Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
TOLREK
Iboarded the bus early because sitting still at the hotel had become impossible. Game prep worked better in motion. Mental sequences. Positioning reads. The patterns I’d need to track once we hit the ice again. Keeping my head occupied meant I didn’t think about other things.
Like the woman who’d be sitting in the row ahead of mine.
I took my seat and ran through the Crimson Crushers’ forecheck structure. They were aggressive and fast. They targeted new acquisitions in the first ten minutes, testing to see what kind of pressure you could handle. This was the standard strategy. I’d done the same thing myself in the past.
Haley boarded and eased down the aisle, her laptop bag hanging off one shoulder, her overnight bag in her other hand. She wore the same jacket as yesterday, dark blue with a hood she never pulled up.
She stuffed her overnight bag in the bin over her seat and took her usual place in the middle of the bus, directly in front of me.
I caught her scent, floral and sweet. It made my tusks ache. If she left Boston, I’d follow her until my skates wore down to the boot.
Mark, the other team analyst, boarded next, taking a seat behind Crim, near the front.
Brashe strode up onto the bus and walked down the aisle, dropping into the seat across from Haley’s. He glanced at me, at the back of Haley’s head, then at his phone, saying nothing. We’d been teammates long enough that silence functioned as its own language.
More players filed on. Mikael passed Haley’s row and slowed for half a step. Crim sat in the front like he had the day before. Two rookies moved past me, talking about something that didn’t matter.
The bus rolled out of the lot, heading toward the highway.
The overhead bin above Haley’s seat had been packed too full. Someone had shoved their bag in at an angle that left hers pressed against the side. I noticed it about an hour into the ride.
It would hold until the first solid bump.
The bus driver slammed on the brakes, and the vehicle lurched forward.
Her bag shifted.
I was up before it could fall. I repositioned both bags so they sat flat and secure. Then I returned to my seat.
She glanced up and back at me. “Thank you.”
I nodded, and she faced forward again.
The bus settled into highway speed, and I let pre-game focus take over completely, the mental preparation that made the physical preparation possible.
Haley opened her laptop. The faint click of keys told me she was working.
I tipped my head back, closed my eyes, and pretended to doze.
Away arenas felt wrong in small ways.
The ice was regulation, but every surface had its own personality. I did my read during warm-up, taking the corners at speed to test the edge grip and working through the neutral zone to feel where the puck would move clean and where it might skip.
The Crushers’ building was much older than ours. The boards had more give, and the glass showed wear at the bottom where sticks had scraped for years, details that mattered if you knew to look for them.
I felt good. The work from the first exhibition game had carried. My reads were clean. I was starting to know where my teammates would be before they got there. The hesitation I’d brought from my old team was fading into nothing.
The tape session had shown me what I’d been protecting. Seeing it from the outside had given me enough distance to work past it.
The press area sat high on the north side, the standard configuration for most buildings. I didn’t look up at it directly. That distinction mattered, though I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because I didn’t play to the roar of twenty thousand people anymore. Only one.
The horn sounded, and we cleared the ice.
I was ready.
We played the first period well. The Crushers came out aggressive like I’d expected, their forechecks fast and targeted. They hit each of us early, testing for weakness. I adjusted my timing and held my position. The plays developed, and I put myself where I needed to be.
Crim took a hit along the boards and came out with the puck. Three passes and we were in their zone. No goal, but the structure felt right. It was just a matter of time. The team was coming together.
Between periods, the assistant coach gave me a positioning note that made sense. I noted it and went back out for the second period.
The Crushers adjusted their forecheck, coming in rough on the weak side. I read it in real time and communicated the shift to my defensive partner.
Six minutes into the period, their forward drove into the neutral zone with speed.
I recognized the sequence. Haley had shown me this exact play in the tape session. The forward’s angle and the way he’d cut toward the high slot. Where the passing lane would open if I didn’t close my gap.
I knew what to do.
But instead of reacting from instinct, I thought about the footage and the tag she’d used. She’d isolated the pattern and shown me where the mistake would happen.
A half-second falter on my part was all it took.
The forward got through, and the puck came across in a solid pass. Their winger buried it in the goal.
I skated back to position and reset, not letting my dismay show on my face or in my posture. I was a professional. You didn’t let one mistake compound into two. But I knew what had happened. I’d thought knowing would be enough, that understanding the pattern would translate to stopping it.
It hadn’t.
I spent the rest of the period between the bench and my shifts, recalibrating. I played more conservatively than I wanted to. My reads were still accurate, but I was protecting instead of organizing. Reacting instead of anticipating.
We didn’t score.
The third period delivered more of the same. My positioning remained technically correct, but the instinct that made me useful had pulled back into something safer. Something cautious.
The final horn sounded, and we lost by two goals.
I hadn’t looked at the press area after the freeze, and I didn’t look at it now as I skated to the edge of the ice and strode down the tunnel.
