Chapter 28
TY
The second I step onto the ice, I know Campbell lied. This is not a captain’s skate. He’s arranged a full-blown summer pickup game disguised as “getting some reps in.”
Guys are already circling through warmups when I hop over the boards at the Dominion Ice Center’s development rink, the sharp scrape of blades and pop-pop-pop of pucks against sticks echoing off the glass.
Jerseys from half a dozen organizations move through the flow—Dominion practice gear mixed with AHL socks, old college hoodies, NHL shells, and whatever random equipment bag somebody dug out of storage at six in the morning.
I even recognize a couple guys from the Renegades here, the AHL team that feeds into our system.
Apparently Campbell invited everyone.
I look around and find Owen and Liam stretching near center ice while two defensemen from the Renegades run a passing drill along the far boards. Near the blue line, a former Olympic player I grew up watching snaps a puck bar-down—casually—like this is no different than a Tuesday beer league skate.
Which, to be fair, for guys at this level?
It probably isn’t. That’s the thing about hockey players in the offseason.
Everybody knows somebody. A teammate’s cousin is in town training.
Someone’s old junior linemate got traded nearby.
A goalie coach brings two prospects. A retired guy shows up because he misses the room.
By the time skates hit the ice, the level somehow always ends up absurd.
And terrifyingly fast.
The puck movement is already crisp. Heads up. Tape-to-tape. No one coasting. No one half-assing it despite the fact this is technically voluntary.
Summer pickup hockey at our level always turns into the same thing eventually. Usually one really good, meaty competition.
Owen glides past me, grinning beneath his visor. “You made it.”
Behind him, Campbell blows a whistle unnecessarily loud for a non-coached skate.
“McCade,” he yells, pointing to his jersey shell. “You taking white or dark?”
I look around at the thirty-ish guys scattered across the ice and laugh under my breath.
“You invited an entire league.”
Campbell shrugs like this is completely reasonable. “Figured more bodies would make it fun.”
Fun. Right. Nothing says fun like getting accidentally reverse-hit into the boards by a six-foot-three winger playing in the Swedish league because he’s “staying in shape.”
And that guy? He’s wearing a dark shell, so you can bet I’ll take the dark shell too and be on his team.
Not even two shifts later, the game has fully devolved into chaos, highlighted when Sawyer misses a pass on purpose. I know he does because he looks directly at me while the puck slides between his skates and straight into my lane.
“Ty!” Campbell yells. “Step up!”
I already am. I catch the puck cleanly near the blue line and pivot hard as one of the Elite guys charges toward me.
The rink is loud in that chaotic offseason way—music thumping overhead, benches chirping nonstop, guys laughing between shifts like this isn’t somehow becoming aggressively competitive.
The guy coming at me reaches with his stick, but it’s too late. I pull the puck wide, cut across the line, and send it low toward the net through traffic. Not trying to score, but trying to create chaos––and it works instantly.
Bodies crash the crease. Somebody swears. Campbell hacks at the rebound like his life depends on it.
The puck pops loose again. Sawyer dives in from the side and snaps it past the goalie on the glove side. Both benches explode.
Sawyer throws his arms up like he just scored an overtime winner in the playoffs instead of during an unofficial summer skate in suburban Virginia.
“I’m elite!” he yells.
“You’re offside half the time!” someone shoots back.
Sawyer shrugs and does a little dance on the ice. He’s our clown on the team, that’s for sure. “Creativity shouldn’t be punished!”
I laugh despite myself as we circle back toward center ice. Sweat drips down the back of my neck under my helmet. My lungs burn pleasantly. The ice cuts sharp beneath my skates as I glide backward into position again, watching the next rush develop before it fully forms.
We’re back at it, and in no time, a winger cuts middle.
I angle toward him automatically, forcing him outside while Campbell backchecks through the center lane like a man personally offended by his defense breaking down.
“Middle!” Sawyer yells.
“I see him.”
The puck carrier tries to split us anyway. Bold choice.
I step into him cleanly along the boards, shoulder to chest, and the puck jars loose hard enough for both benches to erupt.
“OHHHH!”
“Little early for murder, McCade!”
“He’ll live,” I mutter.
Sawyer grabs the loose puck and immediately takes off the other direction.
“GO, GO, GO!”
I push hard to join the rush, legs burning now as we fly through neutral ice. Campbell jumps over the boards mid-change and somehow still enters the play screaming for the puck.
“I’m open!”
Sawyer cuts wide right, while Campbell drives center. I trail high as the defender bites toward Sawyer for half a second and that’s enough.
The pass comes back to me near the top of the circle.
Time slows.
I fake the shot once.
The goalie drops early…wrong move.
I snap the puck cross-ice to Campbell instead. Wide open net.
Goal.
Campbell points at me immediately as he skates by. “THAT’S hockey IQ!”
The Oarhouse is busy in that midday, Saturday weekend kind of way. Glasses clink behind the bar. Somebody misses a dart throw near the back and gets heckled immediately for it. The smell of fries, beer, and old wood settles into the walls like it’s been there for decades.
Liam sits next to me at the bar, halfway through demolishing a burger the size of his head.
“I’m glad you came today,” he says casually before taking another bite.
I glance up from my beer. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “You’ve been through a lot, and I know you need time to process but, you need to have fun too.”
