“I’m always thinking something.” He sipped his coffee. “Spot me when Torrk is done destroying himself.”
Torrk executed something that might have been a jump, might have been his version of a ninja kick, and landed in a squat. “I’m never done—that’s the secret of the Torrk Method. You have to be constantly training, ready to jump in front of flying objects at any given moment.”
“Flying pucks,” Dakvaar noted dryly, and Jord snorted in response.
“No one would give a flying puck about Torrk.”
“Better than flying ducks,” the goalie quipped.
Bardon rolled his eyes. “You all aren’t doingnearlyenough sweating. Get your asses in gear.”
Torrk saluted from his squat. “Sir, yessir!”
We settled into the rhythm of it after that—the comfortable noise of the gym, weights and breathing and the occasional grunt, Torrk narrating his own exercises to no one in particular.
It was good. It wasnormal, and I’d missed normal more than I’d been willing to admit.
It was Jord who brought up the game, which I should have expected. The kid had no instinct for self-preservation.
“So the Crushers are on our schedule third week of the season,” he said, from the treadmill he’d only climbed on after Bardon had instructed. “First game back against them since—” He caught himself, glanced at me. “Since the playoffs.”
The gym went slightly quieter. Not silent—Dakvaar was still lifting—but quieter.
“Good,” I said.
Jord blinked. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I meant it. I’d been thinking about that game for months, turning it over, carrying it. I was ready to play them again. “We’re better this season.”
“We were good last season,” Bardon said, from the bench. His voice had that careful flatness of someone choosing their words. “One penalty in one game doesn’t change a season.”
“It changed that game.”
“It changed one shift in that game.” Bardon sat up and looked at me directly, which he didn’t do often without reason. “You know how many shifts we played that got us to the second round? You want to count them?”
I didn’t answer.
“I’ll tell you what changed that game,” Torrk said, from somewhere behind me where he was doing something rude with a foam roller. “Their goalie had a save percentage that night that was genuinely offensive.Iwas offended on behalf of goaltenders everywhere. That guy was not normal. I respect it, but it was rude.”
“Offensive, huh?” I tried to make a joke. “Not defensive?”
“I’m just saying—” Torrk grunted. “The Crushers might not have been better than us, but their goalie was on fire, and stopped every shot you made.”
“And in those last two minutes, we weren’t able to takeanyshots,” I pointed out dully. “Because we were a man down.”And why was that? “Because I couldn’t control my reactions.”
Too wild.
As if he had heard the unspoken words, Dakvaar finished his set, and sat up with a grunt. “You’re not any wilder than Bardon was his first two seasons,” he said, in the tone of someone stating a geological fact.
The gym went quiet again, but differently.
Bardon didn’t deny it. He just picked up his coffee.
“I remember,” Jord said carefully, watching Bardon. “The thing with the?—”
“Thething,” Bardon agreed, with a look that closed the subject.
Torrk pointed at me with his debauched foam roller. “The point is, we’ve all got a thing. Yours just happened to be on camera during playoffs. Mine was during an exhibition game that nobody cares about, and Dakvaar’s was?—”
