18. Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
~ZED~
The cold cools my airways on the way in.
The season is right around the corner, the pressure is mounting, and the entire team is grinding until their lungs burn.
But while the other guys are sweating from exhaustion, I’m running entirely on a wave of pure satisfaction.
My body feels alive with the memory of Lilly’s thighs on my shoulders, the lingering scent of her branded into my senses.
I’m a brick wall in the crease. Puck after puck slaps against my pads, deflected into the corners.
During the final minutes of a grueling scrimmage drill, my eyes instinctively track toward the stands near the player benches.
The instant my gaze lands on Lilly, a smile pulls at my lips behind the metal cage of my goalie mask. But a fraction of a second later my smile dies.
Movement floods the corridors behind her. Dozens of small, chaotic shapes start pouring into the arena seats, loud, high-pitched chatter cutting through the thud of skates and pucks hitting the boards. Children. An army of academy kids, swarming the stands, surrounding Lilly like a flock of birds.
And it gets worse.
“All right, boys,” Coach shouts, banging his clipboard against the glass as the whistle blows. “Wrap up this drill! As soon as the buzzer sounds, the kids are taking the ice with us for a community skating session! Keep your gear on, let ’em get some shots on the net!”
My stomach drops so fast it feels like I missed a step. A snarl rips from my throat.
Absolutely fucking no.
I track the next shot late because of it and just barely catch it with the blocker, sending the rebound out harder than I mean to. It clatters off the boards and I hear somebody yell something at me, but I’m not listening now.
I push through the last thirty seconds of the drill, my movements turning aggressive. When a winger tries to slide a lazy puck across my crease, I slash my stick down, sending the puck flying clear into the upper rafters.
The buzzer sounds, but the ringing in my ears doesn’t stop.
It’s a high-pitched whine that vibrates against the inside of my skull, drowning out the sound of the gates opening. I stand frozen in my crease, my gloved hands clenching my stick so hard the composite groans.
The kids are already hitting the ice. They’re small, uncoordinated, and loud. They swarm onto the rink like a plague of bright-colored jerseys and wobbly ankles.
I hear a different sound.
I hear the phantom groan of shifting metal.
I hear a crack that doesn’t belong. My eyes aren’t on the kids anymore.
They’re darting upward, scanning the rafters, tracing the bolts and wiring of the massive lighting rig above our heads.
My breathing comes in shallow, ragged hitches, my chest tightening until my chest protector feels like it’s made of lead.
“Mercer! Move it!” Coach shouts from the bench, waving me toward the side of the ice. “Make some room for the little ones!”
I don’t move it. I can’t.
A small boy, maybe nine or ten, skates toward my net. He’s got his head down, focused entirely on the puck, completely oblivious to the world around him.
He’s skating right into the middle of my crease and for a moment, it’s an entirely different boy.
My eyes snap upward toward the ceiling and the light rig. He’s directly fucking under it. In a second, it’s a different child skating toward me.
“Back.” The word comes out low enough that nobody hears it.
He keeps skating, and the closer he gets to me, the faster my heart starts beating. My vision jerks back to the ceiling. Too much fucking steel hanging over a child who has no idea it can fall.
I shove off my posts, my body lunging forward.
“Get back!” I roar it this time, the sound echoing through the arena. I don’t hit the kid, but I spray a wall of ice shavings over him as I skid to a stop right in front of him.
The kid freezes, his eyes going wide shock as he looks up at me.
The rink goes silent.
Every eye is on me. I don’t care. I just need the ice empty. I need to know that nothing is going to fall this time. I look past the boy and up at the rig again. The ceiling’s still there, still waiting.
“Off the ice,” I order.
I don’t even know who I’m talking to.
The kid flinches, trying to skate back and away from me.
Fuck this.
I can’t breathe in here.
I storm off the ice, my blades tearing into the rubber mats of the tunnel as I pull my mask off with a hard jerk. Voices are shouting after me. I hear Coach barking my name, and beneath it, a soft, breathless plea from Lilly that nearly makes me hesitate.
“Zed, wait!”
But I don’t. If I stay out there under that rig with those kids for one more second, the walls are going to cave in.
I slam into the varsity locker room, the door clicking shut behind me, isolating me in silence. My chest is heaving against my pads, my breath coming in ragged gasps as I rip off my blocker and catcher, slamming them into the bottom of my locker. I need to get the fuck out of here.
