Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Pickle
My edges had never felt this clean.
I carved a crossover around center ice, and my body did the thing it was supposed to do—weight transfer smooth, knee bend automatic, blade angle finding the ice like it had been waiting for me all morning. No static. No second-guessing. Pure motion.
I grinned so hard my cheeks ached.
Sent a tape-to-tape pass to Desrosiers. He caught it without looking, which meant I'd put it exactly where his stick already was. Shot on goal—top corner, the satisfying thwack of rubber on crossbar that said almost perfect, do it again. I did it again. This time it went in.
The rink hummed with pregame electricity. Stands were filling up. Early in the season—fresh chances, fresh everything.
Usually, my warm-ups came with noise—the endless internal sportscaster narrating my failures before they happened, including a checklist of things I'd probably screw up.
Today, the broadcast was off. Someone had found the mute button on my brain, and all that was left was the scrape of blades, the cold bite of rink air, and the satisfying burn in my thighs as I pushed harder.
I knew why.
And I wasn't going to think about it, because if I thought about it, I'd concentrate on his mouth and his hands and the way he'd said goodnight, Pickle, and then I'd skate directly into the boards.
So I didn't think about it.
I skated.
"Piatkowski." Desrosiers materialized beside me, matching my stride. "You trying out for the Olympics? Dial it back."
"Can't dial back greatness, Des. It's a volume knob, not a light switch."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Greatness usually doesn't."
He peeled off, muttering something in French that was probably unflattering. I didn't care. My legs felt like they belonged to someone who knew what they were doing, and that person was currently wearing my body like a well-fitted suit.
Evan caught my eye from across the ice. He had his analyzing face on—the one that meant he was filing information for later.
I waved at him. He did not wave back.
Suspicious, his expression said.
I skated a figure eight just to prove I could.
And then Hog glided past.
He didn't stop. Didn't even slow down. Just drifted through my airspace, close enough that I caught the pine-scented soap smell of him.
He said, quietly, almost conversationally: "Someone got kissed."
My left skate caught my right ankle. I stumbled, flailed, and nearly ate ice in front of three hundred early-arriving fans and one very smug enforcer.
"What—I didn't—that's not—"
Hog was already ten feet away, skating backward now, watching me with the serene expression of a man who had never once in his life been surprised by anything.
"Warm-ups look good," he said. "Keep it up."
I stood there, heart hammering, face burning, brain running through every possible explanation for how Hog could possibly know about—
He was right.
He was completely, annoyingly right, and the worst part was I didn't even care.
I could have been spiraling about discretion and professionalism and the fact that Adrian was literally here to film me being a person, and I'd gone and kissed him in a rental car like some kind of hockey-playing romance novel hero.
I didn't worry about any of that. I smiled. I couldn't stop smiling.
Hog knew, and instead of warning me off or threatening Adrian with bodily harm, he'd accepted it. Like it was a fact. Like it was fine.
Maybe it was fine.
Coach's whistle blasted across the rink. I snapped back into drill formation, still grinning, buzzing, and refusing to look at the tunnel where Adrian was probably setting up his camera.
The ice was perfect beneath my blades. I let myself fly.
When we returned to the locker room, it smelled like industrial disinfectant, tape adhesive, and whatever body spray Kowalczyk had started using that made him smell like a department store exploded.
I dropped onto my bench and reached for my stick tape. My knee bounced before I started wrapping.
A shadow fell across my lap.
I looked up.
Jake stood approximately six inches from my face, staring at me with the intensity of a man trying to read microfilm through someone else's skull.
"Can I help you?"
He didn't answer. Just kept staring. Then, his eyes narrowed.
"Your face is doing a thing," he said.
"My face is always doing things. It's a face. That's its job."
"Not this thing." He crouched down to eye level, which put him directly in my personal space. I leaned back. He leaned forward. "This is a specific thing. I've seen this thing before."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're glowing."
"I'm sweating. It's warm in here."
"You're glowing, and your knee is bouncing." Jake's face split into a grin that meant nothing good for me. "Your face never does that thing unless there's a crush situation."
My tape job went crooked. I ripped it off and started over.
"There's no crush situation."
"You sure there's not a crush situation?"
"I just said—"
"Because if there's a crush situation, I need to know about it.
Team morale. Locker room dynamics. My personal entertainment.
" Jake fed off my discomfort like some kind of chaos vampire.
