17. Ryan
RYAN
I was on the ice at six-fifteen.
The facility was still at that hour. The building crew finishing their night maintenance, the Zamboni driver doing a final pass on the far rink, the overhead lights still warming up from their overnight dim.
I had learned the rhythms of this building the way I’d learned every building I’d ever skated in.
The echo of fresh ice, the cold that lived differently indoors than out, the way the boards smelled when nobody had hit them in a while.
I did my edges first. Always. Thirty minutes of footwork before anyone else arrived, before the noise and the drills and the weight of the C on my jersey. Me and the ice and the silence of early morning in an empty arena.
I’d slept well. Better than I had in months, which was notable given the circumstances.
The bar, Tiffany, the drive to Scottsdale, Maren falling asleep against my shoulder with her hand flat on my stomach.
Around three in the morning my back had filed a formal complaint about her couch, and I’d eased her up carefully and carried her to bed without waking her.
She’d made a small sound and tucked herself against me when I settled in beside her, and I’d lain there in the dark of her room with her hair against my chin until I fell back under.
My alarm had gone off at five-thirty. I’d silenced it fast, dressed quietly, pressed my mouth to her hair. She hadn’t stirred. I’d let myself out and driven to the facility in the gray pre-dawn with the windows down and the desert air still cool enough to mean something.
I knew why I’d slept the way I had. I’d been carrying a tightness in my chest for months.
The wanting without the certainty, the feeling without knowing what to do with it, and last night had finally stripped it loose.
Watching her try to hold herself together in that college T-shirt, hearing her say infinitesimally with total seriousness, feeling her press her nose against my shoulder when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.
All of it had landed and settled. I knew what I felt. I’d known for a while.
I made a wide arc around the far end of the ice, leaning into my edges, and let myself have it for a moment. The certainty, the stillness of it. Then the day started.
Griffin stepped onto the ice and the moment was over.
“You’re early,” Griffin said.
“I know.”
Griffin shrugged, snapping his helmet on. “Couldn’t sleep.” He pushed off toward his crease, already shifting gears, and then glanced back. “You look annoyingly well-rested.”
“I am.”
Griffin held my gaze for exactly two seconds, the goalie reading angles, and then let it go. I turned back to my edges and let the ice do what it always did. Simplify everything down to movement and the clean problem of staying upright at speed.
Practice ran two hours and change.
Calloway had us working structure. Zone entries, breakout patterns, the defensive sequences that had been bleeding against left-shooting forwards all month.
The Sidewinders had a habit of going soft on the weak side in our own zone, a product of twelve guys who’d learned twelve different systems on twelve different teams, and Calloway had been grinding on it with the patience he brought to problems he’d fixed before and knew how long they took.
I ran the first line through the breakout until Eli’s positioning clicked and Cole stopped cheating toward the puck. The second part took longer.
“West, you’re drifting again,” I called on the third rep.
“I had the lane.”
“You had the lane and gave up the backcheck.”
“Kovac had it.”
“Kovac had his own man.” I tapped my stick on the ice. “Run it again.”
Cole groaned with his entire body. Full theatrical commitment, the full performance of someone wronged by a cruel universe, and two of the younger defensemen completely lost it. Eli said nothing, which was Eli’s version of laughing.
“Are we running it or are we grieving?” I asked.
We ran it. It clicked. “I’ve been saying for years that I am extremely coachable. Nobody ever listens.”
“Nobody listens because you spent four minutes arguing,” Theo said from the far side of the ice, not looking up from his own footwork.
Cole pointed at him. “I was processing.”
“In French we have a word for that.”
“What word?”
Theo’s expression was serene. “Whining.”
The laughter that rolled through the group was loose and genuine.
Not polite, not performed, the real sound of men who’d been in close enough quarters long enough to find each other funny.
I let it run for a beat before pulling them back into position.
I’d been on teams with more talent than this one.
I hadn’t been on many teams with this quality.
Men who’d started to trust each other, and I was aware enough not to take it for granted.
After the power play drills, I skated past Theo. “You’ve been the best guy on the ice all week.”
