Chapter 26
Sasha
Aaron Kelly is twelve feet away and I can’t stop looking at him.
He’s at the face-off circle to my right, stick down, weight forward, doing that thing with his jaw where he clenches it right before a drop.
His helmet is low over his eyes and his shoulders are set and he looks exactly like what he is — a guy who was built for this ice, for this building, for the seven thousand people screaming his number.
It’s mid-January, and a few weeks ago he was naked in a bathtub with me, asking about our future.
Now he won’t look at me. Won’t even glance in my direction. Nothing that might suggest the two co-captains of the Ashford Sentinels are anything more than teammates who tolerate each other for the good of the program.
He’s so good at this. The pretending. I hate it. I’m also kind of impressed.
The ref skates to the dot. The opposing center — some kid from Vermont with a mouthguard he keeps chewing — drops into position across from me.
The crowd is already loud, louder than the first game back after the holidays usually warrants, but this town has been starving for hockey through the break and Ashford Arena gives them an excuse to go insane.
The student section starts it. Low at first, then building.
SA-SHA. SA-SHA. SA-SHA.
I love this. I will never not love this. Seven thousand Americans chanting a Russian name like a war cry. My name. In a building that feels more like home than Omsk ever did.
The puck drops.
First period and I’m flying.
Everything is clicking — my hands, my feet, my reads.
The Vermont defense is slow and I’m finding lanes they don’t even know exist. I thread a pass through two sticks and Robertson one-times it off the post and the crowd groans and I tap his shin pads and tell him next time.
But it’s fine. The ice feels good under my blades.
My legs are fresh from the break. My head is clear.
Clear enough to play. Not clear enough to stop thinking.
It keeps happening. I’ll be reading a forecheck, processing the gap between their left D and the boards, and then my brain slides sideways and I’m in the Pemberton with Aaron’s back against my chest and the steam curling around us and his voice saying you when I asked what changed.
The memory is so vivid I can almost smell the eucalyptus.
I shake it off. Push back up ice. Take a pass from Cooper on the blue line and dangle around the Vermont center — the kid with the mouthguard, who bites down so hard on it I can hear his teeth — and rip a wrist shot that the goalie barely gets a glove on. The crowd roars.
SA-SHA. SA-SHA.
Yeah. This is where I belong.
Here. Ashford Arena, blue and white, my name echoing off the rafters where championship banners hang.
Every day I don’t have my US citizenship, every day I have to keep pretending Aaron isn’t anything to me other than a rival, is torture. Soon, I keep telling myself, I will be done with lying.
Done with Russia.
I take another shift. Win the face-off clean. Feed Aaron on the rush and watch him carry the puck wide, his edges sharp, his hands quick, and he snaps a shot high that beats the goalie blocker side. The lamp lights. The building explodes.
Aaron gets mobbed by the guys. Robertson and Cooper and Nakamura pile on him and I’m right there too, helmet to helmet, stick tapping his shin pads, my glove on the back of his neck for half a second longer than necessary.
“Nice shot, Kelly.” Loud enough for the bench to hear.
He grins. That controlled Aaron Kelly grin that doesn’t show too much. “Nice pass, Vorontsovsky.”
The bench whoops. Normal captain stuff. Nothing to see.
But his eyes hold mine for one beat. Green and bright under the arena lights. And I think about his face in the bathtub when he said that’s what I want too, and my mind keeps going places it has no business going during a hockey game.
Focus. Game. Ice. Now.
Second period. We’re up 2-1 and I can’t shut my brain off.
Every time I hit the bench and grab a water bottle, my thoughts go somewhere they shouldn’t. Aaron’s hands in mine underwater. The way he pulled me back into the tub. The text he sent after — miss you too — two words that cost him more than anyone would ever know.
I think about what it would be like to skate over to him right now and kiss him at center ice in front of the whole building.
Just do it. Let them all see. Let the cameras catch it and let Diego figure out the press release and let my mother read about it in whatever Russian news aggregator she follows.
I won’t. I’m not stupid. But thinking about it gives me a buzz that’s better than the crowd noise.
Vermont ties it up on a breakaway and Coach Rafferty calls a timeout. Aaron is next to me on the bench, helmet tilted back, breathing hard. His thigh is an inch from mine. One inch.
“Their D is pinching too hard on the left side,” he says, leaning in. To anyone watching, it’s captain-to-captain strategy talk. His breath is warm against my ear. “If you come up through the middle, I can find you.”
“I know,” I say. “I’ve been waiting for you to see it.”
He fights it, but the grin leaks through. “You could have said something.”
“I wanted you to figure it out yourself. Character building.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“I’m your co-captain. Show some respect.”
He shakes his head, but there’s a smile buried in it. I want to put my hand on his knee. I want to lean over and press my mouth against the spot below his ear that makes him forget his own name.
Instead I pull my helmet down and skate back out.
Third period. Tied 2-2, six minutes left. The crowd is on their feet and my blood is humming and this is the part of the game I live for — the part where everybody’s watching and the ice shrinks and everything moves faster than thinking.
I’m going to score this goal.
I know it the way I know my own name. Some things you don’t decide. They just are.
Vermont dumps the puck in and Cooper fields it behind our net. Outlets to Nakamura. Nakamura hits me at the hashmarks and I’m gone — full speed through the neutral zone, the puck on my stick like it grew there, the crowd noise rising with every stride.
Their defense drops back. Two of them, pinching in, trying to angle me to the boards.
I see the lane — tight, between the left D’s stick and the right D’s skate, barely enough room — and I know this is the move.
Top shelf, far side, the shot I’ve been making since I was fourteen years old on gray concrete ice in Siberia.
This is the shot that gets on SportsCenter. The shot Diego puts in the reel. The shot that proves I belong here, that this country wants me, that every mile between me and Omsk was worth it.
I load up. Drop my shoulder. Eyes on the top corner.
I don’t see the third man.
He comes from the blindside — their right winger, a big kid, six-three at least, closing at full speed on a line I never tracked because I was looking at the net.
Because I was thinking about the goal. About the highlight.
About Aaron in the stands at MSG next year watching me do this in a Titans jersey while the whole building knows he’s mine.
The hit catches me clean. Shoulder to the side of my head, the part my helmet doesn’t fully cover, and my brain goes white.
Not black. White. Like every light in the arena fires at once.
The ice comes up fast. I feel it against my face — cold, wet, hard — and then the sound goes wrong.
Not gone, just wrong. Like someone shoved cotton in my ears and turned the volume down to a frequency I can’t track.
The crowd noise becomes a single flat tone.
My vision swims. The overhead lights stretch and blur into streaks.
I try to push up. My arms don’t cooperate. The ice is slippery under my gloves and my helmet is sideways on my head and I can taste copper in my mouth and I can’t remember which direction the net is.
Someone’s hand on my shoulder pad. A whistle, distant. My name — Sasha — but it sounds like it’s coming through water.
Then another voice. Closer. Sharper. Cutting through the static.
“Sasha. Sasha, don’t move. Stay down.”
Aaron.
He’s on one knee next to me on the ice. His glove is on my chest. His helmet is off — why is his helmet off? — and his green eyes are close and wide and terrified.
There you are, I think. And it’s such a strange thought to have with your face on the ice and your brain not working and seven thousand people going silent above you, but there it is. The only clear thing in my head.
There you are.
Everything goes soft at the edges. Aaron’s face. The lights. The cold under my cheek. The flat tone in my ears getting flatter and quieter and further away, and his hand is on my chest and his mouth is moving but I can’t hear what he’s saying anymore.
The ice holds me. The lights swim. And the last thing I see before everything goes dark is green eyes. Then nothing.