Caldwell nodded. His eyes tracked the players, and then when the whistle blew and the next line started, he faced me again. “I’m not surprised. You’re one of the best in the League on the faceoff dot.”
The little rush of giddiness that went through me almost had me groaning with embarrassment.
Comeon, Peyton. Can we not fanboy Avery Caldwell right to his face?
“Oh. Uh.” I laughed self-consciously. “Does, um…” I nodded toward our coach. “Does Coach Tabakov have wingers practice faceoffs too? Like, regularly?”
Caldwell nodded. To my surprise, a faint blushdarkened his already flushed cheeks. “I’m, um… I’m not very good at them. So, you know, try not to get kicked out of the circle?”
I chuckled. “We can practice them, if you want.”
He met my gaze again, and oh God, those hazel eyes were gorgeous. I’d always known they were—not that I’d ogled him in magazines or social media posts or anything—but up close? Wow.
Fortunately, my brain stopped short-circuiting in time to catch him ask, “Really?”
“Why not?” I smirked. “I do get kicked out of them sometimes, so…”
The way he laughed did things to my head that I did not want to think about right then.
“I mean, I won’t say no,” he said. “Maybe after camp. When we settle into practice a bit more.”
I nodded. “Deal.”
A moment later, it was our turn to run through the drill again, so that was the end of the conversation. Still, it had gone better than I’d anticipated, so I couldn’t complain.
I also couldn’t quite work up the courage to strike up another one. Even when we were standing together in between drills, I wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t standoffish or giving off any signals that I shouldn’t talk to him, but he didn’t try to initiate anything either.
Fine. It was the first day of training camp. Between practicing, traveling, eating, playing, and staying in hotels, we’d have plenty of opportunity to get to know each other over the next season.
At least he still seemed to be in a better mood now. The more we practiced, the more he seemed to come to life. He clearly still had that dark cloud hanging over him—who could blame him?—but he smiled a little more as the daywent on. He talked a lot with the prospects, helping them and giving them pointers. He sometimes chatted with some of the guys he’d been playing with for the past few seasons.
A handful of times, though, I caught him staring at nothing, his expression as distant as it had been in the locker room. More than once, I saw him shake himself and clearly try to remember what was going on or what he was supposed to be doing, as if he’d truly zoned out for a minute or two.
I could guess where his mind was going.
This had to be so damn hard, trying to play through that kind of grief. I’d been a mess for the first half of the season after my grandma died. Early had beenhere. In Pittsburgh. On this ice. On this team. Avery was surrounded by constant, inescapable reminders of the reason he was grieving.
I wondered which would be worse for him—if the club left Erlandsson’s nameplate up in the locker room, or when they ultimately took it down.
Avery had been by far the closest to Erlandsson, but the other guys had been hit hard too. Though they tried to be stoic, they all let the masks slip now and then. Baddy had spaced out a little during a drill earlier. I’d caught Willie gazing at something on the stick rack with a far-off look on his face. As I’d swung by the bench for a swig of water, Eriks and Ollie had been having what sounded like a somber conversation in their native language. I didn’t know the intricacies of Swedish, but their expressions hadn’t left much to the imagination.
Their teammate had only been gone for a handful of weeks now. It was a fresh loss, and grief was not a fast process. On top of that, I’d heard that several of them,including Caldwell, had been at the hospital when the doctors broke the grim news. Thathadto be traumatic.
Returning to hockey without him probably pulled at the healing wounds and set them back. It was probably also what kept everyone who knew Erlandsson going. Hockey players were notorious for not being able to sit still anyway, and the way these guys threw themselves into hockey during camp was conspicuous.
I didn’t know if that was healthy. Honestly, whatwashealthy after something like that? Therapy was great and all, but for better or worse, the grief still had to happen.
I scanned the ice for some of the players who, like me, were new to the Whiskey Rebels. Laramie. Dave Kemper. Lance Trewin. Emil Lavoie. It was still a little early to make predictions, but if I had to guess, those four would most likely be on the roster. Trewin was a rookie fresh out of college, and he’d been practically joined at the hip with Matias Astala, one of the veteran defensemen. Kemper and Lavoie looked like a solid match with Nate Johnson for the third line. Aside from Trewin, I knew them from around the League and—in the cases of Lavoie and Laramie—major juniors. They were standup guys. Great assets to a locker room.
Between us, maybe we could carry the team while the rest of the guys found their bearings after Erlandsson.
CHAPTER 5
AVERY
Getting into the groove of training camp and now preseason practice helped me get my head together. I was still a mess, still reminded of Leif at every turn, but I had something to focus on. Little but little, that shook me out of my funk, at least when I had my skates on.
Hockey was a mixed blessing like that. It was a constant reminder of the man I was missing, but it was also a balm to my soul. It was a lightning rod for my concentration and all my messy emotions, and gelling with my old and new teammates felt like moving toward normal. Not back to normal by any means, but moving in that direction.
