26. KAI
KAI
Double Penalty
My mother has never called me at six a.m. unless someone is dead or she's figured out something she thinks I should already know.
Nobody's dead.
"The renovation is going to be stunning, Kai. Ava walked through every room with me yesterday. She saw things in that house I've been staring at for thirty years and never noticed."
I pour coffee one-handed, phone wedged against my ear.
"She's good at that."
"She really is." A pause. "She looked tired, though. Really tired. Has she been sleeping?"
Steam curls off the mug. I take a sip.
"She's been pushing hard on client projects. The studio move is eating her alive."
"It wasn't that kind of tired, sweetheart."
"What kind was it?"
She sighs. "Ava touched her stomach, Kai. Right there in my kitchen. Her hand went straight to her belly like she was protecting something. And when I looked at her, she pulled away so fast she nearly knocked over a plate. A mother notices these things."
My hand stills on the mug. Is she trying to tell me Ava is pregnant?
"Mom."
"I'm not making accusations. I'm asking if there's something you and Ava want to share with your father and me. Because I've started knitting something small and soft just in case."
The coffee becomes tasteless. I set the mug down.
"You're knitting based on hand placement?"
"I'm knitting based on thirty-five years of watching other women and my experience."
"There’s nothing to share. If Ava had something to tell me, she'd tell me."
"Would she?"
The question makes me tense up. I roll my neck, feel the tendons pull.
"Yes, she would." My voice comes out hard even though I don’t fully believe what I just said.
"Have you thought about what comes next for you two? Beyond the boyfriend and girlfriend stage?"
"I've thought about a lot of things. None of them involve baby booties."
She laughs, warm and knowing, the warm, knowing laugh she uses when she's already decided she's right.
"Okay, sweetheart. I'll drop it."
"Appreciated."
"But Kai? Ask her."
The call ends. I stand in my kitchen holding a mug of coffee that's gone lukewarm.
My mother sees pregnancy in every woman under forty who sits in her kitchen. She started knitting a blanket for our neighbor last spring. This is who she is.
But the image lodges behind my ribs. Ava's hand on her belly. The fast pullback. The exhaustion that isn't work.
I wonder if she’s truly pregnant.
No, she’s not.
We’ve been careful. We use protection every time.
I drink the cold coffee in two swallows and shove the thought deep in my mind.
Time to focus on practice. So I get ready and drive to the facility.
The facility is loud when I hit the ice.
Wyatt is already doing crossovers at full speed near the blue line, his copper hair escaping his helmet from separate angles. Theo stretches by the boards, so massive he makes the dasher look like it was built for a peewee rink.
I hit the ice hard.
Skating drills first, then transition work. My edges bite clean.
Every crossover is tight, every pivot sharp enough that the ice sprays in a line instead of a cloud. Every read I make is a half-second ahead of where it needs to be.
The scrimmage runs five-on-five, full contact. I win the opening faceoff clean, drive wide, pull two defenders with me before feeding Easton in the slot. His one-timer beats the goalie before the blocker even moves.
I skate back to center, breathing hard but controlled. My legs burn in the way that means they're working, not failing.
Brennan watches from behind the glass with his arms folded, expression flat. He makes a note on his clipboard and doesn't look up.
I run more shifts, win every draw, strip a defenseman on the backcheck and turn it into a breakaway I bury top corner, the crossbar singing behind the puck.
Wyatt pulls alongside me during a line change.
"Four for five on faceoffs and that last snipe was disgusting. If Brennan writes anything on that clipboard besides 'give him back the letter,' I'm stealing it."
"You're cheating to your forehand again. Third shift, second zone entry."
"I wasn't."
"You were. And on the cycle before that."
He scowls. "You're counting my forehand touches now? That's creepy, Cap."
"Don't call me that."
Wyatt blinks, then recovers with a grin.
“Creepy?” He shrugs. “Force of habit and it’s the truth, Cap. One of us has got to keep you humble."
I tap his shin pad with my stick. "Fix the forehand."
When Brennan blows the final whistle, my lungs feel scraped raw and my thighs are shaking under my pads.
The locker room settles into its post-practice noise, sticks clattering into stalls. Tape getting stripped.
Wyatt showing Theo something on his phone that makes Theo close his eyes in what looks like physical pain. Easton sits half-undressed, staring at the wall with detached focus. Jordan is across the room, unlacing his skates.
I'm pulling my jersey over my head when the door opens.
Hargrove walks in wearing a charcoal suit. The conversations drop to murmurs. Wyatt pockets his phone.
Hargrove plants himself in the center of the room, feet apart, hands clasped. His eyes sweep the stalls.
"Gentlemen, a quick word."
I set the jersey down slowly.
"As you know, we've been evaluating leadership structure heading into the season. Kai's recovery has been outstanding. His play this week speaks for itself, and everyone in this room knows what he brings to the group."
My stomach pulls tight. There’s going to be a ‘but,’ I can tell.
"But we need stability at the top of the roster as we open the season. So for the opener and the foreseeable stretch after, Jordan Maddox will wear the C."
Wyatt's mouth opens then closes. His freckled face cycles between fury and disbelief. Theo shifts on the bench, his massive frame going very still. Easton doesn't move at all, doesn't blink, as if he’s forcefully holding himself.
