Chapter 1
The thing about insomnia was that it made you intimately familiar with the weird hours of your building. Jake Morrison knew, for instance, that Mrs. Henderson in 2A got up to use the bathroom at 2:47 AM every single night. That Mr. Patterson's ancient radiator clanked to life at 3:15. That his downstairs neighbor—the bakery owner whose name he could never quite remember—started moving around at exactly 4:45 AM, six days a week.
Jake checked his phone: 4:32 AM. Close enough.
He was sprawled on his sagging couch, the blue glow of his television washing over the studio apartment that had been "temporary" for three years now. On the screen, Alan Ladd rode across a Western landscape in grainy black and white.Shane, 1953. Jake had seen it maybe forty times. He kept the volume low enough that he could barely hear it, just shapes moving across the screen while his mind circled the same worn tracks it always did at this hour.
Twenty-eight years old. Leading scorer on a minor league hockey team that most people had never heard of. Living above The Bread Basket in the town where he'd grown up, in a studio apartment with a kitchenette the size of a closet and a bathroom where the shower handle came off if you weren't careful.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go.
Below him, through the ancient floorboards, he heard the first sounds of his neighbor's morning routine. A door opening.Water running. The rhythmic thump of what might have been dough being kneaded, or maybe she was just really aggressive with her breakfast prep. He'd lived above The Bread Basket for three years and he'd never seen her do anything aggressive, but then again, he'd never seen her do much of anything beyond take orders and smile at customers through the window.
On the screen, Shane was talking to Joey, the kid who worshipped him. Something about a man's gotta be what he is. Jake's dad used to quote this movie, back before the heart attack took him when Jake was twenty-two. Back when there was still time to prove that all those early morning drives to practice, all those missed family dinners, all that sacrifice, had been worth something.
His phone buzzed. A text from Marcus:still up?
Jake didn't respond. Marcus knew the answer.
Instead, he levered himself off the couch, his left shoulder sending up its familiar protest. Six years since the surgery and it still ached when he was stressed. Which, lately, was always. He moved to the kitchen—three steps from the couch, basically—and opened the fridge. Leftover Chinese food from Tuesday. A protein shake that had expired last week. Half a sandwich from Mac's Tavern that he didn't remember buying.
He grabbed the protein shake and drank it anyway.
Through the wall—the thin, probably-not-up-to-code wall that separated his apartment from the one next door—he heard something crash, followed by a muffled curse. His other neighbor, the one he actually shared a wall with. The noisy one.
Jake had never seen this neighbor either. Never even knew their name. But he knew their schedule almost as well as he knew his own insomnia patterns. They got home late—midnight, 1 AM,sometimes later. They moved around for hours. They dropped things. They listened to music that bled through the walls at 2 AM. They apparently never slept.
Jake understood the feeling.
He checked his phone again: 4:48 AM. Time to get moving if he wanted to beat the sunrise to the rink. Coach Tommy liked to say that preparation separated good players from great ones, but Jake knew better. Preparation was just what you did when you couldn't sleep, when you couldn't sit still, when the walls of your studio apartment felt like they were closing in and the only thing that made sense was the ice.
He pulled on his practice gear—old sweatpants, a Timber Falls Wolves hoodie that had been through three seasons and had started to pill at the elbows, his lucky beanie that Marcus said made him look like a dock worker. In the bathroom, he splashed water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror.
Twenty-eight. Dark hair that needed a cut, stubble that had crossed from "rugged" to "homeless" somewhere around Tuesday, hazel eyes with shadows underneath that never quite went away anymore. The scar through his left eyebrow from a fight in high school—back when he thought fighting made him tough, before he learned that the really hard thing was just showing up every day.
Through the wall, something else clattered. Jake paused, listening. His mysterious neighbor was apparently having a rough morning.
He should probably feel bad for them. Instead, he just felt tired.
The drive to the rink took seven minutes. Jake knew because he'd timed it hundreds of times, trying to find the optimal route,the perfect moment to leave that would get him there just as the sun started to crack over the mountains. Timber Falls, Vermont in November was all bare trees and gray skies, the kind of cold that sank into your bones and stayed there. Most of the tourists were gone now, the leaf-peepers and weekend hikers packed away until spring. What was left was just the town itself: 8,500 people who all knew each other, for better or worse.
Mostly worse, in Jake's experience.
The Timber Falls Ice Center sat at the edge of downtown, a squat brick building that housed one regulation rink, a small workout room, and a locker room that smelled like it hadn't been deep-cleaned since 1987. Jake had learned to skate here when he was four. Had played youth hockey here, high school hockey here. Had left for the NHL at eighteen, convinced he'd never come back except to visit.
Had come back at twenty-five, tail between his legs, shoulder held together with surgical pins and shattered dreams. Three years of failed comebacks, minor league tryouts that went nowhere, and finally accepting that his body would never be what it was.
The parking lot was empty. It always was at this hour. Jake grabbed his gear bag from the passenger seat and headed inside, using the key that Tommy had given him years ago. The rink was dark and cold and perfect. He flipped on the lights over the ice and stood for a moment at the boards, just breathing.
This was the only place he ever felt close to okay.
He laced up his skates in the empty locker room, the ritual of it soothing something in his chest. Loop over, pull tight, loop over, pull tight. His fingers knew the pattern so well he didn't have tothink about it. Which was good, because thinking was what got him in trouble.
Thinking led to questions like:What am I doing here?andIs this really my life?andWhen did I become the guy who peaked at eighteen?
Better to just skate.
The ice was perfect, freshly resurfaced from last night's practice. Jake's first strides were slow, warming up, finding the rhythm. Then faster. Then flying, the cold air burning his lungs, his legs pumping, the sound of his blades cutting into ice the only thing in the world.