The locker room door flies open, banging hard against the wall.
“What the fuck was that, Mercer?!” Dom demands, marching into the space, his face red with an anger I’ve never seen from him before. He’s completely had enough of my shit.
Makes two of us.
I don’t look at him.
“Get out of my face, Dominic.” I grab my towel, wipe my face, and start to undo the straps of my chest protector.
“No. I’m not getting out of your stupid fucking face.
” Dom steps directly into my path, his broad frame physically blocking the only exit out of the locker room.
He’s breathing hard, his eyes boring into mine.
“You just terrorized and embarrassed a nine-year-old child in front of the entire arena! You looked like a fucking psychopath out there! I want to know why you’re being such a fucking asshole to those kids. ”
“I don’t have time for kids,” I growl as I rip at the Velcro of my pads.
“The season is about to start. We’re supposed to be working, and you want the team to fucking babysit children and waste our ice time?
I’m not about to be a goddamn babysitter, Dom.
I’m a hockey player, not a volunteer at your sports academy.
I couldn’t give less of a shit about it. ”
Dom lets out a harsh, sarcastic laugh, stepping closer until he’s right in my space.
“Oh, you couldn’t give less of a shit?” Dom challenges, his voice dropping into a vicious, mocking register. “If you don’t give a shit about the academy, Zed, then why the fuck are you its biggest financial sponsor?”
The Velcro slips from my fingers. I lock my eyes onto his, the air in the locker room turning instantly microscopic.
“Is it because you secretly care?” Dom presses, his eyes narrowing as he watches my posture change. “Or is it because you’re desperately trying to buy your way out of your sins?”
“Sins?” The word leaves my throat like broken glass.
“Sins, Zed,” Dom snaps, stepping even closer, completely crossing the line.
“Do you think no one’s read the articles?
Do you think I haven’t? If you think throwing millions of dollars at a kids’ hockey academy is going to cleanse you of your guilt for murdering your baby brother, you’re dead fucking wrong. ”
The blood in my veins turns to pure ice. My chest squeezes painfully as a boulder lodges itself inside my ribcage.
I’m so horrified by his words that I don’t even know what to say.
Dominic doesn’t back up. He sees the crack and, instead of stopping, he pushes his hands into my chest protector, shoving me backward. The metal of my locker clatters loudly against my spine.
“You think your money can hide the truth forever?”
“Dominic, I’m warning you—”
“You were scared, weren’t you?” Dom shifts tactics, his face inches from mine, his voice a disgusting, aggressively cruel hiss.
He’s rage-baiting me on purpose, using the exact words I’ve spent years hearing in whispers from every ghost in my past. He wants to see me react.
“Did you just stand there and watch him die because saving him wasn’t worth risking yourself? ”
“Shut your fucking mouth, you piece of shit!” I roar, the grief and fury finally choking me.
I know what he’s doing. I fucking know it, and I still can’t stop the emotions he’s forcing out.
Dom gives me a cold, mocking laugh. “Look at you. The big, bad Zed Mercer. The fucking wall in net. Everybody thinks you’re fearless.” He leans closer. “But when it actually mattered, you were nothing but a fucking coward.”
Something inside me cracks.
“Is it all true?” Dom screams it right into my face, twisting the knife until the bone splinters. “Is that why you can’t stand to look at a kid?”
I force my eyes shut.
Calm the fuck down. He’s baiting you. He wants you to swing.
My chest heaves violently against my pads, the breath rattling in my throat as I fight the primitive urge to rip Dom’s throat out.
I know what he’s doing. Dominic and I go way back.
We aren’t just teammates; we have years of history buried between us.
Dom knew Nico. He played shinny with him on the pond.
He sat at my family’s kitchen table, eating dinner while my little brother laughed and talked about making it into the NHL one day.
This is just a sick, twisted tactic to make me snap, to force me to finally tear off the mask.
I know it’s a trap. I know it. So I press my eyelids together until stars burst in the darkness, trying to ground myself.
But I can’t. Because Dom doesn’t stop. He sees me trying to breathe through it, and he just steps deeper into the graveyard.
“Is that why there’s not a single fucking photo of you crying at his funeral, Zed?” Dom’s voice drops into a mocking growl. “When it came down to you or him, you chose yourself, didn’t you? You saved your own ass and left your baby brother there to die.”
“Dominic,” I grate out, my jaw locked so tight my teeth threaten to crack.