33. Buzz #2
Just Victor Petrov sitting in our room, saying Lucy’s name like a hand on her skin. Dragging her into a shape that fit his resentment because he could not stand that I had something he wanted, even if he did not understand what it was.
My fingers curled once against my biceps.
I looked at Victor. “Petrov,” I said, and my voice came out quiet enough that the room had to lean toward it. “You don’t get to make Ms. Thomas dirty because you’re mad at me.”
The silence afterward was absolute. Not the normal locker-room hush before someone chirped the tension away. It dropped into the middle of the room, heavy enough that even the pipes behind the showers seemed to go silent.
Victor’s face changed. “I was joking.”
No one laughed.
I kept my eyes on him. My pulse hammered so hard I could feel it in the healing bruise along my ribs.
Old me still wanted to move. Old me wanted to say more.
To make sure Victor understood. To make the room understand.
To turn my anger into something big enough that no one could miss it. But big would have made it about me.
So I stayed where I was.
Cam stood with the kind of captain energy that did not need volume to function. He was not as terrifying as Alois. Not as loud as Coach. But the room shifted when he decided something was done. “That wasn’t a joke,” Cam said.
Victor’s jaw tightened. “Come on.”
“No.” Cam’s voice stayed level. “You’re done.”
Victor scoffed, but it came out thin. “Done with what?”
“This conversation,” Cam snarled. “This room for tonight. And maybe more, depending on how stupid you want to be in the next thirty seconds.”
A small muscle jumped in Victor’s cheek.
Harry leaned back against his stall, arms crossed, all traces of show gone from his face. “I’d choose quiet.”
“Good advice,” Oliver said.
Zee, for once, said nothing.
Marco looked at Victor with open disgust now. That probably landed harder than anything else. Marco could forgive stupidity. He enjoyed it recreationally. But cruelty bored him once it stopped being useful for entertainment.
Victor pushed to his feet. “You’re all acting like I said something serious.”
“You did,” Cam said.
Alois had not moved. He sat in front of his stall with his elbows on his knees, tie still loose, hands linked in front of him. His gaze stayed on Victor with the flat patience of a man watching someone bury himself and deciding the ground was doing fine work without assistance.
Victor saw him last. His mouth twisted. “What, Müller? You got something to say too?”
Alois blinked once. “No,” he said. “I am enjoying watching jealousy destroy your last good sense.”
Victor flushed dark crimson. “I’m not jealous.”
Alois tilted his head a fraction, studying him like this was a disappointing medical scan. “Of the dog, maybe.”
Marco made a low sound into his fist.
Even Cam’s mouth tightened like he was fighting the wrong reaction.
Victor grabbed his bag off the floor. “This is bullshit.”
“No,” Cam said. “This our room.” Cam stepped closer, not in his face, not threatening.
Just enough that leadership became physical.
“You want to be pissed about being scratched? Be pissed. You want to be pissed at your minutes? Talk to Coach like a professional. You want to be pissed at Burns because he’s in the lineup and you’re not?
Handle it on the ice if you get back there.
” His voice hardened. “You do not drag staff into it. You do not talk about women in this organization like that. You do not make this room smaller because you feel small.”
Victor’s throat moved.
There it was.
Fear.
Because this was not a rookie saying something dumb in October and getting roasted until the lesson stuck.
This was a depth player at the end of a hard season, already scratched, already on the wrong side of the lineup, making himself look like a liability in front of the men whose opinions traveled faster than paperwork.
Rooms remembered.
Exit meetings remembered.
Coaches asked captains what they could live with.
Cam glanced toward the door. “Get dressed. You’re coming with me.”
“To Coach?” Victor’s eyes flashed.
“You heard me.” Cam’s face did not change. “Get dressed.”
For a second, I thought Victor might double down. The old instinct in me hoped he would, which told me I was not as evolved as the stillness was making me look.
Then Victor looked around the room.
No one saved him. Not Milo, who had gone quiet near his stall, face closed in a way I could not read. Not Marco. Not Harry. Not Oliver. Not even the younger guys who usually laughed at anything if it kept them from being noticed.
Victor swore under his breath and shoved his gear into his bag with too much force.
The room stayed quiet while he changed.
That might have been the consequence that mattered first.
Not Cam.
Not Coach.
Not contracts or next season or the math of a roster spot already slipping through his fingers.
I sat down because my legs suddenly felt less reliable than they had during the third period.
My hands were steady. The anger was still there, but it had changed shape.
It had not vanished. It was not noble. It had not become clean just because I had kept it contained.
But it was mine now. Not the room’s. Not Lucy’s problem.
Not something I had handed to everyone else and asked them to admire.
I reached for the tape beside my stall and started winding it around two fingers, then unwinding it again.
Oliver’s gaze touched me once. He did not say anything. If he had, I might have cracked around the edges.
Cam waited by the door until Victor had his bag over his shoulder. Then he opened it.
The hallway noise spilled in. Staff voices. Wheels from a cart somewhere near the loading corridor. The distant thud of arena cleanup beginning around us. Talon Arena after a loss always sounded strange, like a party being dismantled in another room.
Victor walked out first. Cam followed. The door swung shut behind them.