13. Tyler
TYLER
Training camp is exactly as miserable as I remember.
Day one starts with conditioning drills that leave my legs screaming, and Coach Wilson barking times while we skate suicides until half the team is ready to puke. I push through, finishing in the top three, and nobody acknowledges it. Not even a nod.
Reaper's watching me the entire time with that cold assessment, like he's waiting for me to fuck up.
The power play drill comes next. I'm on the second unit, positioned at the circle where I should be getting feeds for one-timers. That's my job—shoot the puck. That's what I'm good at.
Reaper's running the first unit, and when Coach rotates us in, I'm open. Wide open. I'm in position, stick on the ice, calling for it.
Reaper looks directly at me.
Then passes it backward to the defenseman.
The play dies. Coach blows the whistle, clearly frustrated, and resets us.
"West is open on that," Coach says, but his voice lacks any real authority. More observation than instruction.
We run it again. I'm in position, stick ready, calling for it.
Reaper skates past me like I don't exist and forces a terrible shot from a bad angle that the goalie stops easily.
"Jesus Christ," someone mutters behind me. Might be Danny. Might be Liam. Hard to tell through helmets.
Coach doesn't say anything this time, just resets the drill for the next group.
By the time we move to scrimmages, I'm wound so tight I'm vibrating with frustration.
The hitting starts immediately.
Reaper catches me with a check along the boards that's harder than it needs to be, his elbow coming up just slightly, catching my ribs. Not enough to draw a penalty, but enough to knock the wind out of me.
"Sorry, West," he says, skating away, but he doesn't sound sorry at all.
The next shift, he cross-checks me in the back when I'm fighting for position in front of the net. The stick comes up sharp between my shoulder blades, and I go down harder than I should, catching myself on my hands.
The whistle doesn't blow.
Coach is watching. I can see him standing behind the bench, but he doesn’t say anything or call it. Just lets it happen.
I get up, skate back to the bench, and nobody says a word.
This is my life. This is what I signed up for when I took more money to come here, when I thought a better contract meant a better situation. I didn't know Reaper would decide I was the enemy the second I walked through the door.
By the time practice ends at noon, I'm drained and furious and so fucking lonely I want to scream.
I shower quickly, get dressed, and leave before anyone tries to talk to me. Not that anyone would. I eat lunch in my car in the parking lot, which consists of a protein bar and a banana. Nothing that requires sitting in the team cafeteria, where I'd be invisible anyway.
I'm halfway through the banana when there's a knock on the passenger window.
Danny. He's holding a sandwich and gesturing at the seat with his chin, eyebrows raised. A question.
I unlock the door.
He drops in, takes a bite of his sandwich, and looks out the windshield like we do this every day. "Heard you showed up to camp with a kid."
"Word travels fast."
"Locker room's worse than a sewing circle." He glances at me sideways. "True, though?"
"Yeah." I finish the banana. "Two months old. Showed up on my doorstep about six weeks ago."
Danny is quiet for a second, chewing. "That's a lot."
"Yeah."
"She good?"
Something loosens slightly in my chest. Nobody on this team has asked me that. "She's good. Yeah."
He nods, like that's settled, and they eat the rest of lunch in silence, and it's the least lonely I've felt at this rink since I got here.
When I finally get home, Harper's awake, and Nora's got her doing tummy time on the living room floor.
"How was it?" Nora asks, looking up at me.
"Fine." I drop my bag by the door and head straight for Harper, needing to hold her, needing something good on this shitty day. "Hey, baby girl. Did you miss me?"
Harper squeals, which I'm taking as a yes.
I pick her up, and she immediately grabs a fistful of my hair, which has gotten longer than it should be.
I laugh despite everything, pressing my face against her cheek, and she makes the small sound she makes when she's pleased with herself.
I keep meaning to cut it and never do. Maybe I'll let her keep using it as a handle until I do.
"Tyler." Nora's voice is careful. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," I lie. "Tired."
She doesn't push, which I appreciate. Just goes back to organizing Harper's toys while I hold my daughter.
The rest of the week follows the same pattern. Practice is brutal, both physically and mentally. Reaper makes a point of showing everyone I'm not worth passing to; Coach does nothing to stop it, and I come home exhausted and angry, trying desperately not to let it affect how I am with Harper.
By Friday night, I'm running on fumes.
Harper goes down at seven thirty. I know I should go to bed early, sleep, rest my body, and prepare for tomorrow's practice. Instead, I find myself wide awake at eleven thirty, staring at my bedroom ceiling, replaying every shitty moment from the week.
Reaper's face when he deliberately skated past me.
The sound of his stick hitting my back.
The way Coach just watched and did nothing.
The locker room where nobody talks to me.
Eating lunch alone in my car every single day.
I give up on sleep around eleven thirty-four and head downstairs, thinking maybe some water will help, maybe moving around will tire me out enough to actually rest.
The kitchen light is already on.
Nora’s standing by the stove, her back to me, waiting for the kettle to boil.
"Can't sleep either?" I ask.
She startles slightly, turning to look at me. "Harper woke me up around eleven. False alarm; she went right back down, but now my brain won't shut off."
"Yeah. I know that feeling."
The kettle clicks off, and she pours hot water into a mug. "Want some tea?"
"Sure."
She makes two cups while I sit at the kitchen table, my body sinking into the chair as if I might never get up again.
Everything hurts. My legs, my back, and my ribs, where Reaper caught me with that elbow on Tuesday.