Theo glanced at me sharply. “Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not. I’m telling you because it’s true and because Calloway is going to move you back to the power play unit if you keep it up. You should know that’s coming so it doesn’t blindside you.” I kept moving. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I could feel Theo deciding what to do with that behind me, filing it, and that was enough.
During the water break, I drifted to the boards where Eli was standing apart from the group, big and self-contained, not unfriendly. Not unfriendly, just a man who didn’t feel the need to fill silence with noise.
“How’s Iris?” I asked.
“Good.” Eli drank. Wiped his face. “She keeps asking about coming to a game.”
“So bring her.”
Eli looked at me sideways.
“She’s old enough to remember it,” I said.
“Get her a jersey with your number on it, sit her in the family section, let her watch her dad work.” I took a pull from my own bottle.
“She should know what this looks like. You on that ice, in front of seventeen thousand people. That’s her dad. That matters.”
Eli was quiet for a moment. The warmth in him was always there. Kept on a tight leash, visible only if you knew where to look—and I knew. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Maybe.”
It wasn’t a no. With Eli, that was a yes.
The locker room after practice had the loose, easy energy I liked best. Hard work finished, nobody needing to perform anymore.
Cole was doing something elaborate with his stick tape that had two of the younger defensemen in genuine hysterics.
Theo was already in the shower. Griffin was staring at his phone with a focus that had absolutely nothing to do with game film, and I clocked it and kept walking without comment.
I sat at my stall and took my time with my skates.
The team left for Calgary in the morning—last trip out before the holiday break.
Nine days, seven games. Two nights in Calgary, Edmonton, two nights in Vancouver, down to Seattle, San Jose.
The western swing was always brutal, the travel relentless, and this one fell at a moment when the Sidewinders had real momentum we couldn’t afford to bleed out in cramped charter seats and four a.m. wake-up calls.
I was ready for it. The road had always suited me. Everything compressed down to the rink and hotel and the next game, nothing else requiring my attention.
This was the first time I’d sat in a locker room before a road trip and been aware of what I was leaving.
I took my phone out and made the arrangements I’d been turning over since I woke up that morning. The intention was already decided. I’d know what to do next when the time came.
I pocketed my phone and went to shower.
She was in the corridor outside the training room when I came out, clipboard against her hip, talking to Dom about somebody's hamstring in her professional voice. The one she used in this building.
She glanced up as I passed. Nothing on her face. She was good at that. Pretending there was nothing between us. I hated it.
I stopped anyway.
"Callahan."
"Lindqvist." Still the professional voice. Dom was two feet away.
Dom asked her about the afternoon session and went back into the training room, and for about four seconds there was nobody in the hallway but us.
I could have said any number of things. Can I see you tonight? Don't let anyone talk you into staying late. Or, I could have said nothing at all, which was the arrangement.
"Jag saknar dig redan," I said.
She blinked. "What?"
"Nothing." I kept walking.
I made it about six steps before it sounded like she took her phone out of her pocket, and I did not turn around, but I smiled the whole way to my truck.
She texted me at three forty-seven.
Maren: Don’t make plans tonight. Come here instead? I have a surprise
Ryan: What kind of surprise
Maren: The cooking kind. I make exactly three things well and tonight you’re getting one of them
Ryan: I’ll bring wine
Maren: Please bring something red
Ryan: Anything for you
Maren: Flattery will get you everywhere
I was grinning at my phone in the parking lot like I was twenty-two.
I was thirty-one years old and a professional athlete and a team captain and I was sitting in a parking lot grinning at a text message, and I was completely unbothered by it.
I put the car in gear before Cole could walk out and witness it.
She opened the door and I could smell garlic and bacon from the front walkway. After a brief kiss, I watched her walk back to the stove, okay, I watched her ass as she walked back to the stove, possibly drooling a little bit.
She was standing there in denim cutoffs and a white tank top, hair up in that loose knot she did without seeming to think about it, a dish towel slung over one shoulder.
The cutoffs ended just below her ass and I stood in the doorway for a solid three seconds before I remembered I had a functioning brain.
“Stop looking at me like that and open the wine,” she said without turning back around, a laugh in her voice.