Locker rooms after a loss were always quiet. Exhibition games didn’t carry the same weight as regular season, but they counted to the people in this room. The silence squeezed around me, heavy in a way that didn’t need volume.
I sat at my stall and stripped off my gear. Sweaty jersey. Shoulder and elbow pads. The routine was automatic enough that my hands could work while my brain stayed somewhere else.
Players decompressed in their various ways.
Some talked while others didn’t. Mikael made a joke that landed wrong and stopped trying.
The rookies kept their heads down. Brashe sat three stalls over and said nothing.
Across the room, Crim had already showered and was half-dressed. He glanced at me once, then away.
I showered and changed into the suit I wore to make sure the team looked good to the press. I spoke only when someone asked me a direct question that required an answer.
Two players glanced at me on the way out. Then at the door. They’d seen something and were choosing not to turn it into a conversation yet.
Quiet ruled on the bus during the ride to the new hotel. We were all exhausted; the adrenaline was gone. What remained was the reality of the loss and the individual analysis of what had gone wrong.
I took a different seat. Not the one behind her. Closer to the back, away from the overhead lights and the shape of the back of her head that I’d spent hours memorizing.
She was visible anyway. Five rows up, aisle seat. Her laptop open. I couldn’t tell if she was working or just staring at the screen, and I didn’t let myself look long enough to find out.
She’d been in the box. She’d seen the sequence unfold in real time, the same one she’d isolated in tape. She would’ve tagged this mistake. I didn’t let myself think about what label she’d use.
During the morning ride, I’d sat behind her and felt the pull of her like something gravitational.
Hours of highway with her nearby, and I’d pretended I was thinking about hockey.
Now I sat five rows back and stared out the window at nothing, and the absence of that warmth was another problem I added to the others.
The bus pulled into the hotel lot, and we filed off. I went to my room and ordered food I didn’t want. I ate half of it because my body needed fuel regardless of what my brain was doing.
Then I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall.
The game ran on repeat in my mind. Not the full sixty minutes, just the six seconds that mattered. The forward cutting. The recognition. The half-second where I’d thought instead of reacted. The goal.
I lay back and stared at the ceiling, the hotel version of the same ceiling I’d been staring at since moving to Boston. It was a different room, but still the same problem.
At some point I stopped waiting for sleep and accepted that it wasn’t coming. The ceiling had nothing left to offer. Stillness was making it worse.
I got up, pulled on shorts and a shirt, and left the room.
She stood in the hallway, outside the ice machine alcove across the way, a bucket in her hand, wearing the clothes she’d traveled in. She looked up when my door opened.
We didn’t move.
I wore gym clothes. It wasn’t a difficult read where I was going.
With a nod, I boarded the elevator and rode it down.
Hotel gyms all looked the same. Flickering fluorescent lights overhead. Functional. Each held equipment designed for business travelers, not athletes who needed it to hold their weight.
This one had mirrors on two walls. I’d been avoiding looking at myself clearly since the game ended, but the mirrors were built into the space.
The weights were too light. The bench was too narrow. But none of it mattered. Stillness was worse than inadequate equipment.
I did curls. Presses. Rows. Movements I could execute without thinking. This wasn’t cathartic. It wouldn’t fix what had happened on the ice. But it gave my body something to do while my brain ran through it all again.
I picked up something heavier, beginning another repetition.
The door opened behind me and footsteps rang out. I would know the sound of her anywhere. Haley crossed the gym and sat on the bench along the far wall, like the park bench that first evening with Beau.
In fourteen years I’d had teammates who’d clapped my shoulder after a loss and coaches who’d given me notes, and agents who’d told me the right numbers would fix everything.
I’d meant nothing to any of them.
She wasn’t here to fix me. She was just here.
I kept working. Three more sets. Then two. The effort wasn’t helping, but being watched made continuing impossible.
I set the weights down and straightened. I grabbed a towel and wiped my face. My chest. And draped it around my neck.
The mirrors reflected both of us. Her small frame on the bench. Me standing in the center of the room, still breathing hard from the exertion.
Quiet filled the room.
“I knew what you showed me. I worked through it.” The words came out flat. “I went into that game believing knowing would be enough.” I paused. “It wasn’t.”
I didn’t look at her when I said it, and I didn’t explain further.
The gym’s fluorescent hum filled the space between us.
I waited, though I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for.
She stood.
I tracked the movement in my peripheral vision but didn’t turn my head, not until she was close enough that turning became necessary.
When I did, she was right there, small in the mirrored gym. She looked up at me with the same certainty she’d had outside her apartment, as if whatever was growing between us was inevitable.
I didn’t move toward her, but I didn’t step back.
“Haley.”
She closed the remaining distance and put her hand on my chest, right over my heart.
The answer I’d been waiting for.
The door had a lock. I walked over and engaged the mechanism. The click echoed in the small space.
When I turned back, she was still waiting.
I strode back to her.