Something in my chest eases a little at that. Not because of what he says, but because he leaves it there.
That’s what I like about Liam. He knows I’ve been in a place this week—my brain tangled up in too much noise, too many feelings, too much everything—and instead of cornering me with questions, he lets me exist until I’m ready to talk.
It’s rare, and I don’t think he even realizes how much it matters.
“Me too,” I admit. There’s a beat before I add, “Emma actually made me call my therapist the other day.”
Liam glances up from his fries. “Yeah? How’d that go?”
“Better than I expected.” I adjust myself on my barstool a little. “Dr. Hale explained this whole thing to me about internal and external sensory processors.”
Liam blinks. “I’m sorry, what?”
A small laugh slips out. “Okay, so basically some people process stress and stimulation differently. Noise, touch, movement, routines, all of it. She said sometimes your nervous system gets so used to operating one way that you stop noticing how much it’s affecting you.”
Liam nods slowly, following. “I can one hundred percent understand that.”
“She introduced me to behavior plans and sensory diets too,” I continue. “A sensory diet is not dieting-dieting. More like intentionally giving your brain and body the kinds of input that help regulate you.”
“Like routines?” Liam offers.
“That’s it,” I nod. “And movement. Quiet. Certain textures. Grounding stuff, like the fidget ring I have. Whatever helps your system feel balanced instead of overloaded.”
“And what are behavior plans?” Liam asks, flipping his hand in the air to punctuate each word.
“Basically figuring out what helps before things get bad. Recognizing patterns and having tools already in place instead of waiting until you’re completely overwhelmed.”
“Huh.” He leans back a little. “Actually…that makes a lot of sense.”
“Yeah.” I glance down at my hands. “But habituation was another new term for me, and honestly, that was the one where the penny kind of dropped.”
Liam tilts his head. “How so?”
“Dr. Hale explained it like…your brain gets used to whatever environment you keep putting it in.” I shrug lightly. “So if you spend enough time operating with constant noise, pressure, and adrenaline, eventually your system starts treating that like your baseline.”
“And that’s what was happening to you, huh?” Liam asks.
“Yep. Everything was stacking up so gradually I didn’t even realize how overloaded I was getting anymore.
” I rub my thumb against the edge of the basket absentmindedly.
“The crowds, the noise, the pressure, constantly needing to track everything happening around me…” I shake my head once.
“I stopped noticing I was drowning in it because my brain had gotten so used to carrying it.”
“Hockey kinda trains us for that, though,” Liam says, gesturing vaguely with a fry. “You get so used to functioning in chaos that when things get quiet…”
“You don’t really know what to do with yourself.”
“Exactly.”
For a second neither of us says anything, and weirdly, it doesn’t feel awkward. It just feels good to say it out loud to someone who gets it. A friend who gets me.
Liam nods once like that settles it, then points his fries at me. “I’m hitting the bathroom before Owen inevitably finds us. He texted a few minutes ago to say he was almost here.”
He hops off the stool and disappears toward the back hallway just as the song overhead changes to “Midnight Rain” by Taylor Swift.
The song wraps around the low buzz of conversation inside the bar, and I barely notice it at first until my attention catches on the display screen queue mounted near the wall beside the bar. A few moments later, a new song rolls in. “Somewhere Only We Know” begins and my head lifts automatically.
Something about it tugs at me. Not enough to fully catch hold yet, but enough that I find myself looking up at the screen to study the queue again.
“You know what Campbell needs?” Liam gives me a jump-scare, interrupting my thoughts as he settles back onto the barstool beside me. “A hobby that doesn’t involve making us skate suicides.”
“He’s being a captain.”
“I think he’s trying to wear us down with emotional warfare.”
Liam keeps going, listing out all the reasons Campbell needs to rethink how we do practice, and I let my attention drift back toward the queue and the music playing around us again.
A new song kicks in. “Again” by Lenny Kravitz. The opening notes hit me instantly and my stomach oddly seizes and twists.
Slowly, I look back toward the screen, at the songs.
“Electric Love”.
“Talk to Me”.
My pulse kicks hard against my ribs when I look at the account name and recognize who it is immediately. I knew it.
Jewelsy.
Beside me, the bartender pauses while drying off a glass, catching me staring.
“You like the playlist?” he asks with a grin. “Been kinda invested in it myself this week.”
That pulls my attention fully toward him. “What do you mean?”
He hooks the towel over his shoulder and nods toward the touchscreen. “This woman’s been coming in every day around lunch. Sits at the end of the bar, orders her crabcake sandwich, and barely makes conversation.” He shrugs. “But every single time, she queues up basically the same songs.”
A strange pressure builds inside my chest. “Jewelsy, right?”
“That’s her. The jewelry designer down the street.” He points vaguely toward the window. “Owns a shop nearby. Dark-ish hair. Pretty smile.”
My Vivian.
The bartender shrugs. “Honestly, I figured she was going through something. The songs are a little…” He waves a hand. “Specific.”
Liam grabs his phone now. “All this talk about the playlist, I feel like I should add a song.”
He busies himself adding to the queue, while I let my eyes lift back toward it. It’s not random, it’s not someone coming in to hear their favorite songs over and over.
She’s been leaving me a message.