Fault Lines
Jason
The morning won’t sit still.The apartment hums like a fridge about to kick on and never does. I make coffee, forget it, find it by the sink with a skin on top that smells like burnt almonds. I drink it anyway. It’s cold by the second swallow.
My wrist twinges under the tape when I turn the mug. I flex, rotate—soft grain-of-rice grind where scar tissue lives. Riley would’ve rewound the anchor, floated the padding, told me to stop arguing with physics.You’ll feel pressure, then release.Today the echo lands wrong, like a song played in the wrong room.
HerIt’s nothingkeeps looping. Not the way she saysI’m fineto a rookie who wants attention. The kind of nothing that feels like a dam. I watch the bedroom door like an idiot, as if it might confess what it’s keeping.
Phone on the counter, face down. I flip it, flip it back, lose a minute, flip it again. The lock screen throws my grainy face at me. I hit call before I can talk myself out of it and lean against the counter while it rings.
“Hey.” Her voice lands like touching a hot stove: quick, soft, pulled back fast. Zippers, a door catch, sneakers on tile. “I’m on my way in.”
“Riley.” I keep it easy because panic makes her shut the door. “About last night?—”
A beat of breath. “Later,” she says, gentler than the word deserves. “I promise.”
I want to believe her. A triple-tone needles through the line—pager, emergency channel. She inhales. “I have to—” The sentence frays. “Later,” she repeats, softer, and the line goes dead.
I keep the phone to my ear like stubbornness can summon her back. It can’t. The promise feels like a rope tossed from a moving car. I set the phone down like it might bruise and stare at the winter city pressed flat against the glass.
The tape itches. I strip it with my teeth, peel back layers until the skin flashes pink and mean. I retape one-handed because I hate being handled when my head’s like this. It’s sloppier; the distal anchor bites. Good. Pain I can digest. Hoodie, cap, keys; the coffee cools to a skin while I’m locking the door.
The elevator is a metal confession booth that smells like someone else’s cologne and a fight I didn’t win. Numbers blink. A small voice in my head keeps counting what I can’t name: one missed call, two words, five letters—later.
Outside is all salt and puddles and the city’s bad mood. Practice in an hour. PR will have a plan for my mouth. I’ll ruin it or I won’t. Either way, the ground feels shifted and I’m the only one who noticed.
Traffic stacks like bad Tetris. Wipers thump lazy ellipses across a salted windshield. At the first red, I call her again because restraint didn’t wake up with me. Voicemail. The recording is older than we are now—too bright. I don’t leave amessage. Anything I say will sound like a demand in a room that already wants too much from her.
Text instead:With you. Breathe.It looks thin, a paper umbrella in a storm. I add:Later works.The moment I hit send I hate it for pretending time is ours to set.
A siren needles behind me; I make room. Heart kicks for reasons that aren’t traffic. I picture her bent over a table, pager tucked to her hip like a second pulse, the way she tunes the world out until there’s only the body in front of her and the fix. Holy to watch. A door I don’t follow her through.
The facility lot is the same oil stains and winter air that bites the inside of your nose. I kill the engine and sit with the key in my hand longer than necessary, herLater, I promisericocheting around the cab like a puck I can’t clear. Promises are only as good as the ice they’re laid on. Ours feels thin.
Buzz. Not her—Julia:Heads up: media scrum pre-ice. Keep it vanilla. We’ll reset narrative this afternoon.A second:Owner on site.
Vanilla makes my teeth itch. I rub my taped wrist where the anchor bites and welcome it. Pain is a fence I don’t mind leaning on. I text back:Copy on scrum.I don’t addvanilla.
Inside, the hallway smells like detergent and damp gear. Sharpeners sing their high, anxious note. Kitson shoulders through with a coffee balanced on a tape roll. “You good?” he asks, half-grin offering me a chance to lie.
“Define good,” I say, and bump his cup with mine. It sloshes, he curses; for three seconds normal exists and I cling to it like center of gravity.
PR has the scrum set by the logo wall—four cameras, two mic flags I recognize, one handler clutching a list like a weapon. He clocks me and pastes on a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Two minutes, Maddox. Hockey only.”
“Always,” I say, and hear the lie plain as glass. He hears it too; his smile tightens.
I check my phone once more before the lights. Nothing from her. No dots. Nolaterturning into now. Do Not Disturb on. Phone deep in the pocket so the silence can’t skitter out and embarrass us both.
Red lights snap on like targets. The handler raises two fingers—two questions—and reporters volley anyway.
“Last night’s fight—message or loss of control?”
“Your thoughts on Code Section Twelve?—”
“Do you deny a relationship with?—”
I take the cleanest blade. “We won because our systems were good,” I say. “Discipline in the neutral zone, commitment on the kill. That’s the story on the ice.”