I took ibuprofen before and after practice, and sat in the ice bath long enough to go numb from the waist down, and none of it touched it.
It's the kind of hurt that's less about the injury and more about the fact that nobody called it.
Nora sets a mug in front of me and sits down across the table. We drink in silence for a minute, the house quiet around us except for the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of old wood settling.
"Training camp's going well, I take it," she says dryly.
I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "Oh yeah. Fantastic. Living the dream."
"What happened?"
I should brush it off. Should say it's fine, I'm fine, everything's fine. But it's midnight, and I'm exhausted, and Nora's looking at me like she wants to know, like my answer matters.
So I tell her.
About Reaper refusing to pass during power play drills, making me look incompetent in front of the coaches.
About the physical hits that are just hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to draw penalties.
About skipping the locker room before games because being in there feels worse than warming up cold.
About Coach watching it all happen and doing absolutely nothing to stop it.
"Today he cross-checked me into the boards so hard I saw stars," I say, my hands tight around the mug. "Right in front of Coach. And Coach just... watched. Didn't blow the whistle, didn't say anything. Just reset the drill like it didn't happen."
"That's bullshit." She leans forward, her hazel eyes intense. "You're telling me that your coach watches your captain physically assault you during practice and does nothing?"
"Coach Wilson is weak. He won't stand up to Reaper because he runs that locker room. If he tried to discipline the captain, he'd lose the whole team, so it’s easier to sacrifice one player than risk the team unity."
"You're not expendable."
"To them I am." I take a sip of tea, barely tasting it. "I'm the guy who got traded in for more money than the captain makes. I'm the threat. And Reaper's making damn sure everyone knows I'm not welcome."
Nora's quiet for a moment, processing. When she speaks again, her voice is calmer but no less firm. "What do the other players do?"
"Nothing. You don’t go against your captain in this league—not openly, anyway. A couple of guys nod at me when no one’s looking. It’s the most popular I’ve been since I got here.”
"That's incredibly lonely."
The words hit harder than I expect. "Yeah. It is."
"Is it getting worse?"
I think about the past week, about the escalating hits, the increasingly obvious refusal to pass to me, and the way Reaper's hostility seems to be building instead of fading.
"Yeah," I admit. "It's getting worse. Like he's testing how far he can push before someone stops him. And nobody's stopping him, so he just keeps pushing."
"What happens if you fight back?"
"Then I'm the problem. Then I'm the guy who can't handle the pressure, who's starting shit with the captain, and ruining team chemistry. I lose either way."
Nora leans back in her chair, her expression thoughtful. She's not offering empty platitudes or telling me it'll get better. She's just listening, asking questions, trying to understand the impossible situation I'm in.
And fuck, that means more than she knows.
"How do you deal with it?" she asks. "Day after day. How do you keep going back?"
"I love hockey." It's the truth, even when it hurts. "I love being on the ice, love the game, love everything about it except the people I'm currently playing with. And if I quit, Reaper wins. If I ask for a trade, I'm the guy who couldn't handle it. I'm stuck."
"You're not stuck. You're surviving."
"Doesn't feel like surviving. Feels like drowning."
The baby monitor crackles softly from the counter, and we both freeze, waiting to see if Harper's waking up or just shifting in her sleep.
Silence. She settles.
"I should go back to bed," Nora says, but she doesn't move.
"Yeah. Me too."
Neither of us moves.
We sit here at the kitchen table, tea cooling in our mugs, the clock on the microwave showing twelve thirty-two in the morning. The house is quiet except for us, this little bubble of honesty in the middle of the night when all the walls come down.
"Thank you," I say finally. "For listening. For not telling me I'm being dramatic or that I should just deal with it as everyone else does."
"You're not being dramatic. What they're doing to you is calculated and cruel."
"It's hockey."
"It's abuse," she says firmly, leaving no room for argument. "Just because it happens on the ice doesn't make it less abusive. You don't deserve that, Tyler. Nobody does."
Tyler. Not West. Tyler.
The sound of my actual name in her voice does something to my chest, makes it tight, warm, and complicated.
The monitor crackles again, louder this time, and Harper's cry follows immediately after.
"I've got her," Nora says, standing quickly, like she's grateful for the interruption.
"No, I'll get her. You need sleep."
"So do you."
We're both standing now, awkward in the kitchen, the moment from before broken by baby cries and reality.
"Goodnight, Red," I say.
She pauses in the doorway, not looking back. "Goodnight."
Then she's gone, heading upstairs to get Harper, and I'm alone in the kitchen with cold tea and the echo of her calling me Tyler instead of West.
I head to my room eventually, but sleep doesn't come easily.
I just lie here in the dark thinking about Nora asking good questions, really listening, offering a perspective that doesn't dismiss what I'm going through.
Thinking about how I forgot what it felt like to have someone actually care about my answer when they ask how I'm doing.
The house feels different with her in it. Less empty. Less like a place that I'm just existing in between practices and games.
But she's also going to leave eventually. That's what nannies do. They take care of kids for a while, and then they move on to the next family. This isn't permanent. She isn't permanent.
And I need to remember that.
Even when it's midnight, and she's listening like nobody's ever listened before.
Even when she calls me Tyler.
Even when the house only feels like home because she's here.
I need to remember this is temporary.
But lying here in the dark, listening to her footsteps as she tends to Harper, all I can think is that temporary feels like the cruelest word in the English language.