said he didn’t believe me, but he nodded and went back to taping his stick.
Crim’s voice carried across the locker room. “Kedish, it’s going to go great.”
His approval sat on my shoulders like lead.
My throat closed up, my lungs refusing to expand.
“Kedish.” Veskar strode over to stand beside me. “Focus.”
“I’m focused.”
“You’re thinking too much.”
“I’m not.”
He left, and I sat, trying to make my hands stop shaking long enough to lace my skates.
The crowd’s roar hit the second we skated out onto the ice.
Home crowd. Purple everywhere. The family section was packed, but I found her immediately in the third row, my hoodie drowning her smaller frame. Smiling.
My chest rose and fell too fast to control. My eyes burned.
I tried to focus on warm-ups. The feel of the ice under my skates, the weight of the puck against my stick. This sort of muscle memory should be automatic.
But I kept looking up.
Was she watching?
Veskar skated past. “You need to put everything else aside and keep your mind on the game.”
I knew that, but knowing didn’t help when my brain was screaming and my body was moving through someone else’s routine.
The puck dropped.
Two minutes in, their forward broke through, his wrist shot coming at my glove side. I’d stopped this exact shot a thousand times. Automatic. Except my glove was half a second behind my brain, and the puck was already past me before I registered the motion.
The red light. The goal horn. The crowd’s groan rolling through the arena in a wave of disappointment.
I didn’t look up at the family section. I didn’t need to. I could feel her watching. Could imagine her face, the little furrow between her eyebrows that appeared when she was worried.
She’d watched me prove I was exactly what I’d told her I was: not good enough.
I tried to reset, planting my feet, adjusting my stance. Smacking my stick against the sides of the net.
The assistant coach’s words echoed in my mind, trust your instincts.
A second shot came a few minutes later. I overcommitted, lunging too far left, barely getting a piece of it.
I tossed it out, and Tolrek swept the puck away.
We kept playing, and I started loosening up. I could do this. Easy.
Then the other team got a breakaway, and their star forward roared across the ice, sweeping past our defense.
Shot. Goal.
The referee’s whistle cut through the noise. 2-0 Crimson Crushers.
Every shot after that became a referendum on my worth, not as a goalie, but as a person. As someone worthy of the woman in the stands wearing my number.
I made it through the first period without letting anything else in, but during the break, the coach pulled me off the ice. I skated back out with the team and took the bench, keeping my head down. Drachmar skated over to the net to replace me.
The crowd’s noise felt distant. Muffled. Like I was underwater.
I couldn’t look at the family section.
The game continued without me. Drachmar stopped shots like I should’ve. The team rallied, scored twice, tying it up. The crowd came alive again.
And I sat at the end of the bench and disappeared.
We lost 4-2.
The locker room was quiet after.
Coach stood at the front, his expression carefully neutral. “We regroup. Game five is in two days. It’s an away game, so we won’t have home advantage, but we can do this. We’ve been here before.”
I couldn’t hear any of it through the noise in my head.
You failed. Again. In front of everyone.
In front of her.
I showered and dressed in street clothes, moved through the motions like someone had set me up to function without actually being present.
My phone had texts from Ellie. I didn’t open them.
I would leave through the side exit. Avoid everyone. Go home and figure out how to pretend I was still worth the roster spot.
But my feet took me past the family lounge on my way out.
Ellie stood inside, still wearing my hoodie, talking to Simone and Haley. Her face looked worried. That made everything worse. She spotted me through the doorway and came out into the hallway.
“Brashe. Hey.” Her voice was soft. Careful. Like I might break.
That made me angry, though at myself, the situation, and the fact that she had to be careful with me because I was fragile.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine.” The words came out without inflection.
“You don’t look fine.”
“I said I’m fine.”
She stepped closer, her hand reaching for my arm.
I stepped back.
Her hand dropped. I watched it fall, watched her fingers curl into her palm, clinging to something that was already gone. “Whatever you’re about to do, don’t.”
But I was already doing it.
The words were forming, and I couldn’t stop them even though I knew they’d destroy everything.
“I appreciate everything you did,” I said. “Getting me back on the ice. That’s your job, right?”
She stilled. “My job.”
“Yeah. You’re great at it. Really great. I’m just…” I gestured vaguely at myself, at the arena, and the space between us that was growing the more I kept talking. “I’m the problem. Not you. You did everything right.”
“Stop. Please stop.” Her voice went tight. “That’s not what this is.”
“Isn’t it? You’re here because you’re supposed to make sure I don’t break again.”
“That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair.”
Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Crim appeared, his gaze moving between us, his expression shifting from confusion to anger.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Crim’s voice came low, dangerous.
“Nothing. I’m just being realistic.”
“You were right, then.” Crim’s words came out hollow. “You are too damaged for her.”
Ellie’s breath caught. “Even my brother thinks I can’t handle my own life.
” The hurt in her voice cracked me wide open.
“Neither of you gets to decide what I can and can’t handle.
I chose to be here. I chose to wear this.
” She tugged at the hoodie, her hands shaking.
“But I’m not going to stand here and let you make me feel like I’m nothing because you’re scared. ”
“I’m not scared.”
“You’re pushing me away before I can leave. I know how this works. I’ve been here before. But here’s the thing, Brashe. I wasn’t going to leave.”
She pulled the hoodie off in one motion, holding it out to me. “Here. You can have this back.”
I couldn’t make myself take it.
“No?” Her laugh sounded bitter. “Alright then.”
She dropped it on the bench beside us and walked away, her footsteps echoing down the empty corridor.
She didn’t look back.
I stood with Crim, the hoodie pooled on the bench, and everything I wanted disappearing around the corner.
“You’re such an asshole,” Crim said quietly.
“Yeah. I know.”
11 PM found me on my couch, staring at nothing.
My hip didn’t hurt. That should’ve felt like victory. After two weeks of rehab, the hip was fine.
Everything else hurt.
My phone sat on the coffee table. 9:41 had come and gone with no text from me and no evidence that the last few weeks had been anything more than my imagination.
I didn’t blame her for being mad.
I picked up the phone, scrolling through our text thread. The messages from last night stared back at me, proof that this had been real.