She turns to the sink, grabbing the sponge like she needs something to do with her hands. The sound of scrubbing fills the silence between us.
I reach for my gym bag, desperate for motion. “I’ve got practice.”
“Of course you do.”
I wait for her to look at me, but she doesn’t. Her shoulders stay squared, rigid, like the only thing keeping her upright is defiance.
The words sit heavy in my throat, useless and sharp. I want to apologize, to say something that makes it less awful—but the truth is, I don’t trust myself to speak without wanting to do it again.
So I leave.
The door closes behind me with a soft click. It sounds like the end of something we haven’t even started.
The locker room hums with noise when I get there—music pounding, banter flying, tape snapping around sticks. Normally, it’s white noise, a rhythm that grounds me. Today, it grates. Every sound feels too loud, every light too bright.
I drop my bag. The crash echoes louder than it should, a sharp reminder of the chaos I can’t seem to outrun—on the ice or off it. I pull off my jacket, and focus on routine. Tape the stick. Lace the skates. Keep moving. Don’t think about the taste of lemon or the way her breath hitched against my mouth.
Across the room, Trent’s scrolling his phone, smirking. “Hey, Voss. You see this?”
I don’t look up. “Busy.”
“Come on, man,” he insists, turning his screen toward me. “You made the morning gossip feed.”
The headline glows in bold letters:Puck Whisperer Exclusive: Penthouse Problems—Surge Captain Leo Voss Displaced After Luxury Flood.
The photo underneath is worse. A shot of my building, a blur of contractors and water damage, and me walking out with a duffel. The caption speculates where I’m staying, a few guesses way too close for comfort.
My jaw locks. “Who leaked this?”
Trent shrugs. “Beats me. Probably some maintenance guy or your doorman. You good?”
“Fine,” I lie, scrolling through the comments anyway. The tone’s predictable—half jokes about “roughing it,” half speculation about distractions off the ice.
The last one hits harder than it should:Maybe he’s shacking up with someone. Explains the silence lately.
I lock my phone before I can throw it.
Noise swells around me again—laughter, shouting, the slam of lockers—but all I hear is the echo of that word: distraction.
I can’t afford to be one. Not for the team, not for myself. And especially not for her.
Coach strides in, whistle around his neck. “Alright, boys, let’s tighten it up today. We’ve got Locke’s crew next week, and they’re hungry.”
Grayson Locke. The name lands like a weight on my chest, dragging up flashes of locker room taunts and the bitter taste of every loss he ever gloated over. And now, somehow, Sage is tangled in the same orbit.
I pull on my gloves, flexing my hands until the leather creaks. Locke thrives on noise—feeds off it, weaponizes it. He’s already circling.
When practice starts, I throw myself into the drills. Harder turns, faster sprints, sharper shots. I push until my lungs burn and the only thing left in my head is the sound of my skates on the ice.
It almost works.
Until the end of scrimmage, when the locker-room TV kicks on. Sports panel, mid-laugh. And then his face.
Grayson Locke, smug as ever, leaning toward the mic. “Some teams are… rebuilding chemistry,” he says, smirking. “Should be light work.”
The panel laughs. Everyone knows who he means.
My stick snaps clean in my grip with a sharp, splintering crack that cuts through the noise like a gunshot.