"Is it the camera guy? It's the camera guy, isn't it?
Because he's like thirty-five and here to film you, which is—"
"He's thirty-four."
The words were out before I could catch them.
Jake froze.
The entire locker room held its breath.
"He's thirty-four," Jake repeated slowly. "You know his exact age."
"That's not—I just—"
"OH MY GOD, YOU KNOW HIS EXACT AGE."
"Keep your voice down—"
"PICKLE KNOWS THE DOCUMENTARY GUY'S EXACT AGE, WHICH MEANS PICKLE HAS BEEN THINKING ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY GUY ENOUGH TO LEARN HIS EXACT AGE—"
I shoved him. He staggered back, laughing, and I shoved him again for good measure.
"It's not a big deal," I said, too loudly. "People learn ages. It's called conversation. Adults do it."
"Adults also don't turn the color of a tomato when someone mentions their crush's name."
"I'm not—" I touched my face. It was, in fact, very warm. "Shut up."
Jake dropped onto the bench beside me, still grinning, and for a second I thought that was it—interrogation over, back to regularly scheduled chaos.
Then his grin faded.
Not all the way. Just enough that I noticed.
"Hey." His voice dropped. Lower. Quieter. The voice he used when he was about to say something that mattered. "Just—be careful, yeah?"
I looked at him.
"He's gonna leave eventually," Jake said. "That's his job. He shows up, films the small-town hockey story, and then he goes back to wherever guys like him go back to. Chicago, probably. Somewhere with better coffee and fewer moose."
The tape felt too tight in my hands. I loosened my grip.
"I know that."
"Do you?" Jake's eyes searched my face. "Because I've seen you get attached to things, Pickle. You get attached fast, and you get attached hard, and then when the thing goes away—"
"I know."
He waited, but I didn't have anything else to say. His warning settled into my chest like cold water.
He's gonna leave eventually.
I knew that. Of course, I knew that. Adrian had told me himself—three days, maybe five. Plus two more days. Temporary. Everything about him was temporary.
Still, last night in that car, with the windows fogged and his hand on my neck, it hadn't felt temporary.
It had felt like the start of something.
"I'm fine," I said. Smiled. Made it look real. "Seriously, Jake. It's nothing. Just—warm-up high. Early-season energy. You know how I get."
"Okay," he said. He didn't sound convinced.
Coach's voice echoed from the hallway—five minutes to puck drop.
I finished taping my stick. The wrapping was uneven, slightly crooked, but I didn't fix it. Fixing it would mean admitting something was wrong.
Nothing was wrong.
Adrian was temporary. I was temporary. Everything was temporary, if you thought about it hard enough, and I was very good at not thinking about things.
I stood, grabbed my helmet, and headed for the tunnel.
Behind me, Jake said nothing.
***
First shift, I flew.
The puck dropped, and my legs remembered what they were for—fast breaks and sharp cuts. I won a board battle against a guy who had thirty pounds on me. Next, I threaded a pass through two defenders. I got back on the back check so fast that I surprised Evan.
The crowd was loud, the kind of noise that got into your blood and made everything feel possible. Storm jerseys everywhere, a sea of blue and white, and somewhere in the building, Adrian was filming, but I wasn't thinking about that.
I was thinking about hockey. Only hockey. The puck and the ice and the next shift and nothing else.
In the third period, I noticed Heath.
He was on the bench three spots down, helmet on, mouthguard clamped between his teeth like he was trying to bite through it. Too stiff, I thought.
His shoulders were practically at his ears. Every muscle locked. The posture of a guy who was so terrified of making a mistake that he'd forgotten how to move.
I knew that posture. I'd worn it myself, back when the Storm felt like someone else's team and I was only borrowing a jersey until they figured out I didn't belong.
Coach called the line change. Heath stood like he was walking to his own execution.
"Breathe," I said as he passed.
He didn't hear me. Or if he did, he couldn't process it. He was already climbing over the boards, already on the ice, already somewhere inside his own head where my voice couldn't reach.
The play developed fast.
Their center carried the puck through the neutral zone—smooth stride and good hands. Heath was supposed to cover the weak side, watching the winger, and staying between his man and the net.
Instead, he watched the puck.
The center's head came up. He looked at Heath and found the gap. Found the opportunity.
The pass went wide.
Heath turned to follow it.
The winger—two hundred and ten pounds of welcome-to-the-league—lined him up from the blind side.