“I didn't say anything.”
“You were going to.”
I sit down across from him. Drop my bag.
“Fine.”
I sit. I pull my tape. I lace.
Paul's in the office at the end of the hall. I can see his silhouette through the frosted glass. He likely came in twenty minutes ago and hasn't come out. That's a pregame ritual of his. Film, silence, the same two slides he always pulls up, whatever mantra he whispers at himself before walking a group of grown men into a building. I have no respect for any of it and tonight that is going to show.
Theo comes in on the far side of the room at 7:22. He doesn't look at me. He moves like someone balancing a glass of water on his head. I watch him through my lashes while I tape my shin. His neck is flushed red the second he sees me and then it isn't, because he's practiced, because his father has been training the flush out of him since he was six. But I caught it. One second of pink under the jaw.
I lace my other skate.
We don't speak in the tunnel.
First period, first shift, I can tell the other team came to play ugly.
Blackford. Bottom-of-the-division bullshit. Their coach is a retired defenseman who believes in two-handed slashes and a lot of talking. Their left winger, big guy, number 44, cross-checks Phoenix in the small of the back thirty seconds in and the ref doesn't call it. Phoenix goes down, gets back up, doesn't look at the ref because Phoenix doesn't bitch.
I look at the ref. I smile at him. I want him to remember my teeth.
Second shift. Number 44 takes a run at our rookie d-man and nearly puts his head through the glass.
No call.
Third shift. I'm on.
I go find him.
I don't have to look hard. A guy built like that in a rink this size is impossible to lose. He's parked at the top of the circle waiting for a pass and I come in from his blind side and take him clean off the puck with a shoulder and two inches of the top of my stick tucked up exactly where the ref can't see. He goes into the boards. He comes up with blood in his mouth. I skate past him, very slow, and I say the word that's going to be in his head for the rest of his career every time he thinks about playing a Frosthaven game.
He comes at me. Of course he does. I let him get a glove in my face before I drop mine.
The ref whistles so fast I almost laugh.
Four and four.
From the penalty box I watch Paul watch me. He doesn't move his head. He doesn't move anything. He already knows this game is gone. He already knows what I'm going to do next.
I do it.
Second period. Power play. Fourteen seconds left on a penalty I drew by running at 44 one more time. I'm supposed to set up at the blue line and feed Phoenix on the half-wall and let the system work.
I skate off the line.
I cut across the slot with the puck on my backhand, take the defender's stick out with my shin (you can do it if you're willing to go to the box for it), and I put the puck top-shelf over the goalie's blocker from an angle that was not supposed to exist.
Arena goes.
I don't celebrate. I skate back to the bench looking at Paul.
Paul doesn't look at me.
He doesn't have to.
“Creed.”
