Page 3 of The Reckless Rookie

It comes out.

I go at him. Gloves on, but I go straight at the back of that jersey, and the entire building feels it a half-beat before I reach him.

And there’s an arm across my chest. Hard.

Ryan.

“No. Not him. Not now.” His cage against mine. “Look at me. We’re down two. You go, we’re down two and a man. Look at me.”

There’s a thing I can’t make anybody understand who hasn’t stood where I’m standing with the front coming in. I want to go through him. For one bad second my captain is just the last thing between me and the only thing I want, and I measure him for it.

Then his voice, and every voice like it that’s been in my ear since I was a kid, pulls me back, and I let him walk me off, and I go to the bench with my hands shaking inside my gloves.

I sit. The boards are cold against the back of my neck. Down the bench somebody’s telling me good, that’s smart, and it lands on me like praise for a dog that didn’t bite. My hands won’t quit. I press them flat on my thighs and hold them there until they do.

Twice. Hit me twice, bored both times, and I’m the one who gets walked off his own ice.

Six says something to his bench. They laugh.

I don’t catch the words. I caught the laugh.

We lost 2–0.

The horn’s final, flat note, the most terrible sound in the building, jolts me, and I sit on the bench a beat too long, gazing at the ice we couldn’t figure out. Ryan stops on his way past and taps his glove against the back of my helmet, says something I don’t hear, and he knows.

Whatever I’m carrying out of here, Ryan knows I’m carrying it. Because reading the room is his whole gift, the way it’s Sully’s, and the two of them have been reading me all night and coming up with the same answer.

Let it go, kid.

I nod as if I had.

Second lie of the night, and the bigger one.

Up in that same suite off the north end, most of the glass has emptied out. Left behind is a family gathering their coats, performing the slow shuffle of patrons ready for home. The still woman’s among them, not looking at the ice anymore, already somewhere else in her head.

She never looked at me. Whatever held her that still all night, it wasn’t the kid on the small side of every scrum.

Then they’re moving, and they’re gone, and I think nothing of it.

I’ve got no idea that before long I’ll be shoveling out that woman’s barn.

Chapter two

Finn

The showers are empty by the time I get out of the ice bath, which is how I like it.

You lose 2–0 at home and the room clears fast. Nobody wants to sit in it. Guys dress quick and say the small useless things, we’ll get them Thursday, long season, and they’re gone, out to whatever normal looks like, and I’m the last one at my stall because I’ve got nowhere I’m in a hurry to be.

Maren already read me the riot act about the knee. Ice tonight. Tell her tomorrow if it climbs. Don’t be a hero.

“I’m never a hero,” I told her.

“That’s the problem,” she said and left.

I dress slow. The knee’s stiff and loud and I test it lacing my boots. Bend, straight, weight. Holds. It’ll hurt worse tomorrow. Everything hurts worse tomorrow. That’s the job.

The building’s near dark when I come up the tunnel. Cleaning crew running blowers over the seats. Somebody’s already stripped the ice of everything but the logos. Two hours ago this place had eighteen thousand people screaming, and now it’s a man with a leaf blower and me.