This arena, this team, is my father’s legacy. It’s a place of love, not fear. I refuse to let the memory of a monster poison the one space where I used to feel safe.
My gaze sweeps past the chaotic crowd and settles on the ice. The teams are just finishing warm-ups. I watch him, and the frantic pounding in my chest slows, hitching to match his measured rhythm.
He has a ritual. Before the anthem, he skates a tiny half-circle, carving a line in the ice—mine. He taps the left post with his stick, then the right. A prayer. A ward. He adjusts the glove on his left hand, pulling the strap tight. I can see the shadow of his jaw moving behind the cage of his mask—mutters, vows, curses.
He looks different. Controlled. Every stride speaks of survival through stillness. I recognize a fellow survivor when I see one. Another prisoner. And I envy his walls, envy the way danger doesn’t seem to touch him—how he shapes it instead of shrinking beneath it.
Then his head moves. Fast. Scanning the stands.
His masked gaze locks onto our section.
The shock hits so hard it hurts. I freeze, breath catching in my throat, hands aching in my pockets. It’s impossible to know if he truly sees me, but the connection feels intrusive, like a searchlight pinning me in the dark.
The horn blares—warm-ups over.
He misses his tap. Stumbles. Then slams his stick down and forces the ritual back on track. He skates stiffly to the blue line. Focus wrecked. Sequence broken. And his gaze still burns, branded into my skin.
I give myself rules because rules feel like scaffolding. No earbuds. Don’t leave before the horn sounds. Stand for the anthem, even if my knees tremble. If it gets overwhelming, breathe to four, count the steps to the aisle—but do not run.
My pulse stutters, then steadies around that last command.
The anthem begins. The crowd rises, voices swelling, a thousand threads weaving into one. My knee wants to lock; I make it bend. I stand anyway. The cold bites deeper into my lungs, and I embrace it. Chin up. One rule upheld—a small, stubborn victory no one else will ever see.
When the puck drops, the arena detonates.
“Go! Go! Go! Shoot it, Hale!”
Clara is on her feet beside me, a supernova of energy, voice raw and shredded as she screams. She’s all in, vibrating with an intensity that matches the arena itself. On the ice, Adrian Hale—the captain—takes the puck, his body a fluid line of coiled power as he skates hard along the boards. He centers it. A slapshot. A flash of a glove.
A collective groan erupts from the stands—a single, unified sound of disappointment. Clara drops back into her seat, bumping my shoulder.
“He had him! God, he had him,” she groans, but a fierce, proud smile breaks through.
“They’ll get the next one,” Genny says from my other side, voice cool and steady against the chaos. She’s filming—not like a fan, but like a documentarian. Her lens tracks patterns, not just the puck.
Zoë leans two seats down, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Hey, Gio! Get your head out of your ass! My grandmother could make that pass!”
Clara laughs, nudging me. “She’s hopeless. He knows.”
Someone in the row behind us laughs. A small, involuntary smile touches my lips before I can stop it, and I pull my chin deeper into my scarf, hiding the brief crack in my armor. The performance costs me.This is fine. I’m fine. I’m surviving this. I’m winning.
Winning looks ordinary from the outside. To everyone else, I’m just a girl at a hockey game with friends. Inside, it’s trench warfare: breathe, unclench, don’t bolt. Tonight that war feels louder, messier, like someone keeps reaching inside me and twisting all the dials to max.
Clara leans forward again, her entire being locked on the ice. On him. The whole student section knows they’re a thing. A few guys in front of us chant “Hale’s girl!” when she stands, and she flips them a happy, confident bird, claiming the title.
It’s like watching a foreign language I don’t speak but so badly wish I understood. That easy, public claiming. She’s his, he’s hers, and the entire world gets to watch. She lives that loud, that free, with no fear of cost.
I can only admire it from a distance. An astronomer watching a star I’ll never touch. It throws the vast, quiet, defended emptiness of my orbit into sharp relief—a reminder of everything I used to want—before wanting became dangerous.
The play moves to our end. A defenseman slams an opponent hard into the boards in front of us. The crack of the plexiglass is a gunshot.
I don’t flinch; my whole body seizes. Breath vanishes, stolen from my lungs. My hands fist inside my pockets, nails digging into my palms so hard I know they’ll leave crescent moons.
The sound slices through me like déjà vu, sharp and visceral. My stomach flips, memory and reflex colliding in a sick, painful lurch. Crowd noise dissolves into a high-pitched ringing. The smell of ice is replaced by something metallic. Blood.
Stupid. Weak. Get it together. Not him. Not that room. Just a game.
Rage spikes through the fear—rage at myself, at the reaction, at the fact that he still holds this much power, this foothold in my head. This is exactly why I hide. It feels like failure. And tonight was supposed to be different.
