Theo swept it out of the crease, but even his stick work felt sluggish tonight. Or maybe it was just me, feeling the weight of every second tick off the clock.
Grayson wasn’t on the ice. Not on the bench. Not skating back to drop his shoulder into some poor bastard. His absence was like a phantom limb. You didn’t realize how much you relied on it until it was gone.
And with him gone, that left me. The useless right hand of a pro Southpaw. Barely holding my own in the posts, let alone showing up as stand-in captain for our squad.
I crouched low, vision darting between the Ducks’ offensive line as they regrouped. Without Grayson calling plays, everyone looked half a beat off. Even me. Especially me.
The Ducks won the faceoff in neutral ice. Shit. I grew bigger like Ialways did, guarding my posts. But my pads felt heavier with each stride they took toward me.
“You good?” Theo muttered as he swung back to cover my left side. His breath puffed through the bars of his helmet, sharp and fast.
“Peachy,” I snapped. My voice cracked in my own ears.
He gave me a look, eyes dark through the cage. “You’re overcommitting. Stay square.”
“You’re a square.”
Overcommitting. As if I didn’t know the Ducks smelled blood in the water every time I shifted a fraction too far.
From the corner of my eye, I caught a flash up in the stands. The place was packed, so there was no reason for me to pick her out so easily. Holly. Sitting just behind the glass, hair pulled back, pen scratching across her notebook between shifts. Probably drafting my post-game mea culpa for the press.
“Callahan accepts responsibility for Surge’s implosion.”
Another shot screamed off an Anaheim stick. I kicked my leg out, catching it with my skate blade and shoving it to the boards. My heart thudded so hard it felt like it would tear through the padding of my chest protector.
“Head in the game, head in the game,” I chanted under my breath.
Which, under the circumstances, was harder than any other time I’d been out here. Everything kept railroading my thoughts. Leading without sucking. Controlling the narrative. Holly with her shirt untucked, white socks whispering on the hotel room carpet.
We chased the puck out of the zone, but Anaheim clawed it back in. Everything was chaos. No system. No Grayson. And me, supposed backbone of the team, cracking under the noise of my own thoughts.
“Settle in, Callahan,” Theo hissed as he slid past me, stick dragging a Duck off balance. “Quit playing like your mask’s on fire.”
“Swap places and see how you do,” I shot back. My throat wassandpaper.
Another rush. My knees burned as I dropped into butterfly. Shot blocked, rebound cleared by the mighty Theo. Again.
I heard the crowd roar above the play, a mix of excitement and frustration. Surge fans wanted a hero, but they were stuck with me.
Every whistle felt like an indictment. Every glance from the bench burned through me. The guys weren’t talking to me like they talked to Grayson. No subtle nods, no quick chirps of trust. Just silence, like they were waiting for me to fuck it all up.
Ducks set up in our zone again. Their winger feinted, passed cross-ice, and I lunged… too far. Thankfully, the slapshot clanged off the far post and sailed out of play.
“What did I just tell you?” Theo barked, skating back to tap my pad. “Stay home!”
I swallowed hard. My glove hand twitched. “I’ve got it,” I muttered, but I didn’t sound like me at all.
Up in the stands, Holly was still scribbling. Her eyes flicked up to me just once, a flash of contact through the glass. Not exactly pity. She wouldn’t waste pity on me. But maybe frustration. Disappointment. Or the cool detachment of someone already writing the press release about how their client blew it. Always composed, that one. Professional. Always just doing her job.
We dropped for another faceoff. I crouched lower, forcing myself to breathe slow. The Ducks’ center won it clean, and their winger drove straight down the slot.
“Cut him off!” I yelled. Theo’s blade clattered against ice, driving him wide. Tucker tried to compensate, but the puck came across, low and nasty.
I snapped my stick down and batted it out. For a second — just a second — the crowd roared approval. But the rebound came back like a boomerang.
I sprawled, glove out, catching it inches from the goal line. Mybody slammed to the ice. The whistle blew.
I stayed down, forehead pressed to the cold sweat inside my mask.