Hargrove says more after that. Words about evaluation periods, transition, earning, the team's best interest. I stop hearing them after "Jordan Maddox will wear the C."
The blood in my ears is too loud.
My hands hang between my knees. I study my calloused palms, the tape residue on the left ring finger. These hands have held every trophy this franchise owns. They’ve lifted the cup above my head while thousands of people screamed my name.
Now they're sitting empty in a locker room while a man in a suit reassigns the only identity I have left.
My face stays locked.
Flat. Composed. The expression that's gotten me through years of professional hockey. Blown leads. Brutal losses that stung for weeks. Every moment when the last thing I could afford was letting anyone see what I was feeling.
It's second nature by now.
But underneath it, I'm breaking.
No. I'm fucking shattering.
Years spent building walls strong enough to hold everything in, and he brings the whole damn structure down in seconds.
Hargrove finishes, nods once, leaves. The door clicks shut behind him.
Nobody speaks for three full seconds.
Then Wyatt breaks the silence. "Well, that was a pile of horseshit."
"Wyatt." Theo's voice is low despite the warning.
"What? We're all thinking it. Everyone in here saw what he just did on that ice. Everyone."
"Enough." My voice comes out level, controlled.
Wyatt looks at me with raw, frustrated loyalty.
"It's fine," I say.
It is not fine.
Jordan hasn't moved from his stall. His skates sit unlaced on the rubber mat, and he's staring down at his hands.
No smart-ass comment. No cocky grin. None of the usual Jordan.
I have nothing to say to him. Hargrove made the call.
I finish changing, each movement precise, each item placed rather than thrown. If I throw something, the mask cracks. If the mask cracks here, in front of men who used to look to me for composure, then Hargrove was right to take the letter.
So nothing gets thrown.
Theo passes my stall on his way out. His huge hand lands on my shoulder, squeezes once, hard enough that I feel it through the muscle, and lifts.
Easton stops beside me. “You’ll get through this. You’ll find a way like you always do.”
I nod, swallowing hard. Then he walks out.
The room empties around me. I sit in my stall staring at the polished brass nameplate: DONOVAN. The letters haven't changed. Everything around them has.
I drive home with the windows down and the stereo off, my hands gripping the wheel. The air is warm.
Inside the penthouse, I sit on the couch and pick up my phone. The screen is bright in the dim room. Ava's name is right there.
I sit on the couch with my phone in my hand for several minutes before I call her.
She picks up on the second call.
"Hey." Her voice is flat.
"Hey. How was your day?"
"Long. I'm wiped."
"They announced the captaincy today."
"Oh?" A rustle on her end. "What happened?"
"Jordan's wearing the C for the opener and the foreseeable future. Hargrove's words."
Silence. After a while, she speaks, "I'm sorry, Kai."
They’re the right words, but she sounds like she's reading from a card someone else signed.
Heat builds in my throat. "Yeah."
"Maybe it's just a short-term thing. Front offices do that. They hedge until the numbers make them feel safe."
I don't want hedging or analysis.
I want the version of Ava who would have sworn at the phone and told me Hargrove doesn't deserve to watch me play.
That version isn't here tonight.
"Sure. Probably just politics," I spit out.
"Kai, I'm trying to help."
"I know you are."
"Then why does it sound like you're angry with me?"
Because you're not here.
Because I stood in a room full of men who used to follow me and watched my title get handed to someone else, and now I'm sitting alone in an apartment that feels like a museum and the one person who makes it bearable can barely hold a conversation.
"I'm not angry with you."
"You are. I can hear it."
"What you're hearing is a guy who lost his captaincy today and called his girlfriend hoping for something other than a strategy session."
"That's not fair," she says, her voice dropping.
"What’s not fair is finding out your girlfriend needed a blood transfusion from a phone call where she passed out."
It comes out before I can stop it. The thing I've been carrying for days, buried under the careful restraint I've had since I found her unconscious on her couch.
Now I've thrown it at her like a weapon.
"That has nothing to do with this."
"It has everything to do with this. You shut me out, Ava. Every time something real happens, you handle it alone and hand me whatever's left."
"I'm not shutting you out."
"Then what do you call today? I told you I lost the only title I've had since I was twenty-seven, and you gave me a consulting fee worth of advice and nothing else."
Her breathing gets shorter. "I gave you what I had. I'm running on empty. I've had the longest day and I don't have the energy to act the way you want."
"I'm not asking for a performance."
"Yes, you are. You want me upset. You want me furious. And I don't have it in me right now, Kai."
"All I wanted was for you to care."
"I do care."
"Then act like it."
The line goes quiet, the only sound is the faint hum of her TV in the background.
"I need to go," she says.
"Fine."
"Kai..."
"I said fine, Ava."
I hang up.
Her contact photo stares up at me from the screen. That grin. My coffee mug raised toward the camera.
I put the phone face down on the cushion.
A ball of regret hits me.
I just pushed away the only person who's made the last few months survivable.
I just hung up on the only person who makes any of this survivable.
My thumb hovers over her name. Call back. Say something. Anything. But I can’t bring myself to call her back.