I don't have to.
3
THEO
Idon't sleep well.
Dad and I eat breakfast in the same kitchen in the same order we always have. He reads the morning brief on his tablet. I eat a bowl of oatmeal I can't taste. He asks me what time I'm going to the rink. I tell him. He nods. He does not ask me how I'm doing because how I'm doing was not in the day's briefing.
I drive in early because driving in early is what I do. I do four in, seven hold, eight out at every red light between the house and the facility. It doesn't fix anything. It marks time. A breathing exercise is a metronome, not a cure.
I change in a locker room that has gotten louder overnight. The Wolves’ room is three days old to me and I can already feel the shape of it, the stalls that are safe to pass close to and the stalls that aren't, the conversations I'm invited into and the ones I'm not. I'm not invited into any of them. That's fine. That's day three.
“Virgin,” says Jax, cheerful, as I pull my jersey on. “Morning.”
“Morning.”
He waits to see if I'll chirp back. I don't.
“That's gonna stick, by the way,” he says. “I hope you know that. We've been workshopping.”
He taps the side of his head, mock-thoughtful.
“Virgin. Two syllables. Easy in a chirp. Rhymes withsurgeon, which nobody's used yet but I've got plans.”
Grayson's stall is across the room, and I hear the sigh before I hear the line.
“Jax, Jesus, it's seven-thirty. Leave the kid alone.”
“I am welcoming him. This is warmth.”
“This is nothing.”
Jax shrugs, throws a tape roll in my direction, and then actually hands me another one when he sees I didn't catch the first.
“For your shin guards. Welcome, Virgin.”
“Thanks.”
He goes back to his stall. The room moves on. I finish taping. I haven't looked toward Maddox's stall once. I don't know if he's in yet. I have made my peripheral vision into a blind spot shaped like his side of the room and I have been holding the blind spot in place since I parked the car.
I finish dressing. I go out.
Practice is the same drills as yesterday. Dad wants the system on repeat until it's muscle and I have the system in my muscles already, which means I run clean on every rep and get nothing for it. Running clean is the floor. If you want notice, you have to run clean plus something, and I don't have a plus something. I never have.
The chirping rides underneath. Not loud. Never loud enough to be a problem. Just there.
Virgin.Good boy.Daddy's center.Careful with him, Cap, he bruises.
It's background. I carry background well. Dad trained me to carry background well.
Maddox is on my line today, which is either Dad making a point or Dad testing Maddox or testing me. I don't try to work it out. I take my faceoffs, I hit my routes, I play my game. Maddox on my left wing skates a little closer than he has to. I notice it. I don't say anything. I don't look at him.
Third drill in, we're running a rush up the ice against the second unit, and I'm carrying the puck across the blue line with Maddox trailing, which is the system, and I drop him the pass at the trail, which is the system, and I skate into the slot to take the return pass, which is the system, and I never get it, because the trail pass never happens, and what I do get instead is Maddox's shoulder in my chest at full speed against the grain of the play.
I am in the air for half a second. Then I am not.
The ice is very cold against my back and the lights are the too-white lights. My ears ring for a second. I breathe out. I check my body the way I've been trained to check my body, part by part. Fingers first, then wrists, then forearms, then shoulders, then the hinge of my jaw, then hips and knees and ankles. Nothing's broken. Nothing's torn. My helmet rode up and the strap is digging into my cheekbone. I'm just down.
