38. Adrian
Adrian
The silence in my dorm room is a suffocating accusation. It’s been twenty-four hours since the Greystone game. Twenty-four hours since I scored a goal for her and then walked away on my father’s command like a well-trained dog.
I haven’t left this room. The walls feel like they’re closing in, the air thick with the ghost of her scent on my sheets and the fresh, bitter stench of my own self-loathing.
I pace the length of the expensive rug, a caged animal in a space designed to look like a pinnacle of success.
I replay the sequence of events in a relentless, punishing loop: the triumph when I saw her in the stands, wearing my name; the satisfying crack of my fist against Greystone’s captain; the ice-cold dread as my father appeared, his presence erasing it all in an instant.
He didn’t have to yell. He just had to remind me of the leash around my neck. And I, in front of my entire team, let him pull it.
The rage at my father curdles into something uglier: a deep, profound shame that crawls under my skin and makes it feel too tight.
I am a coward. I promised her no one would speak that way about her again, and when my own father did it, dismissing her as a liability, I stood there and took it.
Then I abandoned her to go shake hands with men who see me as nothing more than a stock ticker.
I look at my phone, at her name in my contacts, the screen a bright, accusing rectangle in the dark. I’ve typed and deleted a dozen messages. I’m sorry. He’s an asshole. It wasn’t about you. All of them are lies. It was all about her. And it was all about me being too weak to fight for her.
Declan’s warning echoes in my head. You’re going to break her, or she’s going to break you.
My father is trying to break her, to erase her from the equation. And I’m letting him. I am the storm, the chaos, and I just dragged her into the heart of it. The only way to protect her is to cut her loose. To go dark.
With a final, decisive movement, I pick up my phone.
It feels impossibly heavy, like a weapon I'm about to turn on myself.
I send a one-line email to the Academic Center, citing a “team matter” and canceling our next session.
The words feel like a betrayal. I turn my phone off and shove it in a drawer, the sound of it sliding into the dark a final, hollow thud. The silence that follows is absolute.
But the quiet doesn’t last. The noise is inside me now. I can’t breathe. I grab my gear bag and head to the one place that makes sense. The rink.
The arena is a cavernous tomb at this hour, the only sound the low hum of the refrigeration units.
The air is cold and clean, smelling of ice and steel.
A relief. But as I get closer, I hear it: the solitary, rhythmic slap of a puck hitting the boards, followed by the clean hiss of skate blades carving a hard turn.
I’m not alone.
A single figure is on the ice, moving through a drill with a relentless, punishing precision. It’s Declan. He’s not just practicing; he’s exorcising something, skating with a controlled fury I recognize instantly because it’s the same fury that lives in my own gut.
I lace up my skates without a word and step onto the ice. He finishes his lap and glides to a stop in front of me, breathing hard, his face set in grim lines.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say. Not an excuse; a confession.
“Funny. Me neither,” he says, his voice flat. He looks like shit. There are dark circles under his eyes I haven’t seen before. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen his mask crack. He’s fighting his own war, too.
“Family stuff?” I ask, knowing the answer.
He just nods, his jaw tight. Then he turns it back on me, his eyes sharp. “You’re the one who just went to war with your old man.”
“I handled it,” I snap, a defensive reflex.
Declan just looks at me, his expression flat, unimpressed. His silence is more effective than any argument, filling the cold air until it feels hard to breathe. It says, Bullshit.
I skate a slow circle, the blade cutting a clean line in the ice. “It’s not about him anymore,” I say, the admission costing me something. “It’s… different.”
Declan waits, watching me with that unnerving stillness of his.
“I told her I’d protect her,” I finally admit, the words heavy and strange. “And I don’t even know how to protect my own shit.”
Declan skates over to the scattered pucks and taps one with his stick, sending it gliding perfectly to my blade.
“Drills,” he says. Not a suggestion. A solution.
For the next hour, we don’t talk. We skate.
The only sound is the rhythmic scrape of our blades, the sharp crack of pucks, and the thud as they hit the back of the net.
A non-verbal conversation, a shared language of violence and precision.
We run drills with a silent, intuitive chemistry, our sticks talking for us.
We skate lines until our legs burn and our lungs are on fire, pushing each other, the shared physical punishment a form of silent therapy.
Finally, we’re leaning against the boards, side-by-side, gasping for air, steam fogging the glass. The storm inside me hasn’t passed, but it’s been quieted by the physical exertion and the simple, unspoken camaraderie.
She’s not just a distraction. She’s the anchor. My mother saw it. And my father, for all his power, can’t cut that rope. Only I can. And I just did.
She’s not dumb—she’ll know something is wrong.
She’ll feel the silence. But this isn’t about pushing her away forever.
This is a strategic retreat. A reorganization before the real battle.
It’s about figuring out how to pull her closer without destroying us both.
Because if I’m going to do this—if I’m going to fight for her, for us—I’m going to do it right.
And for the first time in my life, I have to admit I have no idea how.