Still (Northbound #1)

Chapter 1

Rhys

Oh my god.

If this guy keeps talking I’m going to deck him in the fucking face.

We just played one of the worst games of the season. We’re all crammed into the locker room — pissed off, sweaty, still in full gear. The air is thick with tension and the sharp bite of ice and sweat.

And Jamie Nash has the audacity to sit us down for a thirty minute lecture as if we don’t already know how bad we played. We fucking know, guy. We knew it the second Snyder scored on us two minutes into the first period.

We knew it when the scoreboard read 4-1 and their student section was still screaming. Not a blowout you can blame on bad luck—a loss to a team we should’ve beaten. Which means we all know exactly how fixable it was. That’s its own kind of hell.

We’re all crowded on the benches while Nash paces in front of us, going on and on about teamwork and playing together and the kind of cliché bullshit that sounds hollow after a loss like that.

The kind of speech that would land if we were strangers, but we’re not strangers. We've been skating together all season.

“How about you shut the fuck up and let us get out of here already, Captain?”

The room goes from low murmuring to dead silence.

Well shit.

The energy after a brutal loss can do that — loosen your mouth before your brain catches up. I’m already regretting it before the words finish leaving me. Not because I don't mean it. Because I do mean it—but now everyone in the room knows it.

Nash stops pacing.

He starts making his way through the locker room, weaving between guys still in their pads, getting closer to the bench I’m stretched out on, towel draped over my eyes. I hear him before I see him — that purposeful stride, the way the room gets more quiet as he moves through it.

“You got something to say, Callahan?” His voice is dangerously calm. “Because the way you were playing out there tonight, it’d be in your best interest to pay attention and keep your mouth shut.”

He yanks the towel off my face. I squint up at him under the harsh fluorescent lights and give him my best unimpressed look. Jamie looks at me like he already knows exactly where to hurt me.

I don’t usually mouth off to the captain. I actually respect Nash, even when he’s being insufferable. But it’s just not the night. We’re exhausted. Morale is at a low. My fucking wrist hurts from where I got slammed. And I’m done. So I sit up slowly.

“Bite me.”

He gets right in my face. Sweat is still dripping down his temples, blond hair plastered to the sides of his face.

We haven’t even had a chance to shower yet, so this close I can smell him — musky, electric, still carrying the heat of the game on his skin.

He’s so riled up there’s a small vein pulsing at his temple that I have the strangest urge to press my thumb against.

I grin at him instead.

He lunges at me.

Before it can go anywhere, Coach Fitch materializes out of nowhere and steps between us, one hand flat on each of our chests.

“Alright, alright.” Fitch looks like a man who has fully accepted his suffering and tonight’s defeat. “You think I want to be here right now? You think I don’t want to go home and drink myself to sleep after that game? If you can even call it that?”

He grabs a spare towel off the bench and whips it straight at Kowalski, who had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

Poor guy just stares at him, dumbfounded.

“Go get cleaned up and stop messing around.” Fitch points at the showers like we don’t know where they are.

“Nash, you can finish lecturing them when they show up for practice tomorrow.”

The groan that rolls through the locker room is collective and miserable, like the building itself is mourning the loss. A rare free day—gone, slipped between our fingers before we even had the chance to grasp it.

“Eh.” Fitch shrugs, unbothered. “You play like shit, you get shit consequences.”

I slam my locker hard enough that the sound ricochets off the tile.

“See me after you shower.” Nash’s voice is barely audible, right at my ear. Low enough that only I can hear it. Close enough it sends shivers down my spine.

I had tomorrow off. I have a lab report due Friday and three chapters of reading I've been putting off and an actual plan to catch up on all of it.

Being a chemistry major who also plays college hockey is a kind of exhausting that most people on this team don't understand and I really needed that free day.

But apparently, the universe is on Nash’s side.

I stare at my locker and say nothing.

Fuck this entire